Rising Women Rising Tides: Stories of Women, Water, and Wisdom

Streaming Memories

Water. The word alone lures a liquid stream of memories. It seems to flow in and out of all my recollections, murmurs through every crevice of my mind, washes over so many meaningful moments in my life. A constant current. A river of reverie. Am I a water woman? Yes. Always have been.

I can lead you through my passages from childhood to graying gal with that fluid, essential element. Is it the Pisces in me? Although the stories in this volume are fiction, my experiences with water are the threads of truth. If you look carefully, other strands tie these diverse stories together—a common image, word, expression, visual, or voice—but the most powerful theme that connects them is water.

The stories don’t reflect my life on land; these tales are not my true memories, but they float on the waters I’ve known, that bubble up, become real. Just add water.

Water, water, everywhere. Enjoy.

In My World

Dee swam away from me. She arched her sleek body and dove down. Rising again, she slapped a goodbye twice with her flukes, washing me in her wake. After three years of pure joy, my aching loss had begun.

I treaded water near the boat where my colleagues had slipped Dee from a canvas sling. This was the way it should be, wasn’t it? It was what I’d worked for—to release her into the ocean where she would migrate up and down the East Coast waters and live naturally in the wild with her adopted pod? I could see the dolphin group she would join, circling just a few hundred yards offshore.

Determined not to turn her into a pet, dedicated to protecting her from too much human influence, I’d succeeded in preparing Dee for her new life. But that hadn’t stopped the heaviness in my chest. I would never know what had happened to her mother. What tragedy had brought her newborn calf into my life that day? My time with Dee had changed me, made me realize why I’d spent years studying, just for a chance to make a difference. It was no longer about grades, research, and a graduate degree in marine biology; it was about one tiny orphan dolphin that had stolen my heart.

Exactly three years before that May release day, I’d found the bottlenose calf, gritty yet alive, on the St. Augustine beach, rolling and flapping in the foam with her little pulsing blowhole, and no mother in sight. She couldn’t have been more than few hours old. Measuring about four feet, she was an average-size calf, with a visible vestige of her umbilical cord.

Think, think. This isn’t a lab pool; this is real, Deborah, I’d told myself. It’s all right little one . . . it’s all right.

I’d left my phone in the car to go for my run, was alone on the beach, couldn’t call for help. Talking to comfort her, I’d entered the water with my running shoes on. Once I had washed the sand from her body and from around her fearful eyes, she was smooth again with that sleek feel of those special cetacean creatures. Realizing she was too heavy to pick up and not wanting to jeopardize losing her, I’d immediately put one foot on either side of her, bent over, scooted my hands beneath her, and guided her forty-pound body a few feet deeper into the water. Her only chance was for me to walk her two miles along the shore through the calm surf to the rehabilitation center. I’d learned about the challenges of rehabilitating and releasing captive dolphins. Still, I couldn’t have known what was ahead—for me, for the calf.

Walking her out a bit deeper, I’d stroked her glossy, rubberlike hide, put my face near the water, and created a signature whistle—a call she would associate with me and eventually try to imitate, a call I hoped would comfort her. It would serve as an essential vocalization we would use to communicate while I rehabilitated her before reintroducing her into the wild again off the Florida coast. Click click whistle whistle click ah-ah-ah-ah-ah. I’d made up the inspired and awkward, vocal pattern hoping it would replace her mother’s call. So many recorded versions of dolphin-speak from my lab work were fresh in my memory.

Petting her and repeating my signature whistle over and over—as her mother would have done—we’d made progress down the coast. Too young to vocalize, she’d opened and closed her mouth as though telling me about the tragedy that had befallen her.

The sex of the newborn dolphin would be determined at the center, but I somehow knew the calf was female. I’ll call you, Dee. That delightful, perpetual smile on her upturned beak enchanted me. The flattened, lateral crease on her forehead made her look as if she were thinking about her uncertain future. She’d nodded her head in agreement, opened and closed her mouth, at first silently, days later, talking to me, releasing chatters, chirps, and a laugh—I swear. Was this really happening the first week of my internship at the St. Augustine Marine Life Rehabilitation Center?

