Saving the Queen
Every family with kids has a cascading collection of photographs. They spill from boxes, drawers, and random envelopes until someone has the time to corral and categorize them, make sense of the chaos. I have twenty years worth of kid photos neatly boxed in date order, waiting for the time when I have time. On my desk is a kid-made photo collage, the centerpiece of which is one of my favorites . . . .
This is my middle daughter, Julie, frozen in a frame on a perfect Portland day; sunny but not too hot, an easy breeze rippling the tender blonde corkscrews of hair that escaped from her ponytail. Top teeth clasp her lower lip, and the impish smile also lights those dark, almond-shaped eyes. Orange flower-print swimsuit: a golden child on a golden day. In the background, a slightly tilted view (I am no Ansel Adams) of the Columbia River, with tall trees and a shallow, pristine beach on the other side. Our camera stamped the date on the photo—July 23, 1991—which pinpoints the day, the situation where this photo was born. Julie was almost four.
What you don’t see in the picture are the other people who were there. My friend Judy and her three-year-old son, Aaron, were playing nearby with my other daughters Leah and Tina. Judy and I had both chosen our roles as stay-at-home moms: Judy put her chiropractic practice on hold to raise her son. I abandoned my job at a Chrysler dealership and bought a primer-gray ‘72 Plymouth Valiant, our ticket to freedom while our husbands were at work. This was one of several days that summer when we loaded kids and car seats in the old Valiant, and escaped the heat in our southeast Portland neighborhood with an impromptu trip to the beach at Sauvie Island.
Drawn to the area by the natural quiet, we unpacked sand toys, blankets, towels, a small cooler. The older kids were content to play in the damp, cool sand while Judy and I caught up on neighborhood gossip. I drizzled mashed bananas into Tina’s mouth—she was teething—and she soon succumbed to the heat and the peace of the afternoon. The two of us dozed under the beach umbrella while Judy plotted a sand castle with the big kids.
The movement of the sun eventually sent our shade scurrying; I woke to Tina’s fussing and saw that the sand castle had grown to an amazing height. We must have slept for an hour or more! Dazed and thirsty, I poured water for both of us, and carried Tina to the river’s edge where Leah and Julie danced beside the water, tossing a beach ball back and forth.
I waded knee-deep in the river, and dangled the baby’s toes in the chilly current. A riverboat wheeled by, and snatches of music and conversation drifted across to us, along with the stomach-growling scent of grilling burgers. Judy started a game of freeze tag, and the older kids splashed and screamed trying to escape from her.
A block-long barge lumbered by far across the river, creating a bow wave that crested and crept toward us. I didn’t pay much attention to it; it was so far away that surely it would dissipate before it reached our side of the world. Julie ran to stand near me, and tipped her face up to smile. She hugged my legs and tickled Tina’s feet, then waded, hip-deep in the water, to where Judy and Aaron were “frozen” in outlandish positions about ten feet away.
The baking heat from the sun, light refracting off the water like a million shards of broken glass, the shrieks of the kids playing tag—all of these conspired to throw me into one of those déjà vu moments when time stands still. Noise was suddenly muted by the thumping of my own heartbeat in my ears; the air grew heavy and silent, and my brain felt paralyzed. I gaped into the distance, and watched as the wave created in the barge’s wake swelled and rose to a peak in the center of the river, then swept toward our shore much more quickly than I thought possible.
It hit me at thigh level, lifting and pushing me back several steps. Leah and Aaron screamed and ran for dry sand. Leah made it, but Judy scooped Aaron to her hip for safety; she hadn’t seen Julie walk around behind them. One moment she was there, and the next, the wave rolled over the top of Julie’s head, tumbling her into a sideways somersault. The last thing that I saw was Julie’s orange flowered bottom at the top of the wave. Then she disappeared.
Judy turned toward me when she heard my terrified gasp. I was so mesmerized, dazed at once by the sun and the icy water, that I momentarily couldn’t speak or move. I finally managed to point and choke out one word, my daughter’s nickname: Queenie. Judy swung to the right, and at that moment Julie’s feet poked up from the water. Judy lunged, grabbed fabric and pulled. She managed to fling Julie up from the receding wave and catch her, palm-to-tummy, in one swift motion.
The force of Judy’s hand acted as an unintentional Heimlich maneuver: A perfectly arced stream of river water shot from Julie’s mouth like a high-pressure fountain. Judy hoisted Julie higher, Aaron watching wide-eyed from her left hip, and Julie gushed water again. One deep gasping breath, a couple of delicate coughs, a toss of her tangled curls, and out came that smile, as bright at the sunbeams playing on the water.
I was never a particularly cautious person until I had kids. A Native American friend even christened me with an appropriate Indian name: Runs With Scissors. But when my daughters were small, I was the mistress of safety—baby locks on every cabinet, rubber-tipped spoons for the carefully prepared cereal, armor-clad child seats for the car, sun screen on every inch of skin. Before parenthood, I’m quite sure I didn’t know the meaning of terror. Then, nights of infant colic slowly gave way to monster-under-the-bed nightmares, pre-teen tantrums and finally, a solid, stoic silence. Closets full of black clothing worn by a stranger whose hands are shaped precisely like mine. And the awful day when I discovered that safety razors aren’t really safe at all.
The passing of more than a dozen years hasn’t dulled the stab of helplessness I suffered the day that the shutter stilled this shot. Each time I see the photo, I feel at once the warmth of Julie’s smile and the icy dread of the waves that sent us both reeling. And I know that no matter what I do, I can’t save her from everything.
Katherine Gries ‘05 lives in Eugene.
