Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul (11 page)

There was just one thing on our itinerary—Shannon’s dream to swim with dolphins. As we entered the Keys, a large wall mural of a mermaid surrounded by her underwater friends welcomed us. Shannon pointed and said, “That will be us tomorrow!”

As we drove over the bridges to Key West, we strained to catch a glimpse of dolphins playing in the gulf. Later, after checking into our hotel, we rounded up a phone book and reserved a dolphin excursion for the next morning. Shannon’s dream was finally going to come true!

The next morning at the marina, we boarded a catamaran that had been airbrushed with pictures of dolphins playing at sunset. As the boat pulled out from the dock, our captain played the “Winnie the Pooh” song to set the pace for a carefree day.

We arrived at an area of shallow water referred to as a “playground” for the dolphins. The captain asked, “Who wants to swim in the water first?” Shannon, of course, volunteered. She had waited too long not to jump in at the first opportunity. Nearly as excited as she was, I decided to join her. Soon the water was bubbling with commotion. Attracted by our presence, a pod of dolphins flipped and danced beneath us. Clicks and chirps, almost like laughter, were everywhere. It was like nothing we had ever heard! The energy the dolphins projected only intensified our enthusiasm.

We had brought underwater cameras with the intention of taking a few snapshots. But as the dolphins rushed past us, always an arm’s length away, we quickly forgot about taking pictures. For hours, we took turns in the water, two at a time, swimming and snorkeling. The dolphins never seemed to tire. Neither did Shannon. Even underwater, I could see the look of total exhilaration on her face as one dolphin after another gracefully glided by. This was her dream. And it had become more real than she could have ever possibly imagined.

When the captain announced it was time to leave, we reluctantly boarded the boat. As we headed back, the dolphins continued to follow us, playing and jumping in the waves as if they were bidding us good-bye. Later that evening as we sat at the dock at Mallory Square and watched the sunset fade, I saw something wonderful in Shannon’s eyes. It reminded me of the carefree spirit of the dolphins that we had seen earlier. Shannon was at ease.

Four months later, her cancer relapsed. This time her body was unable to fight off the disease due to her already weakened system. In April, she passed away. It is comforting to know that I got to experience with Shannon the fulfillment of at least one of her dreams. If only for a brief period, she truly was living her life how she wanted to. Free.

Jennifer Lowry

Letters

My earliest memories are of my mother and me at the beach in Florida, playing in the ocean. She would stand at the water’s edge and explain that a beach very much like ours was just over the horizon, bordering the same ocean. Her point was that although we couldn’t see the other side, the ocean still connected us to the people who lived there.

On my first day of school I stood at the classroom door, my heart beating wildly, and told my mom I didn’t want to stay. I wanted to go to the beach with her instead.

“We can go after school,” she said.

“But I’ll miss you,” I cried. “I don’t want you to go away.”

Understanding my fear, she repeated the one thing that always soothed me. She pointed to the picture of the globe that decorated my lunchbox and said, “No matter where we are, we’ll always be connected by the ocean.” I stared at the ocean picture, salty water in my blue eyes. Dutifully, I nodded, then turned and walked through the door.

Years later I joined the U.S. Navy. I was at sea for six months at a time. My mother and I exchanged letters, but the delivery delays made it hard to keep any kind of continuing thread in our correspondence. So we developed a game for our letters. We would pick a day to write about and try to guess what the other one was doing or wearing that day. To our surprise we were incredibly accurate with our predictions. My mother soon discovered hers were even more accurate when she meditated and wrote at the ocean’s edge, her feet in the water where we used to play—the same water I was sailing half a globe away.

In May 1987, I was onboard the USS
Doyle
in the Persian Gulf—my last six-month voyage before I would be honorably discharged from the navy. By this time my mother and I had decided to change our letter game. Since the mail delivery was taking about a month, we agreed to write at the same time and day (taking into account the time difference) and try to predict a month ahead what the other was doing and feeling.

The helicopter carrying our mail arrived on May 17, the very day my mother and I had chosen to write about, and I was more excited than usual to read her letter. I always looked forward to her letters. They were always so upbeat they helped me get through the month. But I was especially curious to see if our predictions would still be so accurate. Since I had to be on watch shortly, I read as I walked to the combat information center. She wrote:

Dear Michael,

I went down to the ocean where we played when you were
a child. I walked into the water and began to meditate about
the day we agreed upon. I looked at the ocean’s horizon and
thought of you and how the ocean connects us. I thought long
and hard about writing this as it might make you sad, but as
I stood in the water I saw you as a child with your lunchbox,
crying as you turned and walked through the door at school
so many years ago. I went to the beach that day after dropping
you off and cried. Now, there I was back doing the same thing.
All I felt was sadness, and when a plane flew by overhead I
got scared. For the first time in my life, I felt afraid of being in
the water. I couldn’t even come up with a single prediction to
give you. I’m sorry that our experiment didn’t work.

I was a little shocked and confused at the gloomy tone of her letter. I had reached the radar room, and in order to open the door I juggled the letter and the box of food I carried with me for my twelve-hour shift. As I crossed the threshold carrying my “lunch box,” a strong sense of déjà vu hit me, and I could not help thinking about the irony as I sat down at the air search radar. With my mother’s words echoing in my mind, I began my watch. I could feel the ocean move under my feet and hear the water sliding by the steel grey hull of the ship. Always a comfort before, the water now seemed ominous.

Every aircraft that flew near our ship that day left me feeling anxious. I even challenged a regular commercial aircraft, which quickly veered off. Moments later the USS
Stark,
our sister ship a few short nautical miles away, failed to challenge the same commercial aircraft and was struck from overhead by two Iraqi aircraft-fired Exocet missiles. Thirty-seven shipmates were killed, and the
Stark
nearly sank.

