LIFE PRESERVER || Carla Rudy

Each of us exists in the tension between Eros and Thanatos. Eros is the life impulse, procreation, our survival instinct. Thanatos is the pull of death. Every living creature feels this pull because it is where we will all, eventually, end up.

The summer I was six years old, we had an orangey-red Coleman canoe. We lived on the border of the Pine Barrens, a great pine wilderness crisscrossed with rivers and streams. The waterways escorted us through folksy villages and abandoned glassworking towns. As a small child in the center of the canoe, evidence of the passage of time was all around me. Crumbling stone buildings wore blankets of moss. The forest was invading the structures and pulling them back into the earth. The dark pine trees reached up their fingers to blot out the sky.

Our favorite place was the Wading River. My parents had a routine: park our station wagon downriver, then load the canoe onto a Piney’s waiting truck and ride with them upstream to our entry point. Then the current would carry us back the way we came. We did this all the time.

Every bend and twist of that watery path was a familiar old friend. There was one particular turn with a tree growing out sideways at an awkward angle from the riverbank. Just the right height so my father could lean his head to the left and have our canoe glide effortlessly under it. This gesture was practiced, automatic, wordless, like the many other adjustments my mother and father made as they steered the Coleman over the peaceful water, with my older brother and I sitting cross-legged inside.

The summer in question was hot. It was a hot, sticky season after a long, cold winter with record snowfall. There had been a hundred-year storm with snow piled higher than my head, and my dad had gotten out the cross-country skis to zip down the block and visit the neighbors.

After the snow melted, and spring and summer arrived with a late but memorable entrance, we were overwhelmed by the stifling heat. The air was so humid that it felt like warm mayonnaise. We wore our summer cutoffs, cropped from old corduroy pants. Nothing could keep us cool. I’m sure on this particular day I was wearing my yellow shirt with the iron-on kitten decal, which my mother said I wore so often it could walk by itself.

There was a long stretch where the Wading River emerged from its narrow path into a wide lake. We paddled across, far from shore and far from shade. I wilted in the heat. Sunshine poured mercilessly over my head. Still, I refused to wear a hat. Curly little wisps of hair around my face were limp with sweat. Drooping, I leaned on the thwart with my elbow, my cheek pillowed in my hand.

“I’m hot,” I announced. I may have announced it several dozen times, in varying tones of voice.

My parents allowed me to take off my life preserver so I could be a little less hot. It was really easy to unbuckle and slip over my head. My brother followed suit, as did my parents. We placed the orange life preservers at our feet, near our four pairs of shoes that we had also removed, and the cooler with the snacks and juice.

We passed over the scorching lake until it narrowed and the banks closed in on each other, and the twisted pine trees reached out to give us shade again. There was some relief, but the heat remained. The coconut tang of Coppertone competed with the sour mildew of the canoe seats. I let my fingers drag through the cool water until I was told not to.

The riverbank was familiar, greeting us with every twist and turn. We went around the bend, the spot where my father would dip his head to the left and let the tree pass over his head. Only this time, it was different. This time, the nearly horizontal tree that grew from the bank wasn’t at the level of my dad’s head. You see, the snows, the crazy snows from the previous winter, when they all finally melted, they all flowed into the Wading River and swelled it up.

And what used to be little more than a friendly little stream was now a full-on river, roaring and fast and deep. And now the water was higher, much higher than it had been, and the tree that my dad had so easily ducked under before, was now at the level of his rib cage.

The river was too fast and too narrow and there was nothing anyone could do. The tree reached out to snag my father and the world flipped over as we got thrown from the canoe.

Everything went flying into the current and swept down the river, never to be seen again.

Paddles, the cooler with our lunch, hats, shoes, my parents’ wallets with original Social Security cards in them, car keys, and the life preservers that we had taken off because it was so hot.

And I, at six years old, did not know how to swim.

 I was trapped under the canoe. I remember a glimpse of a beautiful world beneath the surface. Fish swam peacefully, and I thought I heard music. And if I wanted to be fanciful, I would say that I saw mermaids beckoning to me, as I felt the pull of Thanatos coaxing me away under the water.

