Drowning

When I was seven years old we vacationed on Lake Murray.  As of then it was the biggest lake I had ever seen.  I remember wondering if it was the ocean when I first stepped out of our camper and squinted my eyes at it in the hot July sun.  I had only seen the ocean one other time before that, and then only for a few minutes on the way home from our Easter trip to the Everglades.  The reason I thought it might be the ocean was because I couldn't see the other side from where I was standing.  My older sisters had always told me that the difference between the lake and the ocean was that at the ocean, you couldn't see the other side. It wasn't long though before my dad set me straight. He put me in the boat and took me to the other side of the lake, where we dropped our heavily-wormed hooks in the water and listened to the crickets and frogs compete for air time while we waited for the fish to bite.  The air was heavy with mosquitoes, the smell of "Off" and the sound of my daddy's laughter echoing off the shoreline, calling back to us with a deep sigh of relief to finally be away from real life.

We rode back to camp after dark, on top of water so smooth you could trace every ripple as the boat sliced through  wiggly elongated reflections from the far away shoreline, a never-ending pool veined with light that we followed right up to our camp-site.  I loved sitting in the front of the boat where the running light glowed a patriotic red and blue beside me, showing the other boaters where we were, but doing nothing to help us navigate.  No matter what lake we were on and no matter what time of day we were traveling on it, my dad seemed to always know the way back to where we began.  As a kid, it seemed to me that we could have taken any direction and ended up in the same place, but my dad knew better.  I never even worried about how we would get back to our temporary abode, I just sat back and enjoyed being a kid on the lake with my dad.

Our campsite always smelled of camping fuel and smoke, with a hint of fishy clothes wafting through now and then from my dad's fish-cleaning clothes that hung on a line between two trees.  No matter where we went on our camping ventures, our camp-sites always looked the same.  My mom always had her makeshift kitchen with a screen tent over a picnic table, we had our clothes line and special dishes, our tents, sleeping bags and pillows, even our stuffed animals and baby dolls.  It wasn't really that different from home, except that it was way better.

Swimming and fishing were our things. The kids pretty much lived in the water all day. My mother who had a life-long fear of water, would watch us from her lounge chair and holler at us every time she thought we went out too far from shore.   I remember having  very soggy wrinkly fingers and toes and sunburned shoulders that hurt at night when I tried to sleep.  My freckles would get darker from the sun and my hair would get streaks of strawberry blonde from being in the sun so much every day.

My dad the fisherman always got up in the wee hours of the morning to go fishing before the hot sun caught up with him.  Fishing was an escape for him.  I always imagined that he was sitting somewhere out on the quiet lake in the morning, trying to spot deer in the edge of the woods along the shore while his hook sat lazily on the bottom of the lake.  As peaceful as it was to him, it was also serious business.  It stirred up his competitiveness like nothing else and he became notorious among his peer-group for being a master of the art.   I think the biggest fish he ever caught  was a 21 pound rock-bass.  He caught it out of Lake Murray after sitting in the hot-midday sun for hours waiting for a bite.   It was the biggest fish I had ever seen.   It eventually hung over the bedroom door in our house for years and years.  My mom hid money in it's mouth, but she didn't know I knew that.

 One morning at Lake Murray when I was seven and my dad was out fishing, I wandered out to a floating dock with my fishing pole and a bucket of worms.  I didn't tell anyone where I was going.

I was wearing a pair of brown bell-bottomed pants with flowers on them--oddly enough, I'd probably still wear those pants if they fit.  I don't remember what else I had on but those pants were some of my favorites back then.  Someone had left a bar stool on the dock that I noticed but ignored at first.  I sat on the edge of the dock with my pant-legs rolled up and my toes in the water. I baited my hook and dropped it in.  Waited for a few seconds, and like a typical seven year-old decided to try a different spot.  I went to each corner of the small square dock, cast my line, waited about a minute and then went to the next corner.  I could see the smoke from the last night's campfire still smoldering from a distance.  I saw my oldest sister poking around in the screen tent, saw my nephew throwing rocks.  No one even knew I was up.

