Every time you remember an event, your brain replaces the original memory with a new version, one that is slightly altered by the impact of all you’ve experienced between the last time you remembered the event and now. The new memory is, therefore, never exactly the same as the old, which is why memories can’t be trusted for accuracy. Family stories in particular, are told and retold until all you can count on is the emotional truth. Which is why this story, while real, may not be true.

My father has bought a Volkswagen bug and he is driving our family from Maryland to Florida to visit my grandparents who live on the Gulf of Mexico. My mother and I wait in the car with my sisters: 11 and 14. I am six. Apparently, no knucklehead left the water running or a window open, so my father locks the front door and gets in the car.

As he starts the engine, I regard my family breathing the same air, almost but not quite touching, as we begin our trip south. At the Esso Station in Port Royal, I switch to the wheel well, the narrow space behind the backseat. My sisters shake hands with each other and spread out.

Four hours after the last Stuckey’s stop, we see signs for Cape Hatteras. “We need to get out of this car,” my mother says. There is a package goods store coming up fast on the left.

“I’ll see if these folks know of any motels,” my father says. “We’ll have an hour on the beach and leave first thing in the morning.” He swings the little car into the parking lot and gets out. A few minutes later, he returns with a bottle in a brown paper bag and directions to the Lighthouse Lodge.

We can’t see the ocean from the motel, but we cross the hot pavement and a wooden walkway to the dunes and then step onto an astonishingly long white beach with red, blue, and yellow umbrellas scattered along it like gumdrops.

We run down to the water’s edge, where icy waves numb my small hot feet, sucking away the sand under them so that I become shorter and shorter. My sisters brought Lodge towels on which to stretch out, but only my father remembered to bring something to drink. He takes a long pull from the bottle he has left in the brown bag to stay cool.

Suddenly he scoops me up under my arms. I dangle for a second before he hoists me over his head and onto his shoulders. Holding my hands out on either side as if we are balancing on a tightrope, he walks slowly toward the ocean. One step. Two. The freezing waves splash my thighs. I call out in the breeze, “Far enough!”

But he lets go of my hands pulling us into deeper water, bouncing then paddling to keep our heads above the swells. The next wave rolling towards us is a frothing rogue beginning to break. I cry out again. “Daddy! I don’t want to! Go back!” We will never make it over, and it is too late to retreat. With a half-gasp of air, the sky is gone.

I slam to the bottom, grinding into the sand and sharp broken shells, and am held there as the wave thunders over. Then, still underwater, I’m scraping along the bottom like a piece of beach glass. I claw up for air, but tons of water keep me pressed to the bottom.

I am seeing stars when a strong hand clamps around my upper arm pulling me into the sunlight. A man in bright red swimming trunks sets me on my feet. I stagger, my bathing suit bottom is scooped low with sand. “Are you okay, sweetheart?” he asks.

My mother appears, flying down the beach. Behind her, my father shouts cheerfully, “Hey, cutie, where’d you go?” As we walk back to my sisters, my mother’s quiet is a lit fuse. I reach for my father’s hand to short-circuit the spark. With my other hand, I reach for my mother. That night I sleep with her in one of the big beds, and my father takes the rollaway. We are on the road again at dawn, and I am back in the wheel well. I am becoming famous for sticking it out.

We cheer at the “Welcome to Florida” sign and stop for gas. There are postcards with pink flamingos standing on one leg in front of orange and purple sunsets. Alligators grin because they’ve just eaten someone. As evening falls, we are pulling up to my grandparents’ house. Sure enough, they live on the Gulf of Mexico.

While my parents haul our suitcases inside, my sister and I wander down to their pier and look out across the gulf. I could see Mexico if I could see far enough. I tell my sister, and she says I could walk to Mexico. Anybody can walk on water if they believe they can. “Like if you really believed, you’d just walk off the end of this pier with your shoes on and stuff in your pockets, and you wouldn’t sink because that would prove you believed.”

