Aumakua

It’s Saturday and I am at the beach.

My friend turns to me and asks “If you were going to be a sea animal, what would you be?’

(These are the kind of questions one asks another while lounging in the sun on Saturday on an isolated beach belly filled with PB and J and potato chips)

She says she would want to be a turtle. I tell her I would rather be a dolphin. When she asks why, I respond quickly: “Because they are never alone.”

This answer surprises me. But the truth of it hits my heart with greater shock.

Earlier that afternoon we had seen a school of spinner dolphins swimming and playing the ocean before us. I had never seen them before, though I come to this beach multiple times in the week. They jumped and spun and flipped and squealed until they were out of sight.

I thought how much fun they must have with each other and how they must feel so safe knowing that they are all together. When I swim in the sea or on land, I do it alone and have only my wits and some pretty rusty karate moves to protect me. My best playmate is my own imagination and she is CRAZY if you haven’t noticed.

I find myself yearning for a dolphin school of my own; the safety of friends and family around me who know my fins and flippers, can communicate without words, can sense each other’s need for a nuzzle or a spin. I yearn to not be so alone in this world of mine.

As I sat there musing on this I let my gaze coast along the water in front of us. And then I saw them, the school, was right there, so close you could see their dark fins. I wasted no time, I yelled to my friend as I went charging into the water; “Come Ann! We are swimming with dolphins.”

Ann and I swam quickly to the spot where I had seen the dolphins but they had vanished. We swam out farther and farther and farther, farther than I had ever been out. I was getting frightened. We had seen no sign of them. The water was deep and we were past the protection of the reef bay. I asked Ann if we should go in. She was determined.

Try Wait.

Then just seconds later we saw it. Something big and black with a very pointy fin was coming straight for us.

We both did a sudden gasp which we later confessed was a “I really hope that is a dolphin and not some huge giant man eating porpoise.”

Within the time it took to take a deep breath we were surrounded by them. They swam in groups of two and three, and followed each other in instinctual formation. I dove down beneath us to see one swimming underneath and I could hear them calling to one another in those little squeaks and squeals. Their silvery backs bobbed in and out of the water as they enveloped us. I am not sure if either of us spoke and if you could have taken a picture of our faces at that moment you would see the sight of true awe and wonder.

After the final preliminary circles they began to play around us; suddenly bursting out of the water in a spin or a back flip. They held us close as we all swam along back towards our beach cove. And then just as suddenly as they arrived, they were gone.

Walking the beach later we bumped into a father/son who had watched our whole endeavor and shared their fear for us.

“There was a shark in the water,” they said.

“Oh, no,” we corrected them, “those were dolphins.”

“Not the dolphins. There was a nine foot shark in that reef right where you were headed before the dolphins came to you.” They explained how they had been snorkeling when they saw the shark headed to a spear fisherman’s catch that he held in bag near the reef.

Ann and I stared at each other. We didn’t need to say what we were thinking. We knew those dolphins came to protect us and to move us away from the reef and back to our safe cove.

In the days following this I have had moments of pure disbelief. To any of you who have shared an experience like this with a wild majestic creature you understand how there is this breathless no words can describe pure high of such a sharing.

It is truly one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

I am captivated, entranced and enlightened.

I told my experience to a Hawaiian family I am working with and they shared my awe and wonder of it. They spoke of the specialness and significance of being embraced by the dolphins. They also spoke of the Aumakua, which are the spirit animals families have as guides.

My Dolphin Aumakua is my family out here in the islands.

When I gaze out to sea I know that they are out there.

And I don’t feel so all alone.