Grayson (11 page)

What was he saying to her? What was she saying to him? Was he explaining that he had been looking for her for most of the morning? That he was scared, but that some humans had stayed with him and helped him find her?

They had found each other. That was all that really mattered.

Surfacing, I looked up at Steve. He was beaming. For the first time since I met him, Steve was so emotional he couldn’t speak. He smiled and shook his head and pressed his index finger into the corner of his eye to brush away a tear.

Grayson and his mother surfaced near the lifeguard boat. Everyone on the pier and in the boats was smiling, laughing, pointing, exclaiming about the beauty of the whales and the magic of seeing the mother and son swimming together.

Grayson and his mother dove and surfaced ten feet from me. I made sure not to move between mother and son, but they swam over to me.

Grayson’s mother was enormous, at least forty-five feet long—longer, I think, than the lifeguard boat. She swam slowly past me. I felt tiny beside her. I held my breath and felt powerful energy emanating from her body. Was she speaking to me? Was she using low frequencies, sounds that were too low for me to hear but that I could feel? I treaded water and looked closer.

She had patches of white barnacles on her sides, dimples on her upper jaw, and more barnacles along her chin. There were three long grooves along her throat that allowed her throat to expand when she fed, and I caught a glimpse of her pink tongue. It was longer than my arm and probably weighed more than a ton. She had baleen plates in her mouth. She used these to filter food—amphipods, mollusks, squid, and other little marine animals—out of the water once she reached the Arctic waters and started feeding again.

She turned and swam to within five feet of me. She was massive and it was amazing; she could move so slowly and she was able to gauge her speed and her size. She knew how close she could get without swimming down something as small as me.

She circled back and swam even closer. I was
thrilled to see this magnificent being beside me. She was so big the wave coming off her body pushed me back, but I was compelled to pull closer to her.

She dove deep under me, and I felt the water quickening. I realized she had been swimming under me when we were at the jetty earlier that morning. That’s where she’d lost Grayson. She did what any mother would do; she doubled back and retraced the route she had taken with Grayson that morning. She must have panicked, trying to find her baby in the ocean. She took a massive breath of air and spouted. Her
poof
echoed through the pier and her fountain of water was caught by the wind. It showered the people in the boats and they laughed with delight, in awe at her size and sweet nature.

She slipped through the water as if the ocean were part of her being. As if they were one and the same. And as she swam, she made me think of Grayson, how he was a beautiful swimmer too. And how he must have learned from her. In that moment I realized how amazing life is, how filled with unexpected wonders, and how fortunate I was to be in the ocean that day.

With one lift and push of her tremendous fluke the
mother slid through the water. Her footprints were enormous, maybe seven or eight feet wide. I watched Grayson follow her. His footprints were perhaps two feet wide.

She suddenly swam right under me. I took a breath and looked down. All I could see was the gray top of her head. She was only three feet below. I reached and could almost touch her. All in the same moment, I was fascinated, thrilled, and scared beyond belief. I had never swum with anything as big as her in my life. My heart was pounding in my chest.

With two or three thrusts of her fluke she was swimming fast, moving at four or five knots, but she was so big it took three seconds for her head, back, and fluke to pass under my body. She turned abruptly and swam very slowly two feet from me. She was right beside me. For a moment, I touched her cheek. It felt rubbery and rough where there were barnacles. She tilted her head and she was looking into my eyes. There was a glimmer of light in her big brown eye. I felt a connection between us, just as I had with Grayson. She looked at me. I looked at her. We held each other’s gaze.

It seemed like she was saying thank you—at least
that’s what I felt. I was so elated, hoping, barely able to believe that she was really there.

She swam one more time around us in a circle with Grayson nestled against her side. She seemed to be showing us that she had Grayson now, and everything was going to be all right.

She gently nudged Grayson and he swam closer beside her, up near her head. He made a soft grunting sound. She replied. He said something else; now, looking back, I think it was goodbye.