With my sneakers at the pier’s edge, I concentrate fiercely until I can see myself walking on waves as solid as roadbeds. “All talk and no action,” my sister says, heading back up the pier.

Raised voices reach us as we near the house. The grownups stop speaking until we pass through the living room and close Granny’s bedroom door. “Let’s play who can be quiet the longest,” my sister says, and we climb on the bed to see who can make the other laugh first. We stare at each other as the voices in the living room grow louder. She points a finger at me and then pinches her nose, crossing her eyes. It’s not too funny.

My mother is crying. I point a finger at my sister, pretend I am driving a car, point to myself, and circle a finger near my ear. She rolls her eyes, but we don’t even make the bedsprings squeak. “Last chance,” my mother says through the wall.

“I quit,” my sister says, and just like that, everything is over. In the morning, I get back in the wheel well, and by 8:00 am, we are headed home.

My father begins to sing “Charlie on the MTA.” “Oh, he never returned, no he never returned, and his fate is still unlearned.” The words are sad, but the tune is catchy, and my mother joins in. My parents’ voices sound better together than either does alone and
I wish my friends could hear them. I would say, these, these are my beautiful parents. Because I am watching them, I don’t see the police car behind the overpass. My mother spots it first. “Slow down!”

My father squints quickly in the rearview mirror as the patrol car slams onto the highway, lights flashing, siren wailing. I know we can’t afford a fine, which may be why my father does not take his foot off the gas. He looks in the mirror again and turns to my mother. “Florida cop, Ginny. He’s got no jurisdiction out of state.” He glances from her face to the road and back again. Up ahead, a sign says, “Georgia State Line, One Mile.” The siren is louder. Louder still.

He smiles his slow smile. The one she has told me makes her say yes, every time she means no. “We can make it, Ginny; I know we can.” They look at each other forever and ever, and I hold my breath.

She twists to glance back over the seat. The police car is gaining ground but in the distance, a sign says, “Welcome to the Peach State.” Turning back to the road ahead, my mother sighs, and my father whoops. He slams the car into fifth gear, and we are outlaws gunning for Georgia.

I close my eyes and imagine walking on waves to Mexico. I think maybe one person believing in something just isn’t enough. But if two people believe, anything is possible.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

 

I was at a dinner party this weekend, and bizarrely, all four women at the table had endured the same emergency surgery. We each had a story. Pretty sure mine was the worst.

My tale begins at Hever Castle, Anne Boleyn’s family estate 30 miles southeast of London. Mr. Oliver and I were visiting our eldest daughter and her family. We had decided to do a little sightseeing that morning when I felt suddenly odd but in an indefinable way. 

The 13th-century house and gardens proved to be a distraction for a couple of hours, although I was becoming vaguely more uncomfortable. Even so, I was absorbed by the framed letter Anne had written to King Henry the 8th the night before her beheading. Knowing she was going to die, she transmuted all the rage, injustice, and terror into unconditional love. I got it. Maybe because I was feeling increasingly ill, I could empathize with the feeling that when you can no longer save your body, you can save your soul. The only room to stand in was compassion and forgiveness. I felt a new sympathy for Anne and a bit of envy that she was at peace. The fact that I was now envying a dead person should have been a clue that something was seriously wrong. 

By that night, I was in so much pain, I asked to be taken to a hospital where I was examined by what is known in the UK as a Junior Doctor. Young and very pretty, she failed to perform the one test that would have quickly led to a diagnosis and sent me back to our rental with a charming shrug.

A day later, still feeling awful, I hauled my luggage to Heathrow and boarded a United Airlines flight back to the States alone. I struggled to lift my overpacked suitcase onto the scale at check-in, to hoist my carry-on over my head, and to endure the 8-hour flight. 