Floating on my back, I’d kicked with one arm wrapped under her belly, the other stroking her pliable, soon to become firm, dorsal fin as she pushed us along with her flukes. I held her to my chest and, I confess, I fell in love.

Arriving at the center, soaking wet in my running shorts and T-shirt, I called and waved for help with one arm around the dolphin calf. My boss Jim, was amazed that I’d been able to bring the little aquatic mammal so far. The dozen team members opened the nets to the protected, open-water training lagoon, dropped them to prevent her escape, and went into overdrive to save the calf. The adult female dolphins immediately encircled her, vocalizing support.

She’s in good shape. Nice work, Ms. Sheridan.

Can I work with her, Jim, please?

Not our policy with interns, Deborah. You’ll be gone in a month, then what?

I was already so attached, and she was imprinted on me too—an attachment that happens to newborn animals, even to humans if their mothers are not there. I couldn’t imagine not helping her survive and find her way back to the tides and tastes of the ocean to join a group of her own. It was a marine biologist’s dream challenge.

What if I stayed and worked for free until she’s ready? I’d blurted out the words before I’d considered the consequences—my fiancé Rob’s feelings, our still unsettled wedding plans, and my new job commitment to MERR, the Marine Education Research and Rehabilitation Institute in Lewes, Delaware. I’d forgotten all of that in an instant, but I’d remembered that in the wild, nearly forty percent of newborn dolphins die. And I couldn’t forget the look in those flickering, frightened calf’s eyes.

My look must have melted Jim’s seasoned heart. I could tell by his spreading smile. New calves nurse for over a year. Five or six times an hour at first. You remember that, right?

I must have been crazy. I wasn’t hearing anything; I was only seeing the calf, thriving in the ocean, leading a natural life.

It just felt so right to me. I was in for the long haul.

We’re talking two, maybe three years of twenty-four-seven until release. Sure you’ve got this?

I can be professional, Jim. I know cetacean cow habits, calves too. I can do this. Honestly, the realities didn’t really register at the time, just my instincts.

OK, Deborah, you’ve got your chance, but no falling in love with the calf. Could break your heart, you know.

Too late, I should have said. I knew he was right. I’d already learned firsthand what we’d studied in school—it was human instinct to romanticize a relationship with a dolphin, especially a little calf with a permanent smiling face.

I would ensure Dee remained a wild dolphin with her natural instincts intact.

I got started right away. I wore a waterproof, continuous-loop recording device to broadcast my constant signature whistle, mimicking the repetition a dolphin mother would use to bond with her calf. After five days, Dee had imitated my call, pushing the sounds from her complex nasal passages through her blowhole. After one month, she’d created a unique acoustic signal all her own. Dee’s imitation of my call was missing a whistle, a click, and an ah-ah. I smiled. So much to understand about the soundings, those acoustic signals that dolphins use to communicate. Or was it an actual language that those bottlenose beauties were speaking? Research had shown a dolphin’s whistles may actually be words and sentences. If only I understood them.

If she was to have any chance of being released into her natural world, I would need to avoid reinforcing behaviors that were entertaining to humans or any behaviors unnatural to her. Behaviors she learned from me that weren’t true to dolphins would only have to be extinguished later. It was a disciplined, fine line for marine biologists to ride. Stay close, observe, nurture, yet stay detached, blend in.

I stayed with Dee all day, through that night, and for the next for six nights. While camping out at the center on a cot, the veterinarians checked her and taught me how to feed her. When I offered her the bottle, her tongue curled around a rubber nipple designed to replicate her mother’s teat. Little finger-like projections on her tongue locked in like a zipper to keep the milk shake-thick nutrition from spilling into the water.