As strongly as I could think, as strongly as I could feel, I thought and felt, Farewell, Grayson; farewell, Grayson’s mom. In a very short time you have shown me things I would never have discovered on my own. You have taught me how to listen and feel and understand without using words. Even if words could reach to eternity there would not be enough to express the way I feel about you.

They swam under the boats and under me, and I just hoped they could feel what I felt for them: You’re going far away, but you will always be in my heart and in my dreams. When I think of you I will smile and always remember this day.

Grayson and his mother spouted, and the sun caught their heart-shaped spray just right. There were two rainbows in the spray, side by side, one big and one little. I could see how happy they were to be together again, how excited Grayson was, and how much his mother cared for him.

They swam beyond the lifeguard boat north toward the jetty. Grayson rode in his mother’s wide and strong slipstream, and the lifeguards followed in their boat.

Grayson was gone. It was all that I had hoped for. All that I’d spent hours believing could happen. I watched him swimming into the silvery water, cutting
effortlessly across the cross currents, growing smaller and smaller by the minute as the sea expanded behind him. I knew I might never see him again. But I knew that there were experiences in a lifetime that no matter where you are, no matter what else happens, you carry them with you forever.

Steve’s arms were resting on the pier railing, and his hand was cupped over his eyes to shield them from the blinding glare. He looked down at me and nodded confidently; his mustache curled when he smiled. He knew Grayson would be okay now. He looked happy one moment and sad the next as emotions spiraled around in him.

“What a wonderful morning,” I said.

Steve laughed deeply and nodded a few times. He brushed a tear off his cheek, as emotions surged through him.

I felt a new love and respect for him, for his willingness to stop and help the whales, and for his belief that we could find Grayson’s mother. He never doubted it and he never gave up.

We watched the whales until they disappeared behind the jetty. As they did, the small group on the
pier cheered, and children sitting high on their parents’ shoulders waved goodbye to Grayson and his mother.

The lifeguards offered me a ride ashore and I happily accepted. I was freezing cold, tired, and so hungry. Before I jumped back into the water to swim the last few yards into shore, they radioed their friends on the Long Beach Lifeguard boat patrolling near the
Queen Mary
.

They had spotted the whales. Mother and son were swimming right on course. Cruising at three or four miles per hour with the waves and sunshine on their backs.

The lifeguards near the
Queen Mary
escorted the whales to the outer edge of Los Angeles Harbor and they made sure the cargo ships sailing in and out of the harbor knew where the whales were swimming.

Grayson and his mother joined a pod of three other whales that were swimming north, bound for Alaska.

My feet were numb when I climbed onto the beach, but the sand was soft and warm between my toes. As I walked up the beach, bent over and shivering, I wiped the brownish green plankton off my face, then crossed
the parking lot and asked the lifeguards who were now on duty in the Seal Beach lifeguard station if I could call home quickly to let my parents know that my workout had taken me a few hours longer than I expected and that I was on my way home.

Later, when I sat down at the breakfast table and ate, I told my mother and father what had happened that morning. I told them I had swum with a baby whale and that friends had helped him find his mother. I didn’t make a big deal about it.

Many years have passed now.

When I work out along the California coast I often look for gray whales swimming by. I always wonder what became of Grayson. Did he swim across rough Arctic seas? Had he basked in the warm lagoons off Baja? Had he grown into an adult?

By now, he would be more than thirty years old, and he would still be growing and gaining strength. If he is lucky he will live to be fifty years old. Had he found a mate? Did he have babies of his own?

In winter, spring, and fall, when I’m swimming in the ocean, and I see whales migrating up or down the California coast, I imagine Grayson is swimming with
them. He’s out in front, full of power, strength, and song. He’s using his sonar, guiding the other whales, telling them about the places he’s been, the distant seas and far-off shores. These are waters where I’ve never been, oceans where only gray whales can swim. What would it be like to travel with them?

As the gray whales pass me, I watch them move together across the water and I feel the same awe and wonder as the day I met Grayson.

Sometimes for a moment or two I feel something in the water, a sudden stirring, a high energy force, like the morning Grayson swam with me, and I watch the whales swimming effortlessly across the water, beauty in motion, heading for the distant horizon.