Floating/Drowning/Floating

It’s not a matter of being saved. Because in a basic way, I can swim. I know about the Cork Float, the Dead Man’s Float, Doggy Paddle, I can tread water. Mostly you’ll find me spinning around, though, a sea otter, front to back, usually back, no oyster or clam held to my chest, but on my back nonetheless, the buoying power of salt water amazing, holding me, womb-like.

So I can float. But I will admit to being afraid of waves, of rough water, the undertow that I remember almost drowning me at age 4, or so it felt. Who was watching me? Why was I pulled under again and again and again? Who, three decades later, watches me now? Who watched me in between? The line between safety and danger, freedom and bondage, seems so thin.

It’s true that the tide ebbs and flows, that the meeting place of sea and sand is unstable, changeable, dangerous. Sand. These tiny particles of rock. A rock. A thing you rely on, a thing you expect to see in the same place after a mighty storm. These teeny, tiny rocks, that give way and slide under foot, laughing cousins of the great boulders, shrill serendipity as you fall. Shrugging their miniscule shoulders, singing on the wind in a whistling chorus, “We told you so!”