Statistics show that the people who have the most birthdays live the longest. More and more, I follow Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ mantra: “Old age is always 15 years older than I am.”
Inside my head, I’m still 32 years old: vivacious, hilarious, gorgeous (she says modestly), so when no guests are around during the summer months, I like to jump into the pool and splash around stark naked, as if I was 32 again. My body craves vitamin D is what I tell myself. Scott believes that our nearest neighbor, one quarter of a mile away, could, ingeniously, watch me, if the neighbor or, more likely, the neighbor’s hormone infused teenage grandson, could see over the tall pines toward our home by climbing a tree or hopping onto the roof, carrying binoculars. I reply that even a high testosterone fueled teenager would be scarred for life after viewing a nude 78 year old woman. No man wants to see his mother’s birthday suit, never mind his grandmother’s scrawny naked body.
Adding fuel to my senior siren song, I attempt to lure Scott into the pool by telling him how growing swarms of fireflies will soon appear, stay for a few weeks, as they do each year, to blink their butts in search of a mate. I do the same thing in the pool, waiting for Scott to join me which, being of sounder mind, he does not do. Heeding Scott’s second piece of advice, however, I’m careful to apply suntan lotion liberally wherever the sun shines.
Anyway, here I am, drifting around the clear blue pool waters on a couple of large pool noodles enjoying the sun on my face and on the rest of me. Once I’ve found my solar sweet spot, I close my eyes and allow my mind to wander back a few years; a lot of years actually. When I was young I had great dreams. Now I have great memories and for that I am truly grateful. These days I have plenty of time to revisit my past.
While I’m laying on the pool waters, I remember back to other waters, some fifty odd years ago. I remember the time Cindy talked me into joining her on a rafting trip down the American River. “Everyone who has done it loved it. Besides, we’re not doing the whole river, only the south part, the easy part”. Small solace, but I’d always been an easy mark whenever she would approach me with one of her dubious schemes. Granted, I had heard about the great adventures that were to be had on American River rafting trips. I had also heard about the strong currents, the white water rapids. And while I liked to think of myself as adventurous as the next person, I had also heard that people died on those rafting trips. People actually died. I was very concerned that while maneuvering those rapids, my little 115 pound body would be bounced off the raft and snapped like a twig on the surrounding rocks. I had heard those stories too. I didn’t take up much space so, conceivably, no one on the raft would even notice that I was gone. I’d heard that the waters could be so swift they actually could tear off a bathing suit. That said, arguing with a lawyer was exhausting. In the end, I knew my whining would come to naught so I packed two bathing suits and a set of prayer beads.
I let Cindy arrange the whole trip because, unlike the adage that fear belonged to the unknown, the more I knew about this trip the more fearful I would be, so best not to know. I followed the more common ‘ignorance is bliss’ route.
The following weekend (no point in letting me stew long enough to change my mind), we found ourselves somewhere near Sacramento; some famous valley that belonged to the beginning of the California gold rush. It was very early in the morning. I was cold. There was no coffee. Cindy was impressed with the history of the area but since there was no residual gold around, I didn’t understand what there was to be impressed about. Pompeii was impressive; this was just a nice valley. And I was a city girl. All this greenery was making me itch.
She found our group. We were in the beginner South Fork section; a silent ‘yea’ on my part followed. There were six of us plus the guide. The guide appeared very muscular and very confident while the others looked considerably less so. After looking them over, I was more trepidatious about how well one of them could rescue me if I fell into the waters; if any one of them would even try. Would I do the same for one of them? No, but I would point to their bodies as they floated by. I gave Cindy the side eye and became less convinced about my safe return. Yes, Ollie, here’s another fine mess, etc.
We were fitted with life jackets and then the guide gave us the safety briefing which included how to paddle in sync. I fell into a Busby Berkeley Esther Williams singing and swimming fantasy, which no one appreciated. Actually, that paddling part didn’t sound too terrible, but nervous anticipation began when he was telling us how to ‘expertly’ pull ourselves back into the raft if we took an unexpected dip. I wanted one of those rescue whistles like the heroine in the Titanic movie wore. Again, my request went unappreciated. After hauling the raft down to the water, we pushed out into the surprisingly cold green current and jumped in. While I didn’t want to embarrass Cindy absolutely, I did push past someone to sit parallel to her. I had no doubt that she was my only chance to stay alive.
All settled in, we calmly floated along, enjoying the now warming sunshine dancing on the water, admiring the verdant landscape and making inane remarks about man eating sharks swimming up the river. I was humming some tune from Deliverance, when the pleasant birdsong straight away changed to the sound of a rushing roar of water. “White water!”, someone yelled. We just as quickly catapulted into the rapids, completely soaked with river spray; very cold river spray. The guide sang at full volume: “Meatgrinder! Forward paddle! Paddle!!”. What the hell was a Meatgrinder I wondered, while I paddled paddled paddled. The raft bounced around and over the rocks like an out of control corkscrew roller coaster. Ah, like a meatgrinder. Looking around at the other members of our crew, they looked just as disoriented and skeptical of survival as I did. And just as suddenly, we shot out the other side of the chute into a small somewhat sedate eddy. We slowed the paddling and wiped the water out of our eyes. It was good to see straight again, now that my hysteria and heart rate had begun to subside. The river widened and we drifted down through calm waters once again; not that I trusted this river any longer, but I enjoyed the easy moments. We were alive, we all appeared to relax, taking in the canyon walls, the sunshine, the plants and surrounding leafage hanging into the water’s edge. The waters carried us along once again. A few people loosened up enough to actually speak complete sentences to each other. The guide warbled a few positive noises our way: “you guys did great”. I still didn’t trust him.
Sure enough, in what seemed like no time at all, the guide explained that we were coming around to the grand finale; another rapid with a “ticklish” drop that would most likely cause one of us, or all of us, to flip over or out and land in the water. Did I remember what he had said about pulling myself back into the raft? No. I was terrified. I just stared at Cindy, who wasn’t looking too good herself at that moment. The guide started yelling instructions about paddling through the white foam. I did what he said while reciting the Hail Mary. We paddled, we screamed, we came through it and, finally, as we were heading toward the end of the journey, the guide blithely reminded us that this was the easy 20 mile stretch. He was confident that next time we could all navigate through the river’s north fork. At that point, I was damn sure that the only fork I would navigate in the future was through a plate of food.
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