What Pulls

The current pulls before you know it's there. This is the thing about undertow that the safety signs don't capture. They say DANGER and they say STRONG CURRENTS and they use a red triangle, and all of that is accurate and none of it tells you what it actually feels like, which is: nothing, at first. You're standing in waist-deep water and your feet are on the sand and then your feet are not quite on the sand and you haven't moved but you're somewhere else. I grew up on the coast south of Durban. The water there is warm, which makes it more dangerous, not less, because you stay in longer. Cold water tells you to get out. Warm water invites you to keep going. The Indian Ocean is polite about killing you. My uncle taught me to swim. He was a big man with hands like paddles and a theory that children learn faster if you throw them in. This theory has not been validated by any educational research I'm aware of. I learned anyway, mostly out of indignation. The undertow lesson came later. He took me out past the breakers when I was twelve and told me to stop swimming. Just float, he said. Feel where the water wants to take you. I floated. The water wanted to take me south, parallel to the beach, and then out. It wasn't fast. It wasn't violent. It was patient, the way a river is patient — the current doesn't grab you, it just goes somewhere and you go with it unless you actively decide not to. Swim sideways, he said. Never fight it head-on. You'll lose. The ocean has more energy than you. Always. Swim parallel to the shore until you're out of the pull, then come in. I'm forty-seven. I live inland now, in Johannesburg, where the only water that threatens me comes from a burst pipe or an ambitious thunderstorm. But I think about undertow constantly. Not the literal kind. The metaphorical kind, which is just as real and pulls just as quietly. The job you took because it was easy. The relationship you stayed in because leaving required effort. The city you live in because you're already there. These currents don't announce themselves. There's no red triangle. You're standing in your life with your feet on the ground and then you look up and the shore is further away than you thought. My uncle is dead. Heart attack at sixty-one, which is its own kind of current. But the lesson stays. Swim sideways. Don't fight the pull directly. Find the angle. I'm still looking for the angle. But at least I know I'm in the water.