A Day Snorkeling

It was a sunny, humid day, but on the boat we felt only the warm breeze on our faces. The boat was filled with people like us, tourists eager for a day's adventure with a few thrills, but not too many. There were young couples in swimsuits standing at the rail, their bodies reminding us of being young, how it felt to own a body like that and to stand close to another body that gave you pleasure with its familiar arrangement of muscle and bone. There were some older people like us sitting quietly in the shade. The hum of the boat's motor, the gentle rocking, our cozy spot under the awning, the views of scrubby islands, the unreal turquoise of the water all lulled us and emptied our minds.

The boat approached Norman Island, an outcropping of rocks in the middle of the calm sea. The captain, a young native guy in country club whites, looking fit and handsome, called the ragtag bunch of us together and told us what to expect underwater. "You are going to see several caves close to the surface of the water. When you enter them, don't be afraid. Just swim through the darkness to the end. There's nothing there that can hurt you."

Tom grabbed his gear and jumped off with the first group of people. I smiled to myself because Tom had been a reluctant snorkeler when I first introduced him to it. I moved to the front of the boat and jumped off too. I had not jumped from any height in a long time and went down deep. Bubbles rose on either side through the light waters. The salt stung my nose and I felt a little pressure in my sinuses. It was nothing. My mind was still lingering in the emptiness of the trip out.

I found Tom and we began gliding toward the cliffs, heads in the water, kicking our fins slowly. We moved along side-by-side, with one of us occasionally swimming off. I was always aware of Tom's movements, his enlarged shape hovering at the edge of my vision, partly because I felt responsible for him, my swimming buddy, the one I taught to snorkel, partly because even in the warm Caribbean waters I was uneasy all alone. Plus, I liked knowing that he was seeing the same things as I was, whether or not we talked about them later.

First, only one or two colored fish crossed our path, but as we approached the rocks, groups of fish skittered about with flashes of beautiful colors. All of a sudden we arrived at the cliffs, completely unprepared for what we saw. Bright splotches of aqua and purple lay over orange coral. Rust and celadon slashed their way through. Small anemones formed tight bouquets of green rosebuds. At the door to the first cave, tea-colored fishies fluttered back and forth across the opening like a curtain. We swam through and weren't afraid of the darkness because we could look back at the aqua light from which we came, beckoning to us like the hereafter.

A minute later we were admitted to sun-filtered chambers of even more intense colors than outside. We hovered over the strange colors and forms, the outlandish color combinations of plums, rusts, and chartreuses, the knotty, spiny, and tentacled shapes of the coral dwellers. We floated there, swaying in the gentle tide, like travelers to a lost civilization sleeping in the sunbeams. We let the waters move us for a long time until we saw that our fingers were shriveling. We slowly made our way back to the boat.

At the last moment, I hung back and let Tom go up without me. I looked back at our snorkel site, marked only by the parched rocks above the water line. They gave no clue of the world that lay directly below. I swam around the white boat. We were in the middle of the ocean alone by ourselves. I could see Tom on board, scanning the waters for me. Happiness shot through me, like the sun's rays. I swam up to the ladder and removed my fins. As I pulled myself up the rungs, I swung the fins onto the pile on the deck. It was an easy movement and the fins landed right where I aimed them. I felt my T-shirt clinging to my body, but for a moment, it did not reveal the loose flesh of an older woman. Instead, a young woman rose from the water brown and strong.

Copyright © 2003 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved. Comments. Last modified Mon, Nov 3, 2003.