I wasn't a swimmer just yet.  I loved floating around in the lake with my orange life-jacket on and even diving in from the boat as long as I had a floating device, but I was still kind of scared of the way the water pushed against my chest when I got in without my orange cushion of safety clasped tightly around me, keeping me afloat. I had never swam a day in my life.

There I was, alone in the sun on a July morning impatiently waiting for the fish to bite and starting to feel a little bored.  I saw the bar stool again.  It was so tall I could barely get my behind up on it, but I eventually wiggled my way up where I sat, proud as a peacock that I was only seven and fishing all by myself.  I hoped my mom would see me there and be proud of the initiative I had taken.  Unfortunately, my place wasn't as secure as I thought it was.

A boat landing was nearby, and in hindsight probably a wake zone as well, but the boat that took off from the landing that morning wasn't paying any attention to wake zones or floating docks or seven-year old very proud little girls sitting atop bar stools with their fishing poles. The dock swayed from side to side and my perch swiftly became unsteady, tipping me over straight into the water. It was over my head.  All I can remember is the feeling of water swishing under my feet as I kicked around trying to find bottom but found nothing there to push against.  I flailed my arms and tried to scream "Help!" as I sank down and rose again just barely getting my nose above water.  I was engulfed by it, covering my face, clouding my vision with it's muddiness, choking out my cries, stinging my nose.  I kept fighting it though, kept trying to call  for help, and at one point, saw my oldest sister bent over,  pointing her finger in her son's face.  I think I could hear her high-pitched voice scolding him, but in retrospect I probably didn't.  My memory likely just adds that piece because I heard it so much when I was a kid.

Eventually she heard me calling out and jumped in, shoes and all, to save me.  She grabbed me up, set me ashore, then promptly turned her finger and sharp voice in my direction.  I was a little stunned as she took my hand and dragged me back to our campsite to our mother, who only kind of seemed concerned and told me that the top of my head wasn't even wet.  I remember thinking, "Yeah but that's not where I breathe from."

I spent the next hour or so in my dry red shorts and white tank top lying on my parents' bed inside the camper.  I stared out the screen door resentfully at the lake, as if it were the lake's fault I decided to sit on top of a bar stool that was on top of a floating dock.  I wondered why my mother wasn't more upset.  Why was she just leaving me alone to feel so afraid?  Didn't she care that I almost died?  I imagined the water laughing at me, threatening me.  I talked back to it.  I told it I would never go fishing again.  I would  never ride in the boat again and I would NEVER go swimming again even with my orange life-jacket on. I just knew the lake had it out for me and I wasn't going to fall for its dirty tricks.

When my dad came back from fishing I ran outside the camper to tell him I almost died.  My sister relayed the story to him in a fretful but heroic kind of way as my mother sat quietly, then said something about how I didn't have any business wandering off like that in the first place.  I kind of felt like I deserved to almost-drown because I did something I shouldn't have done.

After my dad had lunch and his usual afternoon nap in the shade, he put on his knee-length cut-off pants and waded out up to his neck in the water instead of zipping back across the lake in our blue boat to catch bass, like he usually did.  I stood on the shoreline without so much as a toe in the water and watched him tossing my sisters in the air.  I wanted to put my life-jacket on and swim to him so he could throw me across the lake and let me splash into the water, but I was too afraid.  He never pressured me even once.  Finally, I grew weary of watching the fun and decided to give the water another try.  I put on my orange life-jacket as tightly as I could and waded in.  I eventually made it out to where he was and after he tossed me a couple of times, he urged me to take off my squishy orange pillow of safety and swim to him.  So I tried.  I had to get used to the swish of water under my feet, instead of solid ground.  I had to remind myself to keep my chin up and  breathe with the water pressing against my body.  Most of all,  I had to keep my eyes on my dad.  It wasn't that I had no fear of the water anymore, it was just that I knew it was time to conquer this thing I loved yet feared so much.  I couldn't have put it into those words when I was seven, but there it is for me now.

And there he was.  My dad, standing up to his neck in murky lake water with his arms outstretched, waiting for me as I struggled and flailed my way to him through the waves, his steadfastness giving me assurance that even if I began to sink, everything would be okay because his eyes were on me too.