I felt my stomach threaten to leap up my throat, over the railing and into the salty water. The ground beneath my feet rose and fell, rocking my insides to nausea. Please stop, I begged the boat. I tried standing in different places. The stuffy galley below the deck had a grill that constantly turned out hot dogs and burgers. Way too hot. The roof of the cabin was worse. Port side, Starboard side. No relief. The bow? Fresh air bombarded my face. It was almost relieving. The Chubasco II still forced my body to sway from side to side, but it was not nearly as bad as the torture the other parts of the boat inflicted. My head spun as my stomach churned at the base of my throat.
Through the buzzing voices of fellow students trying their hands at fishing, I heard one clearly directed at me. “Stop acting,” it said, slightly sardonically. I looked up from my hunched position at the tip of the bow. One leg hung off the ledge as my left forearm and bicep cinched my head in a comforting triangle. Peaking over the sleeve of my hoody, I saw my friends hovered around me. By the looks on their faces I could imagine them watching a polka-dotted clown with giant red shoes about to walk the plank. They did everything in their power to suppress the laughter tugging at their throats. I attempted to remove my pitiful veneer by sitting up and smiling a half-hearted smile up at them.
The sun disappeared somewhere below the fuzzy horizon where the sky faded into the ocean. As darkness settled in around us, students released their wriggling sardines and retired their poles to the sides of the cabin. The boat erupted with laughter as one student scrambled across the deck fumbling after his slippery, runaway baitfish. Laughter is supposed to be a powerful dose of medicine that can cure any wound. Apparently I overdosed. My head racked as my body shook with laughter and I was quickly overwhelmed with dizziness.
I hardly paid attention to anything around me. My focus was restricted to how badly I wanted to get the heck off that God-forsaken contraption. I grasped my midsection in a feeble attempt to keep my insides in their natural place. My stomach inched its way up, up. The boat lurched. Oh God, please let no one see this.
“Whoa look, a shark!” I heard someone shout right next to me. Weary from my nausea, I hesitantly looked over the side of the boat. If it was a joke I’d play it off like I thought I was going to be sick. If it wasn’t a joke, I feared I really would get sick. All over the poor shark. I searched the water below me and gasped as a massive, shining body swerved in and out of my field of vision. Sharks don’t move like that. I leaned in, staring hard in an attempt to make the figure reappear. I didn’t have to wait long. I struggled to adjust my eyes to see into the dark water. There it was. It darted along like a torpedo, always one step ahead of the boat. It rose up slightly, just near enough to the surface of the water that I could make out a curled dorsal fin, a pair of flippers and a tail attached to a glossy, curved body.
“It’s a dolphin,” I gasped.
For a very long period of my life, it had been my goal, my dream, my only aspiration, to become a marine biologist. My sole reason: to work with, swim with, and live with dolphins. I was obsessed. I had dolphin-themed snow globes and stuffed animals from friends and family who traveled to the Yucatan and the Virgin Islands. Although my fixation wore off like any stage in a kid’s life, my fascination and love for the beautiful sea mammals never died.
I sat and stared in awe. My seasickness instantly rocketed to the back of my mind. I was elated.
“Oh my God,” were the only words I managed to whisper. I was dumbfounded and could care less if I had drool running down the side of my gaping mouth. All I could see, all I knew in that moment, was a pair of utterly graceful beings weaving in and out of the constant wave that led the boat. Another appeared and I gazed on and the three played together. This may have been the single most beautiful thing I have ever witnessed. They swerved from side to side, effortlessly gliding over and under each other.
“They’re huge,” I marveled. The dolphins were easily three times my size and within reaching distance. I would have tried to touch them if the boat wasn’t racing across the water. It was marvelous.
To think, I never would have experienced this if my Dramamine hadn’t worn off too soon. My motion sickness steered me straight to the best seat in the house right before the show began.
Life is kind of like that. You keep wandering around, willing the world to stop rocking, when it’s really just trying to pitch you into the right place at the right time. Somewhere along the miserable, swaying path, you’re going to stumble upon something really beautiful, and you’ll appreciate the world for driving you there.
-Phylicia Hisel
No comments:
Post a Comment