Part of my mom’s attempts to get my brother and me to ease back into our relationship with Dad after one of his work absences involved strategic disappearances. She would grab her purse one morning and announce that it was a “Dad Adventure Day” and to enjoy ourselves. The first few times she did this, I remember my dad looking just as uncomfortable as we did at the announcement, but soon we recognized the benefits to be reaped from this sudden tweak to the power structure. One was a complete disregard for how much sugar and salt we consumed, and another was a redefined notion of physical risk that opened all kinds of doors when it came to outdoor fun. One outing in particular has become part of my family lore, and I find myself thinking about it at the strangest moments.
It was summer and I was seven years old and Doug was six. We decided to make a day trip to San Marcos, where there was a great river for tubing. We stopped at a swimming hole near a bridge where the river widened before tipping smoothly over a containment wall and curving on downstream. Dad sat in the shade of some old pecan trees and started blowing up a couple of rafts while Doug and I waded out into the water in our life jackets.
“Be careful of the current,” Dad said. “It gets stronger over next to that wall.” I remember his words because they had the exact opposite effect he intended. There was suddenly nowhere else I wanted to be than the smooth, glassy curve where the water shone greenish before shattering into frothy white down the rocky side of the wall. Besides, a guy was already standing there, a brawny, muscle-shirted dude with sun-bleached hair and a tough-looking mustache, and the way he wheeled his free arm to keep his balance while the other clutched a Silver Bullet looked even more fun. I headed over, Doug paddling in my wake. The strange magnetism of the current tugging against my ankles and making my feet lose their grip on the rocks was electrifying, like a force I could fight against and win if I moved fast enough. I was completely absorbed in the effort, even at the point when I began to lose. I remember the next part in flashes—the sudden drop and water in my nose; the blue back of Doug’s life jacket with its yellow belt, and the sun-browned hand of the man on the wall’s edge grabbing Doug’s belt and hoisting him clear; my continued fall and the unpleasant surprise that there were rocks underneath making all that water turn white, and broken glass; the second and even more unpleasant surprise that my life jacket could not hold my head above water and I was getting dunked in the current, once, twice, three times; and the panicked realization that the hardest I could kick, paddle, and fight did nothing to change the backward-speeding scenery on either side of the river. I couldn’t get enough of a breath to scream, and soon it didn’t matter anyway because I was around a bend and too far from any of the people who would have heard me.
It finally stopped when I got tangled up in a tree, slimy, bruised, bleeding, and coughing up river water through snot and tears. I pulled myself up and realized that the water was shallow enough for me to stand and had been for at least the last five hundred feet, which meant I could have saved myself a few of the last bruises by just putting my feet down. I caught my breath and climbed up the slippery bank, convinced that any minute now a crowd of horrified bystanders would come crashing through the trees calling my name. No one came. I began the hike back to the swimming hole, gradually getting more and more indignant at my nonexistent rescue party. Hadn’t the guy with the mustache seen me go over? By the time I reached my dad, who was triumphantly holding aloft a fully inflated pink raft, I was fuming.
“Didn’t you see that? I almost died!”
“Do what?”
“The waterfall? I fell down it! I almost drowned!”
“Oh! Well, didn’t I tell you not to play there?”
I was so utterly enraged I just spluttered something at him and threw up my hands before stomping off to go pout under the pecan trees. In his defense, my dad knew these things about me: I was an excellent swimmer, a clever kid, and usually well behaved—rule-following to the point of being uptight. He had no reason to suspect I was also powerfully seduced, then as now, by acts of bravado meant to prove to the world how tough I was precisely because I felt anything but. I tried out several proclamations under my breath as I picked glass out of my shin.
“I will never again go in the water.” As soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. “I hate my dad.” Yes, but even that would probably end soon too. I sat for a while and let the breeze warm my back. Doug was still having fun. His raft was ready too and he was trying, and failing, to scrabble up on top of it with his life jacket in the way. My dad was floating in the water on his back with his eyes closed, slowly swishing his arms as his flexed white toes poked above the surface. I was back in the river within twenty minutes.