Breaking and Entering. Liz R. Goodman

again, and recently attended a rowing camp. This had me in Florida, in the sunshine, while New England suffered under still more freezing temperatures. But that wasn’t the best of it. The rowing was. It was, actually, truly awesome. There’s just nothing like being in a women’s eight.

      But on the last morning away, when the rowing was finished and my flight wasn’t until later, my plans for one last swim in the ocean and a walk in a nature preserve skidded off course. A woman in the lobby of the hotel—someone I’d noticed on other mornings, strong and beautiful as she seemed—collapsed next to me over her oatmeal. In fact, she’d have fallen on the hard floor if I hadn’t caught her.

      The lobby, which doubles in the mornings as a breakfast buffet, was empty but for the two of us.

      Unknown to me, but apparently all alone, she was my person now, at least for the time being. She was mine for whom to call 911, mine to take a quick inventory (as the 911 operator asked me to do) of what food she’d eaten and what medication she might be on. (The unmarked pill bottles in her bag indicated many and unprescribed.) She was mine to accompany to the hospital with her sister on the phone—who was apparently familiar with this routine, frustrated, frightened, and close to giving up on it all.

      We made it to the hospital.

      And then, with her coming to consciousness and then refusing care, we made it back to the hotel where she grew more and more pissed at me but no less needful, pushing away while clinging close.

      I stood over her as she rummaged madly through her things in the hotel parking lot beside her rented car, and I noticed then, though not for the first time, a cross that loomed over the palm trees to the southeast. There was a Methodist church that wanted to make itself noticed, which might have struck me as aggressive at some other time. That morning, it was a witness.

      Coming off the awesome experience of being on the water with all those very talented rowers, I could now serve this stranger who wasn’t making it a gratifying experience. What it cost me was one final morning of beachcombing and wave-jumping, one final morning carefree in the sun. But what could I do? All week long, I’d been awestruck, and I wasn’t about to let that experience go unrecognized.

      Trudy might call it “awe terminus” or “awe perfectus.”

      Of that stranger, I know very little. I imagine her tragedy continues, but I have hope in her regard—that she’ll find recovery. As for me, as for us, children as we are of awe, I rejoice that this isn’t something meant only for us to hold and to keep, but is meant for us to spread that it might abound.