The time at the moment was Pi. You might remember the sign for Pi (𝛑) from school, especially if you had a kid in class who had memorized the digits for Pi out to a hundred decimal places and spewed their brilliance for the admiration of your teacher and anyone else who cared about math and numbers. Perhaps you yourself were that kid! If so, let’s just be honest and say that it’s a remarkable feat and pretty darn impressive to recall so many numeric figures! Or maybe you use Pi on a regular basis and in various formulas while calculating the area and circumference of a circle; as an engineer or landscape architect might do for their next project.
I had a circle garden in the backyard of the first house that Cindy and I ever owned. It was a good excuse to be creative and make use of the old rotten stump that used to be there on a slight slope just off the northwest corner of our brick bungalow. I was able to level off the soil by building a retaining wall on the lower end; using a double layer of broken up concrete chunks from a motel in Machesney Park that was redoing their sidewalk. I used Pi to calculate the fencing needed around the perimeter to keep rabbits out while still allowing chubby little fingers access through the rectangular wire holes to grab delicious cherry tomatoes and fistfuls of chives.
Sometimes in the middle of a junior high boy’s or girl’s basketball game, back when Cindy and I coached together, we’d notice when the clock on the scoreboard stopped at 3:14. One of us would bring it to the other’s attention. The first three digits to the Greek Symbol of Pi are 3, 1, & 4 (three and fourteen hundredths - 3.14). It comes from the 3 plus a smidge more times that a circle’s diameter can be wrapped around the perimeter of that same circle. It’s a number that in reality extends infinitely, because well, you can technically always cut a piece of the pie thinner; even if it is microscopic!
Anyways, the present time was 3:14 when I started writing this entry aboard a Boeing 787-10 aircraft. Ironically my wife and I were flying from Amsterdam and southeast off the tip of Greece on our way to Kenya - where we would eventually drive down into the bush country where my son and daughter-in-law live. At that moment, far below the 35,000 feet we were flying, I could see the western tip on the island of Crete and sandy Elafonissi Beach. In fact, I could see whitecaps rolling in along the shoreline from the Mediterranean Sea. Imagine the height of those rollers for me to see them from tens of thousands of feet above them in the air!
Having grown up in Michigan and surrounded by the freshwater sea of the Great Lakes, I hold a personal attachment to water being whipped by the wind into whitecaps. I absolutely love the thunderous roar of waves crashing on rocky outcroppings or pounding sand laden beaches.
I’m also terrified of them. I know the seductive power behind those waves! I almost drowned as a child; strangely enough while attending our community swim lessons at Otsego County Park. It was within big waves, that were building from an oncoming front, when I decided in my little brain that I needed to learn to swim on my own right then and there - without a paddle board and in the deep area between two rafts. It was also when the lifeguards earned their keep. Somehow they noticed me in the waves, and pulled me up from below as I was going down into the bluish-gray abyss.
Isn’t it ironic how the waves that can be so fun and exhilarating to jump in when it’s only knee deep, can paralyze you when you have a near death experience? Once I had recovered to their satisfaction, the director of the program drove me over to the other side of the lake; to the State Park where my Dad was a seasonal ranger when he wasn’t teaching middle school math. It would be a couple of years until I could comfortably swim in water that was dark and over my head. The traumatic experience hadn’t planted a seed of fear. It was more like a backyard shade tree! Who knew at the time that I would return years later to swim from that community park, nearly to the other side of the lake, and then back - while participating in what used to be the original distance for the Mark Mellon Triathlon.
I think about that near drowning sometimes, and try to mesh the fear I suddenly felt for deep water with the stories my parents tell of how as a toddler I would crawl fearlessly down sandy beaches and straight into the lake without even stopping! My Mom said she had to watch me like a hawk, because I apparently could crawl pretty darn quick. I do remember wanting to be “one with the water” when I was in middle school; wishing I could breathe like the character in the TV show from the late 70’s entitled, The Man From Atlantis. I often mimicked the way that he swam, but unlike him, my lungs demanded air!
Part of the initiation strategy Dad used to rebuild my confidence in swimming was for him to hold me as he walked out to where he was neck deep and definitely over my head. In that environment he would hold me out at arms length, briefly let go, and I was to swim back to him. I remember clinging to his head and shoulders, and I think it took everything in his power to pull me away - both literally and figuratively. Literally because of my gripping fingers, and figuratively because I was his son and he wanted to help me; in addition to the fact that he had grown up on a lake and was himself half fish.
One such time stands out vividly in my mind when we drove down to a lake somewhere in the middle of lower Michigan to visit family friends. As kids we had fun playing together, picnicking, and searching for fresh water clams in the shallows. When it came time for Dad’s attempted swim lesson, however, I wanted nothing to do with it and held on for all I was worth! And while I trusted my Dad, I didn’t trust the water. More importantly, I didn’t trust myself and my ability to swim when I couldn’t touch the bottom of the lake with my tippy-toes. Fear like that was a real thing for a kid who only ever swam in lakes that got mysteriously deeper, darker, and muckier the farther you went from shore.
The opportunity that slipped through my fingers, and still haunts me to this day, was when I lost out on diving from a raft belonging to long-time friends who lived down on Heart Lake. Those who know me now are familiar with the fact that I could dive off any sort of structure all day long. I simply love the exhilarating feeling of slicing into water. My dives themselves aren’t pretty, and on an Olympic scoring system…well, they probably wouldn’t even register on a scale of 1 to 10. But, that doesn’t take away from my love to do so, even if my feet often come over too far and cause an unnecessary splash!
On that day, plain and simple, I didn’t get to share in the joy that my younger sisters and friends were able to have. Granted, the littles probably jumped in with life jackets. And although I don’t remember all of the specifics, I know that I wasn’t able to submerge into the depths unencumbered and do what I saw some of the older kids doing. What does come to mind is that the water was intimidating, and although the raft was not very far from shore, it was anchored out beyond a steep drop-off.
In the dive position I posed at the raft’s edge, but was frozen from entering the water. It was regretful, especially when our friends moved soon after that to the Upper Peninsula town of Negaunee. Fortunately I was able to come back to that same lake a decade later and swim at a resort just across the bay from where our friends had once lived and even took a group of middle schoolers water skiing there after my freshman year in college. It helped rectify the earlier situation.
I wish I could recall when and where I got over my fear of deep water and not being able to see or touch the bottom. I suppose it would help wrap the story into a tight little bow. Like many things in life, time erased the memory of bravery as time erased the fright. Perhaps I swam in water over my head on beloved Clark Lake where my Dad had grown up and we still had family. Perhaps it was in Pickerel, Big, or Otsego Lake near our home outside of Gaylord, Michigan. Maybe I swam in dark water in one of the Great Lakes - like Michigan or Superior. The specifics will remain a mystery, but this I know; I love water and being engulfed in its fluidity. Yet, from that frightening experience I also have a healthy dose of cautious respect; always checking for submerged debris before jumping in moving water, wearing a life jacket while kayaking or canoeing, and being aware of my surroundings and the weather.
If I have the opportunity, I’ll swing from a rope or dive off a dock into deep water again and again; it’s a joy and rush I rarely get tired of doing. I usually only quit when I run out of time or something else catches my attention. In fact, I’m always looking for the next watering hole where I can wade, swim, paddle, or dive.
It’s random memories, stories, and thoughts like these that I find rattling around inside my brain while flying out over the Mediterranean Sea; now long past the number Pi, the time of 3:14, and the white caps crashing onto the island shores of southern Greece - as we travel the long journey to the flip side of the Earth.
See you along The Way…
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