Grandma’s arthritic knuckles burled, her wedding band bit deep—twisted bark tightening around a fragile branch. In one hand, her trusty paring knife; with the other, those branches stirred eddies through the ice-bright water of her stainless steel sink.
Eddies stir where currents meet resistance, where a fingertip traces water. Or a body sinks instead of swims. Motion caught; motion released.
Even at five, I knew Grandma didn’t swim. She’d skirt an ocean tide, choose the footpath over a pebbled stream bed, and cross the street to let wintery puddles cascade unimpeded by the dam of her sturdy boots.
“Allergic to water,” Grandpa teased.
I knew about Grandma’s almost drowning. How her father tossed her into their farm’s pond and commanded, ‘Swim.’ How she hit the water stiff as a felled branch. How she stone-sunk, the cold swallowing her whole.
Arms thrashed, found no purchase. Then—stillness.
It was her brother who dragged her teenage body up and out, pumping her chest until she sputtered back.
Mostly.
I dive to depth: 30 meters.
There is a moment before descent where my body hovers in the between—the currents, a fin kick, a breath.
Exhale, and I sink. Inhale, and I rise to the surface.
The ocean cradles. It resists. It takes. Below, the world hushes in liquid, salted suspension. Water presses against me, awaiting my decision.
I exhale. Descend to drift along the sheer face of a coral-encrusted wall—past red gorgonians fanned wide, alongside purple and yellow sponges clinging to the rock, into nooks and crannies, searching for glimpses of a pygmy seahorse, nudibranch varieties, the snapping claws of the coral banded shrimp—those overlooked in favor of grander things: reef sharks and mantas, a bait ball of trevally, the Giant Pacific Octopus.
At Richelieu Rock, I feel it before I see it—the Green Monster. A sudden shift, a creeping cold slicing through the thermocline. The upwelling grips me, drives my body downward, pulling fast. My bubbles stream sideways. The reef tilts.
I am flung into a cathedral of barracuda. Silver bodies flash in unison, spiraling, tightening—an eddy of tooth and muscle, of the hunt.
I fight the instinct to kick against the current. I let it take me.
For a moment, I am their stone—they slip under, over, around me. Then the Monster exhales, releasing me into the Indian Sea’s deliberate pulse.
Grandma taught me when to hold something close; when to let it go. Wrists deep in soil, we tested for moisture before tucking tomato seeds into the dirt. Kneeling in her path of earth, we yanked up carrots, potatoes, green onions—sharp, swift, without pause.
When we traversed her gardens, our fingers smoothed across rhubarb stalks, pinched beetles from potato leaves, gave grace to the bunnies who managed more strawberries and raspberries than our afternoon pies.
“Tend to the tiny things,” Grandma guided.
She tended. To plants. To the neighbor’s cat. To a box turtle that lost its way. And to that icy kitchen sink, where she dunked our plucked green onions into her eddies—washing away, she said, dirt’s path. Two strokes, and she clipped the ends. Salt beaded the white bulb.
It was her lake. Her stream. Her salted ocean depth.
“Here,” she said. “Taste.”
I did.
I still do.
