2021. Cape Cod. Have you ever been? I visited this past fall for a wedding. Headed down to the beach the day after. My toes take in the sand of the beautiful roving, roaring monster that once tried to gobble me up.
So many decades ago, I was gobbled up, but the ocean spit me out some time afterwards into the arms of someone who was probably feeling like a goddamn hero! He must’ve dived along the sea bottom to find me curled up in a ball and dragged me up into the light. But, instead of thanking him, I was so angry I pounded his chest, punched him in the face, got up and ran away.
I know. What an ingrate.
But wait. Like everything we see/read/hear, there’s more to the story!
How that morning swim went so awry in Avalon, NJ, so many years ago. I am seven years old, and love swimming in the ocean, spindly and free as a fish. There was a hurricane the day before, and the waters were choppy. My head sinks below the ocean’s top, the water bubbles up and engulfs me. Gulp. Glub. I keep swallowing mouthfuls of water and can’t stay afloat. (Caught in a rip current, I now believe.) I think to myself, well, I’ll just go to sleep. And off I go to Davy Jones’ Locker, bumping onto the ocean floor, curling my legs up to sleep. Still remember it, moment by moment.
Two years earlier, my young father died in front of me. On a Sunday morning, I was sitting on the floor in my go-to-church dress, black with pink and lavender and white flowers, reading the comics. My father read the paper on the couch in front of me, wearing his black and red brocade silk bathrobe. Daddy was too sick to go to church. He suddenly lurched towards me, vomiting blood all over me, my dress, the newspaper on my lap and collapsed on the floor next to me. My screams brought my mother running into the living room, but it took 30 years before I could see this full scene unfold in a recovered memory. Everything past this moment is gone, I can’t remember anything else. I was immediately removed, by whom, I have no idea, nor was anyone ever able to say. I’m surprised they knew where to find me! Weeks later I was returned to my home. The house I returned to was dark, cold, austere and very, very still.
My mother cried a lot when she was alone in her room. My room was across the hall. She would push me away when I would try to comfort her. I desperately needed the comfort, too. What happened to Daddy, why is everyone so quiet, why does Mommy cry every night in her bed? No answers.
As I hit the soft ocean floor and curl up to go to sleep, I find myself inside a tunnel and like “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” walk on in. Facing me, in a wash of grey silvery light — the light was very, very bright — and twinkles of light racing like fireflies — sits my father in an armchair with a woman standing next to him. She is my grandmother, and in this wondrous place, I recognize her immediately. Suddenly I am loved, so deeply it sustains me to this day. I go and sit next to my father. Things are explained to me, though I couldn’t tell you today exactly what they were. This is all so vivid, even today.
I was happier than I’d ever known.
The “conversation” continues. The light, these twinkles, this grand acceptance and love, and my grandmother’s eyes, all in a racing continuum. The feeling of complete acceptance, care and comfort is unlike anything on earth.
As I said, I was happier than I’d ever known. I’m drinking in this whole experience, so happy to be there, when. . .
Suddenly I feel air on my wet face. I’m dangling in someone’s arms. Now I’m put on the beach and a guy is pushing — is it my chest that he’s pushing? A throng of people stand watching. As I spring to life, incensed to be taken away once again from my father, I start to punch the guy with my little fists. Take that, you! How dare you rip me out of heaven! As soon as I can, I get up and run away. Yup, a real ingrate.
I run up the nearby beach to where my mother sits, buried in a book. I lie on the towel behind her. She rarely says much these days, and she doesn’t acknowledge me.
Some of the people who’d seen my rescue come up to talk to my mother. Voices hushed, just like after my father died. I watch my mother’s face, but she shows little emotion or reaction of any kind. After a few minutes, the people walk away.
My mother never said a word to me about the incident. Over the years I took my mother’s silence as disapproval, even distaste, of me. It was a burden. But recently, years after my mother passed away, I was musing over this whole enterprise and I thought I heard, “I was so ashamed. My daughter almost drowned and I didn’t even know it.”
In my bitterest telling of this story over the years I referred to my rescuer as the “do-gooder who took me from Heaven.”
Back on the beach on Cape Cod in 2021, after I attended a most beautiful, loving wedding event, I am quietly contemplating the waves as they roll in. My heart soars going over moments, conversations, laughter from the previous day.
And I think back to that guy who fished me out of the ocean, and bowed my head. Suddenly a wellspring of tears flowed. I said I was sorry for hitting him and running away. Said I was grateful for his brave act. Told him how grateful I am for my life. Cried to think how much I resented being brought back to this earth only to suffer so, and was now marveling at the love and joy I have had in my life. And I blessed my rescuer who I’ll never know in this lifetime. For the very first time.
I was being returned to myself. After a lifetime that was challenging, to say the least, my heart folded joyfully inward and I loved my life.
You, dear reader, do not have the same situation, of course, but I do wish this for you. To be returned to your deeply satisfied and loved self. If you’re looking for it, it will come.
Postscript, should you be wondering. My father died of untreated hemochromatosis, a genetic disease that makes your body absorb iron. The excess iron eventually poisons and destroys body organs. The disease was not diagnosed back then, and so my father didn’t have a chance. His doctor told him he had “digestive issues.”
I have it, too, but will probably not suffer the horrible death that my Daddy did. It’s quite manageable these days. All is fine.
