Grayson by Lynne Cox Page A

nose.
    And it finally occurred to me: No matter what I sounded like, I didn’t know what his sounds meant, and even if I could imitate them, I wasn’t going to be anything more to him than his echo.
    Unable to figure out a different approach, I resumed my swim back to the pier.
    Sometimes it makes sense to try something again and keep it simple. A moment later, the baby whale took the lead.
    When we reached the pier, Steve was waiting there along with a group of fishermen and a handful of locals and tourists. Steve said that one of the fishermen on an offshore boat thought he had sighted the mother whale near one of the oil rigs.
    The oil rig was about a mile and a half offshore and it was almost in a direct line with the pier. I had swum out there only once before, during an open-water race, but at that time, I had had a paddler with me on a long paddleboard. He had helped me stay on course, and he had watched for danger.
    But the baby whale had already turned and started to head offshore. He looked over at me as if to say, Please come swim with me.
    I knew it made no sense to follow him. I could think of many reasons why I couldn’t or shouldn’t, but I didn’t want him to go off alone.
    Sometimes things just don’t make sense, sometimes there’s no reason to explain how or why I wanted to do them; I only knew that I had to, I had to try. Without trying I would never know what could happen. It was like reading a great mystery and never knowing how it finished, always wondering who did it. Sometimes the things that make the least sense to other people are the ones that make the most sense to me.
    Maybe I knew this, too, because I didn’t always fit in. I was shy and large, and I believed that I had to work hard and study hard to do well. I had different friends—from computer wizards to the guys on the water polo team and the girls on the swim team to friends in drama and music—but I didn’t fit into any one group. I had things I knew I wanted to do and didn’t play the teenage boy and girl games. I was more interested in studying people who had been leaders, made discoveries, or explored, men and women who were always going against established thought. It wasalways difficult to swim against the tide, doing something new or different, because the ideas that could result might cause something to change. Many people are happy with things as they are. They are comfortable with what they already know. But if I didn’t move outside my comfort level, how would I ever experience anything new, how would I ever learn, or see or explore? I believe that each of us has a purpose for being here, that we have certain gifts and certain challenges we need to learn from and fulfill for our lives to have meaning and richness.
    “I’m going to swim with him,” I shouted to Steve.
    “I don’t like the idea of you being out there alone,” he said.
    I was afraid. But I knew I had to. Sometimes I just did things because I thought I could and because if I didn’t an opportunity to learn something, grow, and reach farther would be lost. There wasn’t time for a long discussion. The baby whale was turning out toward the open sea, and I was afraid that if he left now without me, we would never know if he found his mother or what happened to him. Maybe my presence could even make a difference.
    So I quickly told Steve I’d be fine and asked him to let his friends on the fishing boats know that we were out there. They’d let other boaters in the area know. He still didn’t entirely like the idea. He was an adult and pretty conservative, and he warned me that the closest fishing boats would be a quarter mile away.
    “I’ll be careful. Besides, I’ll be swimming with the gray’s son. I’ll be swimming with Grayson,” I said, and smiled with more confidence than I really felt.
    Steve smiled. “Grayson, that fits. He’s grace in the water and he’s the gray’s son.”
    But then Steve’s tone grew suddenly serious, and he