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 Weathered
The Lesson

Brian Duggan

    There were many reasons to dislike Richard Ellison. He was spoiled rotten, extremely rude, got the biggest allowance on the block and was the person responsible for my untimely death. Yes, I said death, but don’t call me a liar just yet. What had started out as the first day at the beach that summer ended up with my limp body being squeezed in the middle of a circle of curious spectators. The brief passage back from what seemed a predestined reunion to my unpleasant encounter with that swim-suited throng lasted just minutes, but it launched me on a lifelong search to find the pieces that I left in a place separating the living and the dead.
    That drowning exhibition questioned my cherished beliefs, which in a twelve-year-old are not too far on their way to being carved on rock. For the time being let’s forget I mentioned that word, I really don’t like rocks. Getting back to beliefs, I wanted new ones after my reunion and I stumbled upon Abraham Maslow’s article, A Theory of Human Motivation. I was interested in all the pieces that form an individual and Abraham seemed to know what they were. His term, “self-actualization” implies the attainment of one’s basic physiological needs; having your own inner security, sharing love, belonging to another, and of course creating your own self-esteem. I found self-actualization is very difficult when you’re missing pieces. You should pay close attention to this story because it seemed to me back then that time passed slowly, but now looking back I realize my life raced by all too quickly. I don’t know why that happened or if it’s even true. Could it be just another missing piece? The best place to start is to join those curious spectators whose faces are stenciled into memory, remember we are talking about my death and that’s personal.
    The summer sky was a brilliant blue with a few scattered clouds that would whisk away in irregular shapes and then reform in the high winds that fanned ripples across Long Island Sound. I can feel those goose pimples rising on my small, tanned chest. I was inside a boy then, but I lost him that day. These were carefree summer days enhanced by personal freedom; I swam where I wanted. Boys then were mystical, physical and adventurous. They weren’t held captive by Dolby-encoded, attention-grabbing 3-D graphics. We were enthralled by sleek, glistening grey forms arching above the waves, diving deep and reappearing far away. Those visitors had no schoolbooks or pockets burdened with Pez dispensers, rabbit feet or bulky jackknifes. We transformed ourselves into porpoises leaving the world above to glide over the wave-formed ridges of sand before they glistened in the sun. Richard and I had learned to hold our breath and with open eyes leave the surface to disperse crabs.
    Back then boys did their thing; collected scars, chipped teeth, split lips, and taught each how to spit and whistle. Girls did the meaningless things that we never really cared about. There were no helmets when you rode your bike, just wind that brought tears. We began seeing our world from a rubber-wheeled horse and later heard a car engine from
    resonating baseball cards fastened with clothespins. We had hair cropped into a thick one-quarter inch mat. In those days there were no cylindrical buoys a mere ten feet offshore with their restrictive, prohibiting red lettering to interfere with being a boy. We brought glass soda bottles, played touch football, swam with our dogs, flew kites, kicked sand, and best of all dove out to deeper water to escape the watchful eyes of muscled lifeguards and vigilant mothers. It was a different time; we were part of nature, not an armored and defensive observer fearing injury on a bicycle or a long swim. Risk-taking was viewed as a good teacher and offered big rewards to small boys needing to impress bigger ones.
    I never thought that playing catch using a tennis ball on that sandbar would change my core beliefs, but that is where they began to unravel. One’s certain, unshakable believe in one’s own immortality at the tender age of twelve, that has to be the biggest myth of childhood; Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the gods past and present with their legions of vexed devotees all pale in comparison. Playing catch with Richard wasn’t fun; as usual he was making the tennis ball unattainable. I’m certain now that the idea in his twisted mind was to take me further and further from the safety of the sandbar to the shady waters harboring swift currents as the tide withdrew. Why am I certain, because he didn’t stay to watch my beach drama unfold and he only looked me in the eyes once after that and it was years later.
    I told myself two could play this game, so I was busy speeding the ball on its way. Trust Richard to complain,” Knock it off, you can’t throw hard and in my direction at the same time.” The wet tennis ball whizzed past my ear to Richard’s freckled face. I remember seeing it in slow motion headed right for the space between startled eyes. Those eyes got bigger and bigger, but he never flinched. Richard was raising his left hand in front of a head anchored in defiance. The ball stung his palm and bounced to his lower lip. When he reached to pick it up, I could see the start of tears but he fought them back.
