My New Jersey Aunt used to tell us the story about how she once almost drowned in a tidal wave. She was about three years old, playing near the edge of the water with another little boy at the beach. It was the early 1930s. A tidal wave (that's what she called it, I have no idea how accurate the term was) came out of nowhere and swept the two kids under. As soon as the water was calm, the adults on the beach began diving in to the water, trying to find the kids. My grandfather felt a small body just below the surface, pulled a child out by the hair, and passed the child to onlookers, thinking he had found the little boy. The child he had rescued was actually my aunt, who had short curly hair.
I think it was my aunt's earliest memory, and perhaps the most vivid memory she had. She loved the ocean, loved to swim and body surf in the waves at the Jersey shore, but she also respected the force that came so close to taking her life. Five years ago, as she was dying, she repeatedly told me the tidal wave story, describing what it felt like to be sucked under by an approaching wave. Her short-term memory had faded and she could no longer remember what she eaten for lunch that day, but that early memory was entirely clear, almost as if her whole life had compressed until she was once again that child standing on the beach.
4 comments:
Learning to surf was the most humbling experience of my life...I think it started me on the way to becoming the person I am now. There's nothing like a giant force of nature grabbing you to let you know that you play a role in world...replacing the idea that the world plays a role for you.
There is something haunting about this post.
Did the onlookers rescue the little boy as well?
Yes, both kids were rescued. But when my grandmother used to tell this story, she used to skip over parts -- I was a little kid when she was still alive and the one telling the story -- and looking back, I wonder if maybe there were other people who didn't survive this tidal wave (or whatever it was) and she didn't tell that part. My aunt was so little when it happened that she was only conscious of the part that happened to her and not any bigger context. None of the people in the story are still alive so I can't ask ....
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