I landed at BWI after dark, where my son met me at baggage claim and drove me home in a blinding thunderstorm. I don’t think I mentioned feeling ill. I hauled my luggage inside the musty house and bumped it up the steep wooden staircase to the second floor. There, I threw worn clothes in the hamper, delighted in a warm shower, and laid down. (Hello, my own bed! Hello my pillows!) It was midnight by then, and I felt dreadful, but I was home. I arranged myself on top of the covers, fully clothed, and waited to die. If I didn’t, I’d make a doctor’s appointment in the morning—whichever came first—didn’t care. 

At 9:00 am the following day, I lay on the crinkly white paper of an exam table, and my very American doctor plunged his fingers deeply and quickly into my abdomen in a rebound test to see if it hurt. I yelped, he nodded with satisfaction and told me I had a ruptured appendix. “Go get an MRI to confirm it,” he said, “then come back here.” 

I walked slowly back to my VW and drove myself to the radiologist, where I’d have to be worked into the schedule. Sagging against a chair, I waited my turn. An elderly lady in a wheelchair was taken back. Someone with a broken wrist was called. I wondered if I should explain (again) to the receptionist that my appendix was leaking toxins into my abdomen—and maybe in this one case belly trumped broken bone—but I didn’t want to be rude. Americans do one thing nearly as well as the English. We queue. We are not line jumpers. We are very democratic about waiting our turn. I like us for this. 

Eventually, I was called back. A kind radiologist said, “How are you doing?” then quickly looked from my face to the screen in front of us and said, “Never mind, I know how you’re doing. You’re one sick girl.” She then showed me the shadowy rupture and the little leaking river of poison.

Having confirmed that my appendix had ruptured sometime between feeling odd at Hever Castle and now, I drove back to the doctor to get a referral for surgery, then drove myself two miles to the hospital. Upon arrival, I wondered if I could make it from the parking garage to the entrance. I decided to try valet parking for the first time and pulled up in front. But the valet wasn’t there.

Somehow that was the first unfathomable obstacle I’d encountered. I stared at the empty podium where he usually stands all zippy-helpful, got out, and looked around. Perhaps he was behind a pillar having a smoke. I walked into the hospital. “I need surgery. I can’t find the valet,” I said, as mystified as if they were hiding him. A kind and intuitive volunteer in a pink smock held out her hand. “Just give me your keys,” she said, and a wheelchair appeared. 

Up on the surgery floor, I was offered a landline at the intake desk to contact a friend or family member. I called my son at work in Baltimore. 

And that’s when I lost it. The instant Andrew said hello, the dam broke. Abruptly I could no longer speak. I tried to choke out my story, but it was such a terrible story I couldn’t articulate it. I think the only understandable thing I said was, “Andrew, it’s Mom.” And all I heard, all I will ever hear in memory, was, “I’m on my way.” 

I lost it at the sound of the cavalry.

 Why is love our undoing? Why is it that love breaches our defenses when no obstacle could? Later, he said the call was horrifying. I was unrecognizable. 

The surgery was a success, but I was hospitalized for five days. I guess it was a close call. But was it?

I wonder if the end is written into the beginning. I’ve fallen through ice on the river as a child, and been held underwater so long by a breaking wave at Cape Hatteras that I could only feel detached surprise that this was how I was going to die. 

I’ve been fired upon by someone with a rifle while exploring the woods with my best friend as a girl. We dropped to the ground in a hail of gunfire as tree bark exploded shoulder-height around us, then stood up and ran. Did the shooter think we were deer? We were 14. We were lucky. Or were we?

If my time of departure is on a calendar somewhere, already marked, it means I only have to drop my resistance to love. How much I love will equal my reluctance to leave when it’s time to let go, so I parse it out. I think I live avoiding heartbreak which is such a waste because I know deep in my soul there is no end to avoid. It’s safe to go all in. I won’t be leaving; I’ll just be walking into another room of the same house.  

So, I could die today, tomorrow, or decades from now. All I ask of grace is that I find the courage to live a life I don’t want to relinquish. All I ask of Love is that I get home first, where I’ll be waiting for you. 

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.e