    Richard lofted the ball softly in my direction. I jumped up but it passed over my
    outstretched fingertips to splash down several feet from the sandbar. I glanced back to see Richard dive away toward the shore. I dug my feet into the sandy bottom, my toes piercing sand. I was in the best dolphin dive of my entire life with my hands out front and my palms together cutting cleanly through the water. The temperature was going from cool to cold and I realized that winter currents had been chiseling the sandbar gliding beneath me exposing a collage of assorted stones. A blue crab was on his toes waving pinchers from seaweed-covered rocks. My glide ended and I prepared to touch down and propel myself into the next ascending arc. Then the lesson of my life began.
    I sank feet-first into deeper, colder water watching the tennis ball above grow smaller as it floated away. From my crouching position on the bottom I leaped to the sky waiting to open my mouth after I broke through saltwater to welcoming day, but my upward momentum ended quickly, welcoming light was two feet above my outstretched hands. I sank slowly without the reassuring supply of air that usually accompanies a descending porpoise. I scrapped a large rock and mounted a slippery, mussel-coated platform slicing my right foot. I glanced down to see thin green ribbons streaming away. I had a surge of energy and a heightened awareness unlike any I had experienced before. Consciousness had fused pressure on my eardrums, light filtering from above and a resolute silence. One sound did emerge and it was steadily mounting in intensity, the purest I had ever heard. It was my beating heart. Colors were now a vivid panorama of blue water, grey sand and green seaweed. My legs pressed into the sharp mussels and with adrenalin pumping, I felt the water break over my head. I was thankful for warm air. I scanned the beach; it was an animated postcard, rich in color and sound. The fading cry of a seagull trailed off as I began dropping to the safety of my rock.
    I folded my legs while my arms fanned the sea keeping me over my safe haven. That one rock on the down slope of a vanishing sandbar was my only way back to sky and life. The bottom was sloping away into deep water on my right. The beach must be to my left. All I needed was to get a full set of lungs and I’d dive again towards the beach. I saw it
    unfold in my mind’s eye, one dive would take me to shore and another to where on tiptoes my head would break the surface. Two more dives and I’d be in shallow, warmer water near the noise of splashing children and the chatter of women in beach chairs. A sprint on warm sand would bring a white terrycloth towel, a mother’s smiling face and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich encased in wax paper. I could already taste it.
    My left foot dug into the mussels and my big toe felt a sharp edge. The stab of pain didn’t bother me as much as the frightening discovery that my rock was tumbling away. I
    might never again break the surface or fill my lungs with air. I looked and saw the rock sliding farther down the slope. The surface was tantalizingly close to my outstretched
    fingers. The only sound I heard was the drumming of a heart beating faster to spread what oxygen remained from worthless limbs to a resourceful brain. My legs were becoming rubber and my arms were heavier than they should be. I was slipping further down while my legs floundered in a losing effort to keep me afloat, and worst of all there was no air left in my lungs. I was a weight dropping to a floor of rippled sand. My eyes felt like they were being pushed out of my head in time to a drumming heart banging in my ears. I tasted the weak metallic-tinged aroma that ushers in a bloody nose. It was
    hemoglobin racing out to bond with life-giving oxygen and it rode a wave of panic. My hands grasped a contorted face. My fingertips told me my eyes were truly throbbing. My body told me to breathe but I wouldn’t do it. I knew if I let myself gulp salt water I would die. I wasn’t going to frantically fight fate only to settle to the bottom to be an unknown something traveling to wherever we go when life ends. My heart was about to explode, and I so I did it. I took in a mouthful of salty, cold water and it went into starving lungs. That first gulp tasted like all human fluids; blood, sweat, tears, saliva, and maybe even the embryonic fluid I once had known as a fetus. It had no nourishment, but other strangely comforting swallows followed.
