Depth

Sometimes, when the parched wind blows around the rocks and prickling trees of Colorado, I close my eyes and breathe deep, trying to capture the sea wind of a life once led. I try to remember the drenched air, sweet and rich as golden honey. I remember the brine of the ocean and the terrifying thrill of seaweed wrapping around my ankles. Then I open my eyes again. And I sigh.

            I was young back then, still a child. My innocence has given way to a prickling cynicism, but I remember being young, idling away the hours picking wild, ripe blackberries in empty gallon jugs. I still remember my grandmother’s blackberry cobbler, though I can make it myself now. I haven’t forgotten the dense forest, with thick moss blanketing the trees and ground, and bashful pink huckleberries hiding in the shade. I’ll never forget building forts of driftwood on Double Bluff, or the deep, still tide pools there.

            But there are stories I can’t remember. I can’t remember slipping on the hardwood stairs and breaking my favorite snow globe, or bawling when I wanted to head home and my grandparents took me a way I didn’t recognize. I don’t remember our garden, or the compost pile, or what our quiet stretch of the deep woods looked like. I don’t remember looking up from the bottom of a tide pool, eyes open, quietly, peacefully, drowning. Those stories were told to me after.

            As I can’t remember this story, even though it’s my own, I’m going to have to elaborate on some of the particulars. I don’t mind much. After all, it is my story, and I can do with it as I please.

            The beaches of Washington are a mix of fine sand, hard rocks, and crusted pads of dried seaweed. Sometimes, water collects in deep pools, attracting clams, crabs, and small fishes into a fragile ecosystem that can literally wash out with the tide. When I was a kid, the beaches were my second favorite place in the world, right after a huckleberry bush that I could crawl into the base of and snuggle up and eat berries from. The beaches were more of a treat, a place where my mother could go to drop us off to play with other children, expending our youthful energy on thoroughly useless and wonderfully enjoyable pursuits. My brother and I could spend hours splashing in the surf, stacking the ever-present driftwood into makeshift forts, and generally making fool of ourselves as only small children can. Meanwhile, my mother could take some time off and talk with other parents who also had small, rambunctious children. It was idyllic. If the halcyon days of my youth are awarded retroactively, as Calvin and Hobbes suggests, then I am sure these were some of them.

            Here I have to take a few editorial liberties. Again, these aren’t my own memories. I know this story because my mother would tell it whenever I felt lost in the world, when I wasn’t sure why I was here or where I was going. When I was when I was a leaf on the wind, this story was an anchor in a storm. Nevertheless, I can’t remember walking into the beach’s dunes. I can’t remember looking down into the deep, still pool, watching the fishes slowly turn. I’m not sure if I slipped, or if my childlike innocence lead me to toddle straight in. I only know that when my mother found me, I was at the bottom of the pool, eyes wide open, looking up. My mother doesn’t know how long I had been down there. I was smiling.

            While I was off falling into a watery grave, my mother was chatting with another mom with young boys. This was my mother’s chance to unwind, and get time away from the over-enthusiastic hassle of small children, however adorable my young self undoubtedly was. But this time was different. My mother heard a voice. Quiet. Firm. It only said three words. “Go get Noah.”

            Thankfully, my mother isn’t the type to ignore something like that. She hastily excused herself from her conversation and ran. I was nowhere to be seen. Se crested a hill. I looked up from the bottom of a tide pool, fishes swimming all around me, grinning.

            The way she tells it, she yanked me out of the water, called for my brother, and we left. She toweled me down before we got into the car, as not even a near-death experience entitles you to get seawater on the car seats. Breathless, she asked me, “What happened?”

            Still grinning, I looked up and proudly said, “I eat the fishies!”

            This was one of my favorite stories when I was young, and the utter lack of concern when danger is about is still somewhat typical of me. Mom would tell this story whenever I didn’t fit in, or was just generally having a horrific sort of day. It never failed to lift my spirits. It took me a while to tease the meaning out of it. I’ll admit I was less impressed by the spiritual experience than a two year old probably should be. But knowing that someone’s out there watching after you helps a kid, as I know it helped me later.

            See, this story isn’t done. My family takes fairly regular vacations back up to Washington. I’ve been back to Double Bluff, and fittingly enough, there was a massive tide pool waiting for me. I waded in it. I’ve seen the blackberry bushes in full bloom, and become vaguely known by the side of the family that still lives up there. But the last bit of this story, fittingly, happens on another beach.

            My mom was visiting friends who had moved out, and I was bored, so I went walking. This beach was rocky, with small pools with just enough water for tiny crabs to scuttle, hiding underneath bunches of seaweed. I meandered, picked up a few pretty rocks, and generally enjoyed the sun on my face and the ocean air. It was only when I was heading back that I heard the screaming.

            There was a small group of first, maybe second graders enjoying a field trip at the beach. They were messing around, being kids, and some of them had found a fairly massive crab. Being children, and therefore not possessed of any functioning survival urge, they’d begun to poke at it. And one of them had been grabbed. The claws of a crab are incredibly strong, and they’re only meant to pinch one way. Once they grab you, they can’t be shaken off.

            By the time I made it to the kids, their teacher was trying to pull the crab’s pincers apart as it dangled from the child’s pinky. He was white as a sheet, white as the skin where the crab had hold of him. As I watched, the teacher stepped back and called for something to help pry the claw open. I guess the best way to explain what happened next is selective blindness. Everything close by seemed very real, while everything further away seemed to fade into the background. I heard a voice. Quiet. Firm. It only said three words. “Break the claw.”

            I’ve eaten enough crab to know how their joints work. I hesitated for a moment, as I like crabs and don’t enjoy hurting something that I know was only acting according to its nature. Then I pushed the elbow of the crab inwards, snapping it. It’s how you break cooked crab.  A girl threw the crab into the surf.

            The young boy who’d been dumb enough to get pinched was still white, and seemed to have gone into shock. I did what I could, but this was his teacher’s forte from here, and I figured they’d be better at helping. On a whim, I went back and retrieved the claw. I told the kid to keep it as a spoil of war, a trophy of sorts.

            I only thought to ask about the voice later. None of my family had heard it, despite being close by at the time. I’m not particularly spiritual, and this was the first manifestation of its type to come to me, so I struggled a bit before I admitted it. Looking back, it has a sort of poetry. First my mother kept me in the world, and then I was able to help a kid like I was have a story of his own.