Our first day in the salty, gorgeous water is a lesson in deception.
Temperature: perfect
Clarity: perfect
Clean: perfect
Waves: perfect
Beach: perfect
Stinging jellyfish: not so perfect
Unsuspecting of what lurks beneath, I dive in with gusto. All the while, a little sting here, a little sting there. But they are tiny stings, the perpetrator invisible, so I keep on swimming expecting each sting to be the last. When I realize I must be in a migration of jelly fish and I am still a fair distance from shore, I endure the swim back by imagining each sting is a Botox injection, and I will emerge from the sea a younger-looking woman (for the record I have never had a Botox injection nor did I emerge as a younger-looking woman).
Hoping the morning swim was an anomaly, I join Tony in the afternoon for a snorkel. Not a huge fan of long-length snorkeling (once I’ve seen a cute puffer or two, I’m done), I easily end early when I start feeling the jellyfish stings. I wait on the beach and as Tony emerges from the water, I see he’s swam through a family tree of jellyfish. Red pin points, already swelling cover his face, his legs, his arms. They nailed him under his rash guard too.
A little discouraged that our beach of the week is un-swimmable, it’s one of the first questions I ask Bill. No, he’s never encountered jellyfish stings.
The ocean is seasonal. A fleet of sand dollars will cover the beach. The next month the shore is loaded with so many tiny butterfly clams I can hardly walk down the beach without stepping on them. When we first landed on the beach, there were thousands of crabs. We learned it was mating season—now they are gone. The same must be true with these tiny jellyfish. But how long is jellyfish season?
Not wanting to give up swimming, we observe. Tony postulates the jellyfish are in the white flotsam floating about. It appears one day, it’s gone the next. In the kayak we find the white scum and underneath are the minuscule pink offenders.
The next day the ocean is clear of the white scum drifting about. Reticent, I wade in. Legs, fine. Torso, fine. Arms—all clear. It’s safe to swim. The next day too. When the white scum returns; we keep our distance.
On another day, though the ocean looks clear, I finish my swim with a fine reminder on my back. Tony too had a long snorkel and took one to the leg.
I walk up the beach to join Tony under a primitive cabana protecting us from the sun.
“It would be awful living a life constantly stinging people. Wouldn’t it?”
“It sure would,” he replies, yet we know a jellyfish’s purpose is not solely to sting recreational swimmers. Yet, I can’t help but think about the forces, the people whose intentions are to sting. You know them. They’re the ones who infect our computers with viruses. They may be colleagues who question our motives, who love to point out our mistakes. They may be family who can’t wait to tell us, “I told you so.” They are the reason we can’t carry water through airline security. They’ve forced schools to have lock down drills along with fire drills.
They’re the white scum riding the crest of a beautiful wave. We recognize them, protect ourselves; we dump our water bottles at the beginning of the TSA security line; we swim the other way. We keep our distance.
Comments