I told a friend about my favorite metaphor for a successful relationship. [Bear with me because it’s entirely backwards and if you have not spent time on a Pacific shore it will make little sense.]

You wade into the surf, just a little way in to the middle of your shins because the tide is going out. You face the ocean because it is never smart to turn your back. Waves break to your knees and dwindle down to your ankles. And you have to keep stepping away from the ocean because it draws you in without your noticing. If you fail to pay attention, you will find yourself in dangerous water before you know it.

Loving someone is like that, only in a kind of reverse. The better way to describe it might be that the other person is the shore and the world is the water that continually pushes you apart, drawing you into deeper water. In this analogy, each person must continually walk toward the other. You cannot stand in place, because that will drift you away without your noticing at all.

Two people who want a relationship of any kind must continuously make the effort to approach one another. A continuous approach just to remain close.

Many years ago, I was walking on shore with friends from California and Canada. We were all beach combing, some turning north and others south. One couple headed out into the water. It was a bright, sunny day, little wind, warm, though the ocean is never anything but cold on my stretch of beach. My friends were walking into an out-going tide. It was dangerous and I called a warning. They could not hear me over the ocean’s roar.

And then I did a stupid thing. I walked out after them. Both Ed and Ivy were taller than I was, and Ivy was a strong swimmer. Ed had backed off. I was out past him calling to Ivy. By the time I got close enough to be heard, we were both suddenly off our feet, swimming to stay up, waves washing over our heads and with no way to pull ourselves back against the current. Ivy swam to Ed, who had turned and come after her.

By then, I was a few yards—ten? fifteen?—away, and even in that moment as I scanned the shore, I knew there was no one who could hear or help me. Gary was at work. I knew, had he been there, he would have pulled me out of the water long before I got in so deep. I was already too cold to make any effort to save myself, struggling just to keep my head above water. I thought of all this and also thought this might be genuine irony to drown after wading in over my head in order to warn people that it was dangerous to be in the water in an out=going tide. I thought how stupid and funny and awful.

I called to Ed, but he was at his limit to get himself and Ivy back to shore. He could not wade back to deeper water after me. “Can you get to me?” he called. I felt certain, in that moment that I would die that day.

But instead I thrashed and flailed and found strength to drive myself to his side and Ed saved us all. No one onshore noticed a thing.

So. Love and drowning. How we save ourselves. How others save us. [Thank you, Ed.]