    Suddenly, I had no urge to fight for life. Now this is the important part; I was resigned to my destiny and eager to experience that future. Where would I go? What or who would I become? I had settled to the bottom and was aware of a black, oval-shaped stone worn smooth by waves. This stone was pressing into my shoulder blade. I knew it was black and oval yet I never saw it. My eyes were open staring straight up at the layers of multi-colored water. Yes, I saw banded layers. Maybe it was light going through different temperature zones or currents or both. As I looked through it far on the other side was a blank, colorless sky. My world down there was peaceful and quiet. I no longer heard my heart; there was an astonishing silence.
    Off to my left I saw a large shadow that seemed to be spreading along the bottom. It appeared it would soon cover me just like it had the other objects populating the sand. I
    looked at this shadow and it seems to be curling at the edges as it became darker. It was not menacing as it unfolded before me because I was fascinated. I thought were there undersea clouds too? The edges of this cloud touched my feet and it was warm and soothing. Here I was under a warm blanket-like cloud that was curling over me. My next awareness was the familiar voice of my dead grandmother, “You settle down, Little Man, and get a good night’s rest.” I had missed her voice and it resonated now in soothing tones. I turned my head towards her voice expecting to see her speaking to me, but not from that place.
    That soothing blanket-like cloud had elongated into a bright passageway. Her face hung from the tubular wall of a luminous corridor. I thought, “I’m wide-awake can’t I get up and walk inside closer to you?” She had heard me somehow and was telling me to walk as her smiling face beckoned me. At the same time there appeared to be a movie screen spreading over the inside lining of the passageway. On this screen I watched the smiling faces of everyone I loved. I saw my sisters, mother, father, and even those close relatives who had died. I even saw my brother. He appeared to be maybe twenty years old and he smiled while holding a set of car keys. It would be five years until I had that first glance into our mother’s arms that held him. But that moment in a gateway to or from a watery world, I recognized the adult face of my brother, who would enter the world five years later.
    I felt wonderful, totally at peace as I walked. I was on a deep warm carpet that felt luxurious and years later I stopped in mid-sentence as I touched my first Alpaca sweater.
    Strangely I felt an overwhelming urge in a crowded men’s store to remove loafers and socks and stand on that sweater. By then I would do almost anything to try and recapture that underwater experience. As I walked towards my grandmother who stood near the end of the tunnel, I felt weightless and contented. It was a contentment that was beyond peace. I have never felt that again and maybe I never will. Here is the strangest part, I reached out my hand to grasp my grandmother’s extended hand, but my vision or reality ended when I touched her. I was now cold; in darkness unlike any I could even attempt to describe. I felt my nostrils first; they were moist, salty and dripping. Soon my eyes opened to see sky.
    I saw my mother’s tears of joy and was aware of the hushed crowd gathered in a tight circle around my shivering body. Life returned, but why had I come back? What’s more, where did that passageway lead and even better where had I first really come from? I started looking for missing pieces and new beliefs, but I told you that. This adult believes that the stars made the chemicals that comprise living organisms. No man-conceived, instinct-inspired or self-deluding revelation caused this. It has been a long march from primitive bacterium to the red, white, black, brown, and yellow two-legged warriors that populating this planet. One seems more eager than the next to toss a bomb or start another war to defend his uniquely fashioned deity.
    I also believe we will join those who went to their death on the atomic level as they provide organic compounds for our living planet. I’m not choosey; I include, “Lower life forms” that the pious still call, “Animals.” I believe life is limitless and self-perpetuating and can be found in billions of worlds that orbit in trillions of solar systems in expanding galaxies that approach the infinite. In the meantime, I’m treading air and waiting for my eventual return to another tunnel. I don’t have a clue as to why I’m here except to learn. I’ve looked very hard but I never found that skinny kid I lost at the beach. Oh! Richard resurfaced. He came to town to bury a grandson. You should have seen his eyes; he was staring right through me. You see a car hit Oliver. My younger brother drove it but it wasn’t his fault that Oliver had chased a tennis ball down a sloping lawn into the street. I can see it all now, Richard lofting the ball softly in his direction, Oliver jumping but it passed over outstretched fingertips. Some people never seem to learn.



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