I fed her underwater, just as she would have suckled from her mother, short bursts, as dolphin calves do. Only five-second stints of voracious nursing and we were off parallel swimming, her body tucked in close to mine. Then ten minutes later, she’d be back nursing again. It made me happy to see her begin to swim and toss seaweed with the other young dolphins. The thought of suckling her for two to three years kept ticking in the back of my mind.

I couldn’t wait to go home to our apartment on the seventh day to tell my fiancé Rob in person about this miracle in my life. Dee was feeding well; I had a colleague fill in, but I couldn’t leave her for long.

Rob had just returned from a week away on business. He’d seemed less than excited on our phone calls, listening politely. I knew once I explained, he’d be amazed.

He wasn’t.

I know it’s a financial sacrifice for us, and we hadn’t made our wedding plans. Wasn’t Rob the one who’d been delaying our wedding due to his work, saying as long as we’re together that’s what mattered? The experience I’ll gain could mean a big step up in my career. I tried to find the practical reasons, the justification for my crazy, spontaneous decision.

Rob wasn’t buying it. "Deb, do you realize how much money you’re turning down not taking the Delaware job? Working for free? For God’s sake." He turned away from me and looked out our apartment window with his hands on his hips.

I have some savings and the time will fly. We have our whole lives . . . and you’re always on the road anyway, Rob. If we stay here for a few years, you can still keep your sales job. Airports are even closer for you here than they are in Delaware. You complained about that when I got the MERR offer. Didn’t you say, being together is what counts?

He spun around and spat his words at me. "Two to three years? You’d jeopardize everything for . . . a damn fish?"

Dolphins are mammals. In my world, Dee’s not a damn fish, she’s . . .

Not in my world, Deb. It’s a damn fish. He grabbed my shoulders. "What about me? Our wedding, your job? Have you lost your mind?"

Rob, I thought you understood my work. I thought you said you could do your sales job from anywhere in your region on the East Coast. I thought you would—

"You thought I would what? No, Deb, you didn’t think."

The sound of the door slamming after two weeks of unending arguments stunned me. The morning of our breakup, I was shaking, questioning what I’d done. But a damn fish—those words made me realize that Rob understood nothing about me at all. Three years together, hearing me talk about my work, my passion, and he knew nothing. Why I’d thrown everything up in the air sky-high like confetti for a damn fish, I didn’t know. But I was learning things about myself—what I needed.

The day Rob left me, Dee bumped up against my side all day long. Was she sensing my misery? Jim must have too. He went to bat for me and made a call to MERR. They’d have a job for me when I was free, Jim said. I was grateful.

I moved my things into a small apartment near the center and set up my cot in a screened tent by the water’s edge. Now I could focus on Dee’s rehabilitation.

For the first few months, when I swam, Dee folded in body-to-body beside me and drafted in my slipstream, a behavior essential for a calf to keep up with the pod. Barely eighteen inches longer than her and sixty pounds heavier, I wasn’t much help. I laughed. My human speed was slowing Dee down. Even as a baby, her burst speed was five miles per hour. A year into our rehabilitation, she’d accelerated to ten miles per hour. I ended up drafting on her.

As she grew more powerful, Dee swam with a mature female dolphin who’d been injured by a boat and had lost her calf. While the mother dolphin was being treated for her minor wounds at the Center she’d bonded with Dee. But Dee always circled back to me. How could I stay detached?

I never felt lonely after Rob left. He’d rarely been there for me anyway, I realized. I had so many like-minded colleagues for company, and I’d made a good friend who understood my dilemma. Olivia, a thirty-year-old, experienced marine biologist from England had also found it hard to balance love and her dedication to her work—enough to make her take a job to start over here in Florida. It was good to have a kindred spirit to share ideas about work.

Deb, I can’t believe how well you are doing with Dee. Olivia walked along the edge of the training tank giving me pointers about how to teach Dee to hunt for fish, navigate, and communicate—skills every dolphin would need to survive in the wild.

Thanks. I wake up every morning so ready to work with her. Is that strange?