Although I can’t say for certain that my mother’s letter saved my shipmates and me that day, I do know that what she wrote made me more vigilant. I felt like she and I were held together somehow, bound across the globe by the waters lapping at her feet and licking the hull of my ship. I don’t think our experiment could have worked any better.

Michael Geers

Goddess

I recently took my oldest daughter Maya to our local beach to swim and play. She’s four years old, and naturally her questions have become more thoughtful and profound. At the beach she asked—without any prompting from me—”God made us, huh?” We had been working on a sand castle when she said this. I smoothed away loose sand from our castle and took a deep breath, frightened, really, to mess up this answer .

I considered myself spiritual, but by no means religious. I believe in compassion, giving your all and doing right by yourself, others and the Earth. The religious symbolism I allow in our house is defined by our Afro-Caribbean culture. I have a shelf—some call it an altar—covered with candles, pictures of saints, shells, a coconut, coins, feathers and beaded necklaces. These things are important definers of who we were as Puerto Ricans, but for the most part they have remained a mystery to Maya. Now she is getting old enough to ask for some explanation.

Before she lost interest, I said, finally, “Yes, Baby, God made us.”

That was all I could come up with—a simple answer to a simple question.

“How did she do that?”

She?
I thought. “Well,” I said, “there are a lot of stories about how she did that. Some say she molded people out of the Earth and breathed life into them. And some say that a long, long time ago before dinosaurs were around she made tiny animals first that eventually turned into
people.”

“Turned into people?”

“After a really long time, yeah, the animals
evolved
into people.” Impressively, I knew she understood that word because she once told me that Pokémon evolve.

“Will Puffy [our cat] evolve into a person?”

“Probably not,” I laughed. “It takes a really long time if that were to ever happen again.”

“Is God a boy or a girl?”

“I think God is both, Baby.”

“Spencer says God is a boy!” She said this with a tone revealing the audacity of Spencer, one of her classmates. I tried to imagine preschoolers discussing religion on the monkey bars or around the water fountain.

“It’s okay that Spencer thinks that,” I said.

“Oh,” she answered, sounding a bit defeated that maybe Spencer had won a minor victory.

“I think,” I said gingerly, “that God is, and looks like, all things in nature.”

“Everything?”

“Sure. The sun, the flowers, plants.” I pointed to the water. “The ocean.” Her eyes followed my hand. “Some say that the ocean is a girl god.” Her face brightened. I was offering her the first introduction to a religion that our great-great-grandparents most likely practiced with great passion, as if their identity depended on it. I was proud and scared, praying I would present it right.

“Her name is Yemaya,” I said.

“Maya?” she giggled.

“YE-ma-YA,” I said again.

Maya seemed pleased. She looked at the ocean again. A small wave broke and rolled. Slowly, it spread a thin layer of water over the dark sand. “Yemaya,” she repeated.

“Yemaya is a goddess. That’s what they call a girl god. She’s the goddess of the ocean that is part of a bigger God that made us. She is strong and beautiful. She takes care of a lot of people, but sometimes she can destroy things, too.”

I watched Maya’s face, wondering how she was processing this story. I wanted to believe that it hit her someplace where spirituality and myth are the same. Then my beautiful, bright, yet still four-year-old asked, “Do you think Yemaya likes to wear pink dresses?”

I laughed again.

“I think maybe white and blue dresses,” I said. “They say she likes those colors.”

“Not pink? How about purple?”

“Maybe purple.” What was I going to say, that Yemaya doesn’t like purple?

“Mami?” I thought for sure Maya would go on to ask about every color dress and whether Yemaya liked them or not, but instead she said quietly, “If God looks like Yemaya, can God even look like me?”

I tried to remember something Maya Angelou had once said—after all I had named Maya after her—about the power and importance of the ocean. I couldn’t remember the exact quote because all that overcame me was that Maya, my Maya, was just as powerful and important as the ocean to me. And I said to her, wiping salty water from my face, “Yes, baby, certainly God looks like you, too.”

Danette Rivera

The Guide

Many years ago, my dad and I were driving back to my home on the north shore of Oahu when we noticed a large white albatross tied to a small fruit stand next to the Kamehameha Highway. Near the bird stood a local Tongan man. I pulled to the side of the road and asked the man what he thought he was doing. “These birds are protected in Hawaii,” I said. “Did you know that?”

The man didn’t seem to care. He said the bird helped to draw tourists. To him, it was nothing more than a photo opportunity for anyone who drove by. I did my best to convince him this was wrong, how the albatross was a wild animal that depended on access to the sea for food. To a bird that is capable of flying hundreds of miles in a day, I could imagine no worse torture than being lashed to a structure on the side of a road.

After an hour of negotiation, the man reluctantly released the bird to me. In turn, I handed it over to my neighbor, a local expert known around the North Shore as the bird lady. She agreed to care for the albatross until it could recover enough for release back into the wild.

After a few days, the albatross looked healthier and seemed strong enough to fly. We had done all we could; the rest was up to the bird. We took it to the beach at Kewela Bay, where it tried several times to take off. After the third try, it caught a gust of wind, and with a beat of its wings, took to the air. As clumsy as they are on land, there is nothing more beautiful than the sight of a soaring albatross, and I have to admit we were all moved at the sight of this bird returning to the wild. It quickly gained altitude, and just when we thought we had seen the last of it, it banked suddenly, and in a graceful turn, swept over our heads in what I liked to think of as a final good-bye.