She's Not Drowning, She's Just Waving

Across the state of Florida we went, from Vero Beach to Clearwater Beach, from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Two days from now, after a couple of sixteen-hour stints in the cheap seats of a triple-seven, I'll have a chance to dip my toes in the South China Sea and the Malacca Strait, but for now we're visiting all available water. Calling all seashells. And, apparently, nearly drowning while I'm chasing a seven-dollar inflatable tube deep into the Gulf.

When we last saw intrepid attorney/adventurer Kat King, she was refusing to go in the water. Honestly, given the way the waves were breaking at Vero and the clouded chill they carried, I didn't blame her. But that was Saturday and this was Tuesday and it was a solid ninety degrees, almost flawlessly sunny across the white sands at Clearwater.

"You don't have to come out," I told her, "but I'm going to head out to the limit poles for a while." I swam for ten minutes or a little longer, out to where I couldn't touch the bottom even if I held my breath and dove for it. Then I rolled onto my back, facing the horizon, took a breath, and started to float.

I couldn't float at all as a kid because I was 6'3" and 120 pounds. Now I'm 6'2" and 235 and I have no trouble floating in saltwater. If I lived in Florida I would float in the Gulf all the time. Actually, I wouldn't. If I lived in Florida I'd cut weight down to 210 so I could go shirtless without a deep sense of miserable insecurity and then I wouldn't float. There's some sort of weird irony there.

Where was I? Oh yes, floating. I'm shaped oddly, I have this barrel chest that fills with air and with the aid of some foam shoes I was quite buoyant. My ears were underwater but my eyes, nose, and mouth were completely clear. I could feel the sun against my shuttered eyes and I found myself thinking of nothing at all with very little effort. Eventually I fell asleep and only woke when I heard a jetski passing by. That meant I was far enough out that some lifeguard might feel vaguely compelled to come out to get me. So I started to swim back, and I saw Kat standing in the water near the shore, on her tiptoes. I counted this as a small moral victory of sorts. Another woman convinced to enter the water.

It took me a while to reach her. "They have inner tubes for sale, seven dollars," she said. The way she said "seven dollars" was touching, this woman who earns more than ninety-nine percent of America and who hands out unrecoverable five-figure loans to various hapless elements of her family, scrunching her little nose at the potential lack of value involved in buying an inner tube right at the beach.

"So go buy one and come float with me." An undefined amount of floating time later, she returned, paddling out in a bright-green (of course!) inner tube. For what seemed like hours we drifted out to sea, occasionally kicking back past the limit poles, not speaking, just enjoying the sun and the silence.

Then somehow she slipped out of the inner tube, which was immediately blown out of our reach, out towards the horizon. "Go get it!" she cried. I turned and saw that she was already paddling back towards shore, with some demonstrated competence, and I kicked off after our seven-dollar purchase.

The last time I went swimming in the Gulf for real was decades ago. I wasn't a great swimmer then and I'm no better now. But there was a small boat swerving in from a quarter-mile or so away to grab the inner tube --- my inner tube! --- and I was not inclined to lose that race. Perhaps a hundred kicks later I had it in my grasp and I was laughing at the people in the boat. Not today, bitches! Somehow my prescription Wayfarers had stayed in my face through the whole adventure, too.

Tired from the sprint, I leaned on the green inflatable and began to kick towards shore. I could see Kat making her progress back as well but she wasn't moving very quickly. Finally she got to a spot where she could stand. It took me twenty minutes to get back. She was crying behind her sunglasses. "I panicked and couldn't tread water and I went under and I think I almost drowned. I swallowed water. I feel sick. I was too far out for anyone to help me."

"That's ridiculous," I countered, "they," and I suppose I meant the lifeguards, "they would have been out the minute you needed help for real, nobody drowns at Clearwater Beach (I was very wrong about that, btw) and you'd have been fine, I promise." The air around us turned cold. A thunderhead was coming in. The beach was emptying, children and ripe young mothers in inadequate bikinis scurrying towards the parking lot. We walked out of the water and back to the car. In what seemed like moments, evening had fallen. In the morning, I'd be flying to Singapore and she'd be heading to Maryland.

Drowning's attractive to contemplate in the abstract, but confronted face to face it can take the starch out of you. She cried in the car as we crossed the causeway back to the mainland. "You're leaving, I don't know when I'll see you again," and I assured her this wasn't so, that I'd see her before she knew it, with the same blithe meaningless assurance I’d used on the behalf of the purported competence of the lifeguards at Clearwater Beach.

The reality is this: you can drown at any moment. You can lose your job or break your leg or hit your head the wrong way and fall all the way down, out of the sky and into the deep water, beyond your ability to kick free of the undertow. You can fall out of love in the blink of an eye and never feel safe in those waters again. You can fill your pockets with stones and walk into the waves because the alternative is going forward with the life you have and you're unwilling to face another day of that.

Or you can paddle out past the limit.

If you put down your pen, leave your worries behind Then the moment will come, and the memory will shine

You can be toes and fingers out of the water, the salt soaking your hair, a passenger on the three-foot waves, existing in the moment. You can float, without effort, without worry, facing the sun, unsinkable. But you're probably going to have to do it alone.