Almost Orphaned

Because of space and word limitations, I couldn’t include all the details in my Evening Sun article, Nightmare on the Bay (read the article below). My life jacket had an 18-hour buoyancy. I would have been sighted and picked up way before then. When we were rescued, it was in the nick of time. My parents couldn’t have lasted much longer. If Id seen them go under, Id still be in Shepherd Pratt.

I don’t remember how it went, but when I was older, they both told me that one of them (while we were bobbing in the water with no help in sight) thought I was going to be washed away from them and be orphaned and one thought I was going to drown. It was really horrifying for them, as well for me as a child. During the worst part of the storm, I couldn’t see my parents; everything was black--the rain, the bay water, the sky. And it was all swirling, like a whirlpool. You couldn’t tell what was coming down as rain and what was crashing down on us as waves. When it was over, the bay looked like a sheet of glass and the sky was beautiful like nothing had happened.

There isn’t an August 10th that passes, that I don’t picture it all. It makes me cry. The sadness of it (remembering the fear I felt and remembering the fear I saw in my mother and father's faces) and the beauty of our rescue and how it all came about. My parents reminded me throughut my life, that it was my prayers, said in anger and fear, that saved us.

In the article, the man in the motorboat was the last one to reach us (the last 'leg' of the help chain). He said that he and his wife had 30 people in their yard for a cookout and all had to run inside because the storm came so quickly–they didn’t even have time to carry the food inside.. When they all went back out, his wife was the only one who heard a man yelling H E L P. Everyone else told her they didn’t hear anything. She pestered her husband until he said, "okay, I’ll take the boat out and check around." She told him the man's voice was coming from 'around the bend to the left." She told him not to take anyone with him in the boat because 'you don’t know how many people you might have to pull out of the water and you'll need room in the boat."

When we were all safe on the yacht (the man came aboard), he told that story. He looked at my father, spread eagle on the deck, looking almost like a dead man, "You are the man my wife heard calling for HELP!" He repeated over and over, "My wife was the only one of the 32 of us who heard your cries for HELP. You’re the man she heard."

Now I know God sent an angel to her ear who said HELP in a man's voice. Or God temporarily 'enhanced' her hearing to enable her to hear Daddy. She was the only one.

If my talent were with a brush and oil, I'd paint two pictures–side-by-side. One would be all black. Through the darkness and swirls you'd see a man and woman together--the man holding onto the woman with one arm around her waist and the other arm around a life preserver cushion. And a little girl in a US Coast Guard regulation orange life jacket--all in swirling black chaos--just heads and shoulders. I'd paint another of the bay like a sheet of glass and blue sky like a picture postcard with white fluffy clouds (just the way it was) and for miles, no one, not one boat of any kind as far as the eye could see--just the way it was--and a shore line in dense beautiful trees-- and the little girl with her hands in prayer --and in the clouds, on both paintings, I'd paint Christ and the angels protecting them until human help arrived. Amen