Once, When They Were Right There

On my fourth-grade whale-watching trip, I took a whole roll of photos of a whale that was maybe two hundred feet from our boat.

When we got the film developed at the drugstore (like Neanderthals), all that showed up was a tiny black dot amid a rollicking blue sea. 35 times. Some of the photos were even missing the black dot.

My dad was kinda mad that we’d spent $5.85 in processing.

“Why didn’t you put some people in any of the pictures?” he asked. “Nobody wants to see a bunch of blurry photos of water. Is there even a whale out there?”

And, flipping through the photos in that aisle of that drugstore, I had to admit that I agreed with him. The photos were repetitive and boring. Not one of them captured the excitement I’d felt on the deck of the boat when the faraway stream of water burst from the giant monster they told us was the source of it.

On whale watching excursions, they never guarantee that you’ll actually spot a whale. Even with all the technological advances and fancy equipment that exists, the best they can tell you is that you have a better shot if you go during certain seasons, or at certain times of day. Thus, it is a little bit mean to take a class full of rather literal-minded 5- and 6-year-olds out on the water and tell them that they’ll be watching whales. They expect that the whales should perform for them, as is what happens when they go to watch a movie or watch a play. Children are also a teensy bit spoiled these days (not mine, of course), and so they often have mental checklists of all the things they’d like to watch a whale do: swim, eat, spout some water from his blowhole, maybe some sort of end-zone dance on his tail on top of the water. They expect someone to follow through on this for them.

Perhaps it would be better to just call the trip what it is: Ocean Watching.

Now, the ocean, in its bigness, is worthy of being watched. Whatever is underneath is a fantastic mystery. It is something of a religious experience to go on a trip like this as a child. And while the kids study about ocean habitats for weeks in preparation, nothing is quite like seeing a quick glimpse of whatever lurks beneath the shifting white swells. They see illustrations of whole communities of fish and dolphins and plankton and coral and seals in their books. We know it’s there, but we don’t often know it’s there.

These thoughts were on my mind when I got word of my son Miles’s whale watching field trip. For the first half of the trip, just being on the water was enough to excite him and the other first-graders. We passed the docks and sounded out the cheeky names of the boats, we waved to the sea lions sunning on the rocks, we bought a ring pop from the little snack bar on board.

It didn’t take long for the question to arise, though: “Where are the whales?” they wanted to know.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Moms and Dads said. “They could be anywhere.”

All of us were frantically searching for anything other than the dumb old birds that seemed to be everywhere. Finally, we came upon a pod of dolphins (I was standing near the teacher, who taught me that dolphins run in pods, not in schools).

I can tell you from experience that dolphins are even more fun to watch than whales. They are show-offy and brave and silly. We saw one or two at first, then, gradually, more and more dolphins until we realized that we were smack in the middle of a group of probably thirty or more.

“Looks like they want to play!” the captain said. We crowded at the bow. And sure enough, five or six dolphins clipped along just under the surface of the water, shimmering and electric in the sun. The same feeling I’d had as a child resurfaced. It felt familiar and bubbly.

“There they are!” I squealed to Miles. I was excited to share the experience with him, but he was too short to see.

“Where?” he asked.

“They’re here!” I said. “Right here beneath us.”

I reached my hands around his middle and lifted him slightly. But he is not as small as he once was, and that, combined with the slippery texture of his coat and the fact that we were fenced in by classmates and parents, meant that I wasn’t able to lift him more than a few inches off the ground.

The moment his feet left boat, however, he let out a shriek reminiscent of his baby days. This was not a big-boy shriek. This was panic. I knew it right away — and I should have listened to it; but I was hoping that the moment he caught a glimpse of the dolphins, he’d forget his fear. They were dancing beneath us, less than ten feet from us! I could almost reach out a hand and touch one’s rubbery head when she leapt; Shaq probably could have.

“I’m scared! I’m scared!” Miles was wriggling now, that same sharp edge to his voice. I put him down.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, kneeling. “Don’t you trust me? I’d never let you fall.”

“I’m scared,” he said. It was all he could say. “That scared me.”

I wanted so badly for him to see these mysteries. I wanted him to look straight down and lock eyes with a dolphin. They were right there. So I continued trying to convince him.

He shook his head, “You scared me.”

It was difficult for me to understand, this fear that felt so unfounded. I knew he trusted me. I knew that he knew that I wasn’t going to throw him over the side of the boat.

But sometimes we are scared of the deep.

And sometimes, the dolphins, with their laughing eyes and their butterfly tails, will show you a bit of grace. They will swim out just far enough that you, if you are six and on tip-toe, will be able to see them swimming along with the rhythm of the ship, too.

Katie Savage is the author of Grace in the Maybe: Instructions on Not Knowing Everything about God.