Staying Afloat

My yearning for the ocean ebbed and flowed like the tide. Some days, I wanted nothing more than to be immersed by the sea, as this felt like my natural state of being. Other days, I wanted to move far far away and never look back because I feared my favorite place on Earth would become nothing but a bitter reminder of my father’s absence.

I wondered if Macy felt the same way. After all, the spoiled rotten Goldendoodle had been by my Dad’s side far more often than I had in recent years. I had left, but she had stayed, taking my spot at his side. It was Macy who had snuggled up on top of his lap, wedged between his chest and the armrest of the recliner, for every movie night. It was Macy who accompanied him to the park three times a day, replacing our game of catch with a far more adrenaline-inducing game of fetch with a little keep-away thrown in. And of course, it was Macy who balanced with him on the paddleboard out in the ocean as he navigated them into wave after wave to ride together.

My heart sputtered as I stared out into the sea. It was choppier than I hoped. I looked across the sand at the crowd of people and dogs before me and imagined what a fool I would make of myself if I followed through with my plan. I looked to my left. My fiancee was too busy adjusting the paddleboard under his arm to notice my dismay. My feet dug into the sand with uncertainty, but Macy didn’t let me change my mind. She plowed towards the water with such enthusiasm that I had no choice but to rush along after her, connected by the leash that had become my lifeline.

I had never wanted this dog. In fact, upon the news that my parents were going to buy her, I made them promise that she would never be mine. I was in college and I needed time to focus on my studies. I knew the time, energy, and discipline that a Goldendoodle would require and I knew I didn’t have the bandwidth to provide it. I wanted an easier dog; the calm and loving demeanor of a Golden Retriever untainted by the stubbornness and pomposity of a Poodle. My parents didn’t agree. Macy was selected from among her littermates by profile picture alone and flown to Florida on a plane. My mother picked her up at the airport and when she opened the crate, out tumbled a two thousand-dollar ball of fluff that was destined to be the new star of the family despite never laying eyes on us before.

Like a true star, Macy became the center of our family, and no one orbited closer to her than my Dad.

The two of them were inseparable. After his retirement, his shifts in the firehouse were replaced by shifts throwing baseballs. When the pandemic forced him home from retirement job as an ocean lifeguard, Macy was his only excuse out of the house. They went on nature hikes, on morning jogs, and even to the beach. At first, she was afraid of the waves, but she went straight into the water as soon as he stepped in and she kicked and kicked to stay afloat right at his side no matter how deep he went. And after a long day of play, they lounged together on the same recliner watching old movies until they both started snoring. He was her universe. She was his gravity.

When his marriage tumbled into turmoil and his life turned upside down, she was the one thing that stayed constant. When he needed to escape from all the chaos and stress, she was his excuse to step out of the house. But even the pull of her love, no matter how magnetic, wasn’t enough to keep his feet on the ground.

The day my heart shattered into a million pieces, Macy came to live with me. Together we have been stitching up each other’s wounds, bit by bit. Neither of us will ever be whole again, but we feel closer to his love as long as we have each other.

There was nothing in this world my father loved more than the sea. Saltwater ran through his veins and sustained his heart. He had traveled from coast to coast, delivering sailboats in his youth and navigating by the stars alone. At the same age, I couldn’t get to school and back without the help of my GPS. I didn’t have depths of knowledge of the ocean and all of its fishes. I didn’t have the skill to harness the pull of the wind on the water. And I didn’t have the strength to balance when the waters grew rough. But I knew now I had no choice but to learn. Both for myself, and for Macy.

I stumbled across the sand, propelled forward at an unobtainable pace. Excitement spurred Macy forward and she plowed on with a strength that could pull a barge. It took all of my strength to reign her in close enough to unclip her harness. In a heartbeat, she was off. She frolicked about, darting from umbrella to umbrella until she had announced her presence to every beachgoer within a thirty-foot radius. The dogs delighted her, but the people thrilled her even more. When she had finished greeting everyone, she ran in circles around me and then, with all the force of a hurricane, threw herself straight down into the sand and rolled about, spraying sand in all directions.

“I should have taken off her harness,” I wailed. I could already imagine the sand stuck between the buckles. Whoever said poodles were supposed to be prim and proper clearly hadn’t meant by dirt-loving doodle.

I unfastened the harness whenever she rushed by me again, and all of the sand stuck to her wavy fur was washed off the moment she plunged into the water after my fiancee. I watched from the shore as the waves barreled over her head. She was soaked but undeterred. With a big snort, Macy expelled saltwater from her nostrils and kept paddling. Her wet fur partially covered her eyes and it was hard to say for sure that she could even tell where she was going. None of that seemed to matter to her, however. She just kept paddling.

For a moment, I stood and watched the waves. They were small, hardly a foot high, but they were rapid. Waves make balancing on the paddleboard substantially harder. When they come in sets, precise timing is enough to avoid the worst of it. When they come all at once, spurred by the wind rather than a distant ocean swell, there is no avoiding them. The waves would barrage me until I made it past the break- if I made it past the break. The feat seemed quite unlikely considering I hardly knew what I was doing. Paddleboarding alone was one thing, but adding an excited dog to the equation was enough to trip up anyone.

