Swim Boys Swim

A few years ago when I was young and beautiful visiting my dad in South Carolina with my family and my sisters' families, I did something I am ashamed of and if truth be told, I would probably do all over again. That's the thing about regret: it usually comes tinged with second guesses, as in -- well, that wasn't so bad, or, that was kinda fun actually, or it's not like I had much of a choice... Regret is weird.

Anyhoo, I was swimming about thirty feet from shore, past where the waves were pummeling me in very unflattering ways. My two nephews, about 10 or 11 at the time, were with me. We were chit chatting about the things you chit chat about while treading water and doing somersaults and flipping your hair back like cool dudes when one of them said, just as I was emerging from my own somersault, "giant fin."

From over my left shoulder, not six feet from my delicious yummymusthavesogood sun-burnt flesh, I saw it.

A giant fin.

It was but a split second later that I channeled my Michael Phelps/4th grade swim team training and free-styled my ass to shore faster than it takes to say, "We're gonna need a bigger boat." I left those two boys -- boys I adored, boys I expected to be my son's role models and big brothers and mentors... I left those two boys to fend for themselves.

Well, sorta.

"Swim, boys! Swim!" I hollered.

It's not like I did nothing.

By the time I sputtered to shore, seaweed in my hair, odd stares coming from every direction and my sisters tumbling off their chairs in laughter, the boys (and everyone else) were already well aware that the scary man-eater was but a playful dolphin. A flippin' dolphin.

A few days ago I was home alone in the middle of an afternoon thunder storm. I was gathering dirty laundry and folding clean laundry and barely noticing the booms and cracks outside. All three of my kids were at a birthday party and frankly, I wasn't interested in letting anything disturb my solo-time. I was at the top of the stairwell, surrounded by windows, when the sky changed.

My entire house was suddenly engulfed in raw branches and leaves. There was crashing and cracking and then... our laundry all over the floor and me racing two flights to the basement with the phone (which I managed to grab) and my hyperventilation and only one flip flop. And no dog.

"Come, Sam the Dog," I yelled. "Come!"

That dog has never done what I've said anytime, anywhere. And I knew that.

"Come?" I said from the spiderwebbed haven of my subterranean bog, which I was not leaving. "Good dog?"

I hunkered down while limbs broke and split and the lightening shouted out my heart beat so I can't tell for sure, but I think Sam was doing yoga on the couch upstairs. I think I even heard him yawn. "Namaste," I think he said.

The older I get the more I come to know myself. I am a scaredy cat. I am no one's hero. But despite my vices and my less than saintly ways, I survive...just as the boys did, just like Sam the Dog. And you know what?

Despite how I get teased and let me tell you, I'll never live down the dolphin thing, if you find yourself in a burning building with me, jump on my back. We're getting out.