Daily Prompt: Facing Mortality Under the Sea

Daily Prompt: The Natural World.

I must have been about six years old, and my family had gone to a beach on a lake in Wisconsin.  Green Lake, if memory serves me correctly.  At my age, I was only allowed to swim near the shore.  But, out a ways was a slide…and old school metal slide, higher than any I had ever seen.  I kept looking at it, wondering about it.  I would not have gone all the way up the stairs to the top.  Way too scary!

Still, I was drawn to that slide, and I made my way closer and closer to the bottom of the steps.  Even though I was farther out than I should have been, I had always felt safe when my parents were around.  I had nothing to fear.

But then something happened.  I can’t even tell you exactly what, but I found myself under the water with my eyes open.  I saw smooth rocks of many colors blanketing the bottom of the lake.  Mind you, this was the first time I had ever had my eyes open underwater, and I felt sure that this meant I was no longer in this world…that I had passed into another world.  Was I dead?  Perhaps.  I was not sure of anything anymore.  I did know that I could not take a breath here, so if I was not dead yet, I would not be alive much longer.

Luckily for me, I was wrong.  My parents had seen me go under.  My dad swam out to me and pulled me up.

Now, it would have been good for me to have a chance to reflect on what just happened.  As far as my parents knew, I just slipped and went under the surface for a bit.  No big deal.  But to a six-year-old boy with an active imagination, I had faced mortality and won, thanks to my dad, my hero.