I was once saved by dolphins.
Be Brave Friday
I was once saved by dolphins.
Even writing that feels weird … as wild as saying “I saw Bigfoot.” There’s just something weird there, right?
It’s true though. Dolphins saved me. I wrote “once,” but I’m not sure if that’s accurate. They probably keep saving me every day.
I am not very good at talking about the dolphins and what happened, which is also pretty weird, since I will talk about pretty much anything (except maybe the time I saw a giant Jesus face on the wall of my Lewiston apartment when I was wild from bed rest).
Totally different story. Totally not telling that one.
Anyway, I think this weird hesitancy is because the dolphin event was almost too special and also I’m not sure English has the right words for how I felt.
But when I was a young mother, my father-in-law paid for us to go visit him at a place he was renting in Florida. I’d never gone south of D.C. at this point in my life, so it was a big deal. Just stepping off the plane was a HUGE deal: the way the air smelled, how it felt against my skin, the flowers, the thick blades of the grass, how it wasn’t soft but more prickly. How it was warm in winter!
It was amazing.
My marriage? Not so amazing.
One day, into this vacation, I was feeling a little overwhelmed by my husband squabbling with his dad and left them and Em on the beach and swam alone. I’m a New England girl, so I thought the February Florida ocean water was balmy and amazing.
People looked at me funny every time Em and I hopped in and played and swam.
It was worth it to be in the water.
This solo time, I swam out a bit, past some sort of sand bar and the ocean got deeper. I turned over and floated and just had this feeling—this absolutely beautiful and peaceful feeling bobbing with the waves, right? It was quiet. The sun was out. The waves were keeping me up. There was no squabbling.
I closed my eyes and the sun made my eyelids glow, you know how it does.
And then I heard a nose. Something was breaking the water’s surface in a way that was different.
In my head, I thought, “They’re coming.”
I shifted, started treading water, and looked around. All around me, and I mean all around me, were dorsal fins moving swiftly through the water—far swifter than I could ever imagine my clumsy human body moving.
Instantly, I teared up.
Dolphins.
All my little girl—New Hampshire childhood I dreamed of dolphins, of being best friends with a dolphin (and also Bigfoot and a unicorn and an elephant and an angel and an extraterrestrial like ET, to be honest).
And here they were. Right here. With me.
“Hi,” I whispered. “Hi. You’re so beautiful. Hi.”
They moved in closer, most of them. One breached the water and made a noise. Another joined him.
I inhaled. I forgot to exhale.
“Hi,” I whispered. “Hi, dolphins. Hi.”
It was the same thing when I first met Em when she was born. Only I called her “little baby” instead of dolphin, obviously.
“Hi.”
A moment later, a few of the dolphins shot off, all in the same direction toward another fin that was heading toward me.
This fin was not curved like a dolphin’s.
This fin was straight.
This fin, this very large fin, belonged to a shark.
For a hot second, I was terrified. Back on the beach, my husband and my little girl were playing. His dad was reading. They had no idea. I could die.
I would be just gone. Consumed.
But in that very next second that same voice in my head from earlier said, “Don’t be scared. Trust.”
If I didn’t decide to trust these dolphins, I was doomed anyway, right? I reasoned.
Doomed is a big word and a big feeling, but there was a major shark fin action going on over there. The shark could obviously eat me—or at least a good chunk of me.
Trust.
Don’t be scared.
I decided not to be and in that moment of decision it was like the vibration of the world changed. It was like that feeling you get when you see a really magnificent vista or a work of art that stuns you in a good way, only amplified by a trillion. Everything seemed whole.
It just seemed whole.
It seemed connected.
And it seemed good.
Instead of feeling scared, joy rippled through me—this sort of magical feeling of peace, of connection.
But it was also sort of this massive gratitude that resonated all through me as the dolphins came closer, backing me up a bit, inch by inch.
How could these dolphins be there when I hadn’t known they were and how could they be taking care of me when I didn’t even know that I had to be taken care of?
It made no sense, but it was so beautiful.
The dolphins circled. The shark circled. The dolphins would break off and go toward the shark. They’d come back. And then we all sort of slowly migrated closer and closer toward the sand bar. I got there and stood on it, the water up to my belly button, and after another minute or so, they all left.
They were there.
And then they were gone.
And I cried.
They weren’t fear-tears. They were joy-tears.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you.”
A second later, I swam back to the beach and hugged my little girl. She is a very good hugger and person and didn’t mind that her mom was wet.
“What were you doing out there?” my husband asked.
“Loving,” I said before I took another breath and told him the whole story, but I didn’t need to because that one word—loving—said it all.
Here’s the first thing: I often get a bit frustrated by our language when I try to find words to describe things, but I love-love-love it, too, and I think the fact that “live” and “love” are only off by one letter means something.
Here’s the other thing: the world is full of danger heading right toward you, just gliding through the surface of things and you can feel doomed and you can lean into the hopeless feeling, but you can also trust a little more sometimes. You can whisper thank you to dolphins who may or may not hear you, but they will feel you.
They will feel you.
They will feel your love.
You can stand on the sandbar for a hot Florida second and joy-tears can stream down your cheeks and merge into the ocean you’re standing in and you can know that you’ll never ever see those dolphins again—they’re already gone, right? Off to rescue other humans who swam out too far.
But that’s it, right?
They aren’t gone.
They are there with you and your water-pickled fingertips and your adrenalin-shivers and your heart that keeps beating because they chose to save you.
That seems like the miracle, right? And it is. But the other miracle is that we keep doing this. We keep choosing to move forward, to save ourselves, to band together and protect the weakest ones from the sharks. We choose to love. We do.
We do. And we can.
QUICK NOTE
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COMFORTING
I also have a once-a-week Substack over here and it’s mellow and I share a poem (not my own, God forbid, there’s nothing comforting about those), soup recipe, and other comforting things there. It’s just quietly hanging out there. You can come hang out, too.
Tears..... Thank you for sharing this beautimous moment in time. It is to be treasured.
Just beautiful, Carrie. Loving - like you.