It was 1995. My brother-in-law Dan lived on Fripp Island, SC with his family and we rented a condominium there for a week. We rented a van and Stan, Seth, my sister Julie, her fiance, Matt and I drove down and had bunches of tropical fun.
Our condo was right on the beach at the point where the ocean joined with the bay. Our swimming area was right next to a long rock jetty that separated the two. It was the last day, the last hour of our trip and after this last swim, we were heading inside to pack up and leave the beautiful island and drive back to New Jersey. Seth, 3, was playing at the edge of the water, Stan stayed next to him. Julie, Matt and I were further out, romping on rafts. At one point I heard Stan say, "I'm going to take Seth back to the condo, the water's getting too rough."
It was rough out there. The tide was coming in, the bay was rolling, the waves were crashing. But the three of us didn't care, it was our last hurrah on Fripp. Every once in a while, one of us would notice that we were drifting too close to the jetty and yell, "Hey, we need to swim back over there!" So Julie and I would paddle clumsily on the long, deflating, Kmart raft we shared and Matt would glide over on his boogie board and we'd continue with our water play.
"Hey! You guys!" Matt yelled with more intensity and concern than before, "We're too close to the jetty!" Things got silent and time did seem to stand quietly still. One minute Julie was on my raft, the next she was on the boogie board with Matt. One minute they were there beyond me in the water, the next they were traveling out into the bay as if dragged by a tugboat. The only thing I did know was that no matter how hard my body worked to direct itself away from the jetty, I was powerless. Powerless. I can't remember ever before being powerless. At the end of the jetty where I struggled to stay above the churning, the water seemingly rose from the ocean floor and somehow back under again. Confusion met with blank white fear. When death is looming closely, thoughts quickly go quiet and automatic instinct runs the show. Later I'd learn that Matt had looked for me from his board on the bay and could no longer see my head. He assumed I had drown but kept it from Julie as they floated helplessly further into the bay.
My raft pulled hard. It wanted to follow the strong current that had pulled my sister away. I was presented with a choice and resisted the raft's wishes. All week long, fisherman were catching tiger shark babies from that jetty, from these waters. If I managed to stay afloat on my soft, thin raft I'd surely be eaten by sharks. I wrestled with the fears flashing through my panicked mind and let the raft go where it wanted, figuring I could swim the 20 feet to the end of the jetty better without it. Swimming, though, was not possible.
Then came one of those moments in life when angels seem to step in. One moment I was stretching my chin to breathe, my body long in the deep water, striving to stay vertical and the next moment I was clinging to a black rock at the end of the jetty. What happened in between is still a mystery. Of all the details I can remember, I have no recollection of getting closer and closer to the jetty, only being there. I hadn't taken one breath before these two thoughts plowed through my mind: My son still has a mother - I am returning to New Jersey without my sister.
I scrambled to stand and began running in a clumsy and instinctive desperate act on the slippery unwielding boulders to find some sort of help for Matt and Julie, all the while knowing that there were no lifeguards, no lifeboats, only a single white ring hanging on the shower house. My legs, ankles and feet burned, trampling the sharp rock edges, plunging into the salt water that submerged them. I reached the top of the jetty and could see a couple walking on the beach and ran to them. "My sister and her fiance are out there!" I yelled, pointing frantically out over the water to the floating spots that were my loved ones. The couple looked worried and said that they had seen them, but didn't know what to do. I stood completely lost, my mind spinning.
At that moment, the three of us were encouraged suddenly when we noticed that the two spots actually seemed to be getting closer. Relief flooded through my veins as I watched them paddle slowly toward the jetty and realized that we would all be together again. They clambered up on the rocks and over to me on the sand. We embraced and breathed heavily and began walking toward the boardwalk in front of our condominium.
Navigating the deep sand, my feet burned intensely. I put a hand on Matt's shoulder and lifted my foot to see the bottom covered with a thick layer of red sand. Then the other. I put my arms over Julie and Matt's shoulders and they walked me back to the shower house where I washed my feet and discovered that I had entirely sliced the soles of both feet. My feet were bleeding so profusely that I sat out on the deck of the condo when they went in, told Stan what had happened and packed up all our things. Matt disappeared for a while to gather his senses. When he had assumed that I'd drown, this spun him into such a state that it took nearly an hour of walking around the grounds for him to recover.
Every person coming off the beach followed the trail of blood to me and stopped to ask what happened. I assumed it was simply the rocks. Two people ran back to their room to get me anti-anxiety medication and dropped two pills into my palm with best wishes. First stop off the island was the emergency room where the doctor looked at my feet, winced and exclaimed, "Ewwww!" and then left me to soak my feet in betadyne for one hour. The ER staff insisted that it wasn't the rocks that sliced me unmercifully, it was the beds of mussels in the crevices under the water. Evidently, that was a common injury to tourists. They couldn't stitch up my feet because of the germ contamination of the jetty, so they wrapped both feet and sent me on my way.
I hobbled for a good week thereafter and had scars covering the bottoms of my feet for years. But each time I looked at them or hobbled or told someone the story I couldn't help but beam with a smile because I was alive, my son had a mother and my sister had come home to New Jersey with me.
1 comment:
Wow!
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