 Meanwhile, up above, Eros was in command as the survival instinct took hold. My parents thrashed in the water on either side of the overturned canoe, trying and failing to reclaim their things from the inexorable current. My brother, who could swim, was easy to locate. But they didn’t know where I was. Another couple, who were behind us and had seen us capsize, flew past and called out, “She’s under the boaaaat…”

My father dove down to find me. I was clinging to one of the thwarts running across the upside-down canoe, which, because of its curved bottom, had space to breathe.

My father pulled me away from the quiet and the calm, back to the other side where chaos and fear reigned. My parents shouted at each other as they tried to flip the Coleman. I didn’t know I was supposed to be afraid until I saw the rest of my family gripped with panic.

Only then did I begin to scream and cry, and flail my non-swimming limbs, and fight whoever was trying to restrain me, to keep me above the thin line separating life and death.

The canoe somehow got righted. Half full of water, it still floated low. I was plunked into the precarious craft, struggling and protesting the whole way. Eventually we made it to shore and the canoe was tipped again, to empty it.

I don’t know how we got home that day. As an adult I wonder, without paddles, how did we get our canoe back to the station wagon? With car keys lost forever in the Wading River, how did we drive home? As a child, I didn’t pay any attention to those things. I remember sitting in damp clothes for hours, a ride in a van, being told to stop crying.

 The survival instinct of Eros kept sway as I was given private swimming lessons. I was a difficult student, squirming, whining, and reluctant, but I was taught how to tread water.

Soon after, I was sent to Girl Scout Camp, where I practiced my swimming every day, and eventually got my junior lifeguard certification. But I never got a job doing that. Each time I got into a pool, I was shot through with a pang of nausea. I chose to work at Marshall’s instead.

Our family went canoeing less often, and by the time I was in high school, we had sold that death trap. But…

My parents, on a trip to visit friends, became enamored of their sailboat. They thought it was so relaxing for the breeze to carry them over the bay while they sat with cocktails in a face framing hat.

 My father put his Coleman canoe proceeds towards a used sailboat. My mother, correctly, informed him that it would be dangerous to attempt to sail a boat without knowing how. So my father agreed to take a four-hour classroom course, complete with a workbook telling him what all the parts of a sailboat are called.

I went out on that boat with my family once. There was no room below deck, there was no room above deck. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to sit, and standing wasn’t the best option, because the boom kept swinging wildly back and forth.

Did you know, the decorative women on the front of ships weren’t always carved out of wood? Originally, they were maidens sacrificed and lashed onto the bow to appease Neptune so he would spare the rest of the souls on board. So that was my place. I perched on the very front of the sailboat like my family’s very own flesh-and-blood figurehead.

We sailed at a forty-five degree angle so that the edge of the deck just skimmed the surface of the Navesink River. I was no longer six years old. I was a nervous teenager who knew very much what it was to be afraid of drowning. Screaming and jumping and clinging to the boat for dear life, I no longer believed that the adults around me were to be trusted completely. Now, it seemed like they were trying to finish the job.

Some years ago, I was convinced to go snorkeling off Key West. The Catamaran brought an assorted group of tourists an hour into the Gulf of Mexico, so there was nothing around us as far as the eye could see but open water. And as the little pang of nausea jolted my stomach, I had to have a conversation with myself.

Don’t wanna be an asshole, now. Can’t make a scene. You’re snorkeling. People go snorkeling all the time. Nothin’ weird about that. So I put on the fins and the mask and the breathing tube, and I got into the open sea with everyone else. And after ten minutes’ floating in the Gulf of Mexico, during which I could not see or breathe, my friend exclaimed, “Look at all the pretty fish!”

And I replied, “Yeah!” but the truth was, I couldn’t see them. When I put my face in the water, Eros had me scrunch my eyes and mouth up tight in self-preservation.

But when I finally made myself open my eyes and breathe through the snorkel, I saw a beautiful world under the surface. Schools of brightly colored fish swam all around us, beneath us, among the coral reef and away. It felt like I was flying underwater. And if I wanted to be fanciful, I would say that the fish were welcoming me home.

So this is what I’ve learned. There is a place that exists between these two essential urges of Eros and Thanatos. Between life and death, between the fear that helps you survive and the comfort that could destroy you.

It is, simply, living.