“They should have been back by now,” my husband called over his shoulder. “You stay here, we’re going to go look for them.” He headed straight for the shoreline to look for our boys. My mother-in-law followed at a brisk pace right on his heels. Her head turned back and forth as on a swivel.
Although I knew it made sense for one of us to stay at the beach umbrella “home base” in case the boys returned, I felt utterly alone and totally useless. My assignment was simply to stay put. At first, I was able to distract myself by people watching. The deeply tanned middle-aged woman sitting directly in front of me reached for the baby oil next to her beach chair. The man sitting next to her had legs the color of copy paper. He adjusted their beach umbrella so that all of the woman’s limbs remained out of reach of its shade. Two teenaged boys carrying boogy boards under their arms jogged in front of me, making a beeline for the ocean. After they passed by, a frustrated father got up from his beach chair and placed a coozi over the exposed tent stake that one of the teens had almost tripped over without knowing.
I checked my watch. A few minutes had passed. The sights and sounds of the beachgoers’ activities began to play out in front of me like a movie on a distant small screen, but my raw fear prevented me from taking part in the plot. I could no longer relate to the quotidian nature of the beachday scene in front of me. I was now a background player who would soon exit via trapdoor.
The attack started with a narrowing of my vision and a ringing in my ears. The lovely, sun-drunk beach view, full of colorful shade umbrellas began to shrink to the size of a penny in the midst of an encroaching darkness. My peripheral vision diminished as if I was looking into an eye-mapping machine at a small, round, far-away image.
Suddenly, I couldn’t catch my breath. I started gasping. A trapdoor had opened up underneath my feet, forcing my body to fall down a waterslide I wouldn’t feel against my back until I landed face up at the bottom of the pit. I knew the air all around me was ready, willing and able to be taken into my lungs, but somehow I couldn’t extract the oxygen from it. My body had forgotten how to do something that had always been automatic. Now I had to will myself to breathe in and out rhythmically or all would fade to black.
Breathe in for four seconds, hold for four, then breathe out for another four. My heart began thrumming inside my ears like the drumbeat from a distant snare. The candy-colored beach umbrellas in my line of sight started spinning in circles around me, sucking me into their kaleidoscope. I could see the jewel tones melding into black as they encircled me at ever increasing speeds. I felt like I was standing in the middle of my own F1 race circuit. The roar was so loud it vibrated my sternum. The whirring enveloped me, grabbed my ankles and pulled me down toward an unseen abyss. The sand surrounding my toes turned into quicksand. My head slumped forward. I began to black out.
Suddenly, I heard some familiar voices.
“Dibs on the Cheetos.” my youngest son said. His voice sounded like it was broadcasting through a megaphone.
“Sorry dude, looks like they’re long gone.” My middle son replied. Next, I heard them rooting through the snacks.
My head was almost between my knees. I was gasping for air.
“Dude, what’s up with Mom? I think she’s barfing.”
A second or two later my youngest son yelled at the top of his lungs, “Dad, Mom’s sick!”
My family rushed around me. It took a full ten minutes before I was able to breathe normally. During that time, I observed that various beachgoers trudged by right in front of our beach umbrella, oblivious to the invisible oxygen deprivation tank enveloping me. As I concentrated on slowing my breath, they dragged their beach wagons, filled to the brim with coolers, frisbees, sunhats and bottles of sunscreen, their eyes solely fixed on the divots in the well-traveled sand in front of them.
Nobody even glanced in our direction. If they had, they would have seen the somewhat collapsed huddle centered around a sweaty, overheated middle-aged woman gasping for air in a downward dog pose. Perhaps they would have thought I had overextended myself doing yoga and needed some help getting up.
Nobody mentioned my panic attack as we silently packed up all of our beach supplies. By deciding not to call an ambulance, my family had spared an undoubtedly overworked emergency room staff several hours of futile examination, questioning and paperwork. An hour later we were one grumpy family of many waiting at the shuttle stop with our overstuffed beach totes and wagons in tow. The younger parents around us absentmindedly shifted their weight from one leg to another under the strain of soggy towels, beach chairs, and drooling, sleepy toddlers. Our heads bowed as we checked our texts while sweat dripped down our sunburned cheeks from under our baseball caps. No one but me seemed to notice the neatly manicured garden festooned with vibrant hibiscus, azaleas, and hydrangeas next to the gate by which we waited impatiently amongst a fog of exhaustion and humidity.
Looking back, I see that my dream of a peaceful family beach vacation was as fragile. I realize now that my panic attacks are like stealthy hunters. They pounce without warning like a silent – winged owl swooping down upon its prey after quietly lying in wait. Like a stunned field mouse, I didn’t know danger was circling overhead in the ether that mutes the owl’s wings and vanquishes the oxygen from the air after the owl claws its victim.
Several weeks after our trip, the news surfaced that there had been two shark attacks and one shark sighting on Hilton Head Island. I wasn’t paranoid after all; there are creatures with sharp teeth that can sever your leg circling underneath even the most placid sea. There is no vacation from potential calamity.
The mercurial nature of panic attacks won’t stop me from idealizing and planning yet another family vacation in the future, when we will load up another overstuffed beach wagon and drag it past protected sand dunes while we keep our sunglass-guarded eyes focused on the shimmering lapis lazuli toned waves ahead. Then, while we tread through the white-capped waves and feel the packed sand give way under our feet as the tide goes out, I will be pretending the beasts from the deep, dark waters won’t ever extend their tentacles to the shallows. And we will breathe in the salt-kissed air before diving into the burgeoning wave about to crash into us, believing that our lungs will sustain enough air to allow us to swim free in the undulating tides, even if only for a short while.
Wood Shed Writers 
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