Who can resist unconditional love and a constant smile? Olivia laughed.

At the Dolphin Center, we were all philosophically aligned, similarly dedicated marine biologists. We weren’t trainers. Dee was never a toy, never on display to visitors—no hoops, no entertainment, no tossing dead fish in the air. There were only dolphins—and humans who tried to be part of the dolphins’ natural scene. To be intimate, yet detached, to avoid applying your human instincts became a Zen-like challenge for me. Stay patient, stay calm, clear your mind of expectations and let her thrive.

At three months old she was ready to try to eat fish as a supplement to her milk. First, I hid behind a blind so Dee wouldn’t associate me, the feeder, with the fish. Starting with dead fish, I fed her underwater through a submerged plastic tube. She ate voraciously. Then I served a combination of dead fish and live. One day, I released a live, shimmering fish from behind the blind. Dee dove, lunged, and caught it. Victory.

I found ways to use Dee’s sonar capability to teach her echolocation, as her mother would have—bouncing sounds off objects to identify distance and size was a skill she needed to avoid the deadly propellers of boats and to socialize with other dolphins. I followed all the protocols; she learned fast. Dee did so well during the three years of feeding and training. She was eating fish often and taking milk infrequently. I knew she had the skills to join a pod and survive in the ocean.

Great work, Deborah. Jim stood by the edge of the lagoon.

Three years. Unreal, right? Dee popped up next to me. I figure another year or two and— I could see his face said otherwise.

It’s time, Deborah.

But I still haven’t—

I’ll arrange the release boat next week. He turned to leave. It’s to your credit, you know. Record time.

Yeah, I know. Dee slipped in front of me and turned over, floating, showing off ribs with a healthy layer of blubber. My throat closed. I ran my hand over her silky belly and looked up at Jim. He understood. Dee flipped over, nudged me, and gave that open-mouthed smile.

It killed me.

A week later, as Dee’s glistening body disappeared into the horizon with her new group, she was a mere shadow against the kaleidoscopic early evening sky—the kind of sky that looks like a child’s painting, broad brush strokes of rainbow colors. I felt a deep satisfaction and a profound loss. Dragging my feet through the sand, I went home to pack for my job in Lewes, Delaware.

Olivia had painlessly freeze-marked the letter D on Dee’s dorsal fin. I’ll track her for you, Deb, and keep you advised as to her location. The fisherman along the coast are great at reporting sightings. Olivia handed me a map. You did a great job. You should be proud. Here, put a pin wherever she’s spotted, just so you feel connected.

Oh, Olivia what a great idea.

Tears were gathering, and my throat was tightening as I got in the cab to the airport. No surprise at the depth of my connection with that little creature. It was like another breakup—in some ways harder than my separation from Rob. Like losing a child. I’d worked hard not to jeopardize Dee’s release. I felt good about that and sad about my departure from Florida.

I rented a weathered cedar cottage, silver gray like Dee’s gleaming back, in Rehoboth Beach, just a short ride from my job in Lewes rescuing sea turtles and the occasional injured seal or dolphin at MERR. Running the mile-long boardwalk daily after work, I always searched the horizon for dolphins. It was common to see them swimming and emerging amid the swells offshore in the late afternoons.

After two years, no matter how hard or far I ran, whether my feet pounded the boardwalk that paralleled the shore or the wet sand beside the ocean, I couldn’t outrun the loss. An unexpected pressure pushed against my eyes now and then when I scanned the water’s surface.

Then I received a call from Olivia while I was running one morning. Dee was spotted just south of Ocean City, Maryland, twenty-three miles down the coast from Rehoboth Beach.

Oh my God, Olivia, really?

Good luck, Deb. So amazing. I hope you spot her. But so great to know she’s well and part of a pod again. That was your goal. Congratulations.

Thanks, I’m overwhelmed. Hugging myself, I could see her wide-open smile in my mind. Those early years with Dee all rushed back. I paced back and forth, but no dolphin sighting. At home, I pushed a pin into my map and slept restlessly that night and the next.

