As I mentioned before, swimming out into the Gulf, past the shallows off Anna Maria Island, to reach the sandbar is the whole reason I go under in the first place.
The pull past my ankles, the deep stretch where my feet can’t reach, the shallow water waiting on the other side. What I haven’t told you is that I’ve had the privilege of walking someone else out there too, past the point where their feet leave the bottom and the fear gets real.
Her name is Tracy. I’ve known her and her husband for years, long enough to know she loves this Island, the shore, and standing at the edge of the Gulf watching the sun go down. What I didn’t fully understand, until she told me, is how much that love has always come with a limit.
Then, one afternoon a year ago, that changed. I asked her to tell that story in her own words, because some stories only ring true in the voice that lived them. I could try to describe her fear for her, but it wouldn’t be honest. It isn’t mine to tell. So, here’s Tracy, telling it the way she remembers it.
“I have always had a complicated relationship with the ocean,” she said. “As a 12-year-old, I nearly drowned, and although I love walking along the shore, listening to the waves and watching the sun disappear into the sea, I have never been comfortable swimming where I can’t feel the sand beneath my feet.
“A year ago, while visiting friends on Anna Maria Island, my husband and our friend, Ernie, swam out to a sandbar. I stayed in the shallows until Ernie encouraged me to join them. To reach the sandbar, I would have to cross a stretch of deep water where my feet could no longer touch the bottom, the very thing I feared most.
“The moment the sand disappeared beneath my feet, panic set in. I wanted to turn back. But Ernie calmly kept encouraging me. He said, ‘Just keep swimming. The sandbar is just ahead.'”
“I trusted him as he swam beside me. A few moments later, my feet touched sand again. Standing there, looking back at how far we had come, I realized something profound: the fear had been temporary, but the freedom on the other side was lasting,” Tracy said.
“Since then, ‘Remember the sandbar’ has become a phrase we use whenever life feels overwhelming. Sometimes the only way to reach solid ground again is to keep swimming and trust that the sandbar is there, even when you can’t yet feel it,” Tracy said.
I think about that afternoon more than Tracy probably realizes. I’ve swum that stretch of water a hundred times without a second thought, because for me the fear left a long time ago. Watching her cross it reminded me it was never really about the distance, though the distance is real enough. The near-shore sandbars off this Island sit anywhere from 50 to 150 feet out, depending on the tide and where you’re standing on the beach. That day, with Tracy, it looked closer to 80 feet – the width of water between where you are and where you’re trying to be. Every one of us has our own version of that stretch, whether it’s water or something else entirely.
I didn’t do much that day. I stayed beside her and said the same eight words a couple of times: “Just keep swimming. The sandbar is just ahead.” But I’ve come to think that might be most of what anyone needs, standing at their own edge of deep water. Not a lecture, not a rescue – just someone who already knows the sandbar is there, willing to swim next to you until you feel it under your own feet.