I took a deep breath and turned my face towards the wind. The breeze brushed soothingly against my cheeks. I inhaled deeply, then let go.

My father used to say he took comfort in nature when he was missing someone who had moved on. How many poems back up his words; promises of loved ones gone that they can be found in the wind? Perhaps that was why my father loved to sail so much; the whispered promises of loved ones filled his sail and kept him company wherever he traveled.

I hoped he was with me then. I couldn’t do this without him.

With one final breath to steady my nerves, I picked up the board and dragged it into the sea.

“Macy, come!” I called. She swam straight toward me. I held the board steady against the waves, but I couldn’t hold the board and help her at the same time. She swam around the board, waiting for me to gather her up in both arms the way my father used to, but I couldn’t.

I patted the board with one hand and held it steady with the other, pressing it against my stomach to keep it from being taken back to shore. “Paws up” I commanded. Macy pulled her water-logged front paws out of the water and placed them on the top of the board, but she couldn’t pull herself up. Another wave came and swept right over her head, so she let go of the board and resumed her full doggy paddle.

“I’m sorry girl, again. Paws up.” I encouraged, but my hopes started to recede with each outward tug of the sea between waves. I was my father’s daughter, but I didn’t have his strength. I couldn’t lift a water-logged Goldendoodle out of the water with one hand while holden the board with the other. But I wasn’t alone.

My fiancee swam over and wrapped his arms under Macy. He lifted her up with ease and plopped her on the board. Then, he held it steady as I climbed on with her. “Thank you,” I said as I knelt on the board, paddle in hand.

“Of course,” he replied with a smile. I had felt lost from the day my father left me, but I knew I would never be alone. I still had people who loved me. My fiancee, my brother, my aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. And of course, I had Macy.

“Get the phone,” I told my fiancee. “I want a picture of us standing up together.”

He laughed, promised he would, and sent us off over the breaking waves with one firm shove.

I am no pro when it comes to water sports, but I can firmly say that, most often, I can stand up on a paddle board without issue. Waves, of course, make it harder. But I was born with sea legs and I knew how to brace myself against the predictable rock of the water. The unpredictable rock of an excited dog, however, was another story entirely.

I stayed on my knees as I paddled us past the break where the waves were no longer crashing and I angled us towards the beach. Macy kept shifting her weight on the board so she could glance over one side, and then the other. She stayed standing, tail wagging, as I asked her, again and again, to sit down and be still. It was a hard thing to ask of an excited dog on her first time back on the board after years on dry land. Finally, though, she sat. She was too far back on the board and I had to practically stand on top of her to keep the board balanced, but we made it work. I rose slowly, my legs shaking and swaying us both, and kept the paddle clutched tightly in my hand. To my own amazement, I managed to get fully upright.

“Good girl, Macy. Stay, Macy,” I kept saying. She was looking around still, but staying steady for the most part. My legs still shook. The extra weight on the board was enough to make it much harder. I placed the paddle in the water, steading us both a little more. Then, just like that, we were doing it! Macy and I, stayed afloat on the same paddleboard with the waves at our backs and the wind on our faces.

Right on cue, I spotted my fiancee heading back into the water with my phone. I flashed him a huge smile, but Macy hadn’t noticed him. Her eyes were on everything else around her; people swimming, other dogs running up and down the beach, the birds in the sky. My fiancee called her name to get her attention. Macy, of course, being the good girl she is, responded by leaping straight into the water to go to him.

The result was, of course, sixty pounds of force launching off from the front of the board, kicking it back. I screamed as I plummeted into the water. The board launched several feet behind me, and Macy swam forward, tongue hanging out, happy as could be.

I was more than a little embarrassed as I paddled the board back alone, but just as I headed up the shore, a stranger came up to me.

“Thank you,” he said, catching me completely off guard. “I have never seen anything like that before as long as I’ve lived here. Thank you for showing me.”

My cheeks flushed red. I found myself wishing for the hundredth time that my Dad was here. If this man wanted a show, he should have seen Dad and Macy together. They might have actually been able to catch a wave and ride it back to shore. I looked at this man again. He was perhaps in his thirties, a few years older than me. His German Sheppard had been romping around chasing a red ball in and out of the waves since we’d arrived. I thought again about how things might be different if my father was here, but this time, the thought made me smile.

“Would he like to try?” I asked, motioning towards the german Sheppard. The stranger’s eyes went wide. “Really? You’d let us try your board?”

I proceed to hold my father’s paddleboard in the water as the young man and his German Sheppard climbed aboard. The dog left a few claw marks on the trackpad, but I had a feeling my dad wouldn’t mind. Things were not always built to last. Memories, especially good ones, were built of stronger things.

I stood in the shore break as the stranger paddled from his knees. Macy and my fiancee joined me, and the three of us stared out at the ocean watching the waves. The waters were a little rougher than I had hoped, but I felt confident now that, no matter how rough the seas, and no matter how much my heart yearned for my father, we’d find a way to stay afloat.

In loving Memory of my Dad.

Dad, don't worry. Macy and I will keep each other afloat.