As a child, my one consuming fear was a tsunami. I don’t know when I first heard of the huge tidal wave that could decimate an entire island, but it still has the same effect on me when I think of it. My chest draws in and my breath gets short. I can see it make a tide pool of the beach, disappearing the waves until an unimaginably huge wave starts rising up from a half-mile out to sea and grows larger, as large as a 10-story building, until it crashes over me and everything. 

It is sudden and unpredictable in my day-dream fear. In real life, there would be sirens and evacuation of the island. But what, really, could be done to avoid being drowned in such a wave?

It was late summer on Fire Island, a place I knew well. That beach was where I learned to swim in the ocean, to feel the salt water buoy me, the waves lift me up and over them in one dramatic move after the other. It was where I got “creamed,” as we called it when a wave got the better of you and instead of letting you roll up and over its knife-edge, it took you under and tossed you ferociously until you were all sand and bruises and salt water and jellyfish in your nylon bathing suit. Landing on the shore, you scrambled to get away from the next wave already on your heels.

Late summer was when the Atlantic was warm and jellyfish were plentiful. The larger ones had long tentacles and an orange center that pulsed like a heart. Little translucent watermelon ones hid in your bathing suit and fell out in the outdoor shower, sometimes leaving little welts. Sand was everywhere there. Parents tried to keep it outdoors, but it crept into bed with us at night.

That one day, I was swimming alone at the beach. There were lots of other people but I was alone, a teenager on break from her summer babysitting job. The lifeguards were on duty, in their high chairs and their tanned bodies that stood out against their orange shorts. Older girls in bikinis spread out on towels like abstract designs on the beach. 

I waded in easily. It was warm and the waves came in pairs, then a lull and another pair. Big round-bellied waves. It was easy to slip under and swim out beyond the breakers. I was swimming parallel to the beach but keeping my head above water. The lifeguard chair was my mark and I was swimming toward the flag that marked the end of the swimming area but I wasn’t getting anywhere. The harder I swam, the less I moved toward the flag. Then the chair was far away and the people on the beach looked like sandpipers. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know I was in trouble. Finally, I broke free of whatever demon had me and got to shore, panting as the lifeguards grabbed me. “You did good!” they said, congratulating me. “You were in a riptide.”

A riptide is a current that forms in the ocean perpendicular to the waves. If you are caught in it, the current can pull you out to sea before you know it. The best way to get free is to swim across the current, but it can be hard, even for a strong swimmer. I was lucky that day. Lucky that I was a strong swimmer. Lucky that a lifeguard noticed me. Lucky that it wasn’t a tsunami.