On a blazing, sunny, late afternoon two days later, I saw a pod of dolphins unusually close to shore. They were feeding in the cool water on a bait ball—a school of frenzied fish—the dolphins bobbing, circling, and bursting through the surface, excited by their find. I ran with shivers through the cool June waves and began to swim with the tide. I was a skilled swimmer; I could reach them and get back to shore easily, I thought.

Checking every few strokes, I could see they were still in sight. As I neared them, an unseen current pulled me toward the pod. I was so close, and my instinct took hold at the sight of them. I called out over the water, bubbles tickling my face as I made my signature whistle, click click whistle whistle click ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, hoping it would cause some curiosity and draw a few nearer to me. Then it took hold—the rip current I’d ignored.

I swam parallel to the shoreline toward the dolphins to release myself, but the tide pulled me farther out to sea. I was tiring. I knew what to do. I gulped a breath, let go, and let pull of the tide take me. On my back, eyes to the sky, I prayed I would have the strength to swim to shore once outside the rip current.

I dove down to check the movement of the water below. An undercurrent took me fast, tumbled me. I released my breath in spurts of bubbles that rose toward the glittering surface above. The constriction in my chest became unbearable, tighter, threatening an explosive discharge of what little oxygen I had left. I was in trouble. It wasn’t the first time I’d lost all judgment when it came to those beautiful creatures.

A powerful thrust. A rogue wave? My head hit a solid object and things went murky. I was disoriented. What could it possibly be? My hands grasped the edge of something unstable—rocking. A wave dunked me under again and I rose up, gasping to fill my lungs with a swallow of briny air. Then I was eye-level with a pair of large feet attached to tanned, muscled legs, connected to a tall, fit body with strong arms, who fought to balance his paddleboard. Looking up at his shocked face, I tried to stop gasping. I couldn’t speak.

Hey, you OK?

Chest still heaving, I sputtered, I’m . . . fine.

"That was amazing." His square jaw hung open, a swath of dark, wet hair draped across his face. He struggled to level out his board.

What, me trying to outswim a rip current? I choked out a laugh.

Damn, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m here, day after day, trying to get close to them like that. He reached out his hand, helped me slide up onto the board, and sat facing me, crossed-legged. Hi. I’m Brian.

Before I could introduce myself, he bolted upright. "He’s back! Behind you, quick, look."

By the time I looked behind me, there wasn’t anything to see, but I felt a slithering under the board and it lifted, like a swell was passing beneath us. Then I heard it, click whistle click ah-ah-ah. The sound shot down my spine, electrified me, and Dee lunged up over the board, wanting to be part of the fun.

She circled around us and came to my side, nudging my hand. I burst into tears and laughter at the same time. Dee opened and closed her beak, rapid fire, and gossiped in squeals and whistles through her blowhole, as though telling me everything that had happened since we’d parted.

Is this for real? My new paddle boarding friend leaned over. This is my dream, seriously. Brian ran his hand down Dee’s uplifted beak. Hi, Buddy. Then he looked at me. "What are you, a dolphin whisperer? I’m blown away. Who are you?"

I laughed and hugged Dee’s head. Me? Deb. She’s named Dee, a female dolphin I worked with in Florida.

Florida? Hi, Dee. You’re too pretty to be called ‘Buddy,’ right? Brian stroked Dee’s head again. You’ve come a long way, pretty dolphin. He smiled at me. Feel this—she’s so smooth.

I laughed. Yes, I know. I looked into Dee’s eyes—so many memories, so much emotion. I wanted to be selfish, cherish a few more moments, but I was filled with my original determined dream—I wanted her to be what she was, a dolphin, in her own world, accepted and thriving in the wild. Had emitting my spontaneous signature whistle ruined my years of hard work?

Nearby, I could see Dee’s group dispersing, one by one, two by two, moving northward, leaving the stirring waters as the bait ball was depleted. She backed away, clicking and whistling, half