The Heat - and Sweet - of the Moment

Pfoooough.

Slick, gray skin. Dark eyes stare at us from just beneath the water.

Splash.

Translucent shadows of the animal streak beneath our red kayak.

Pfoooough.

Water sprouts up through his blowhole as he propels himself above the water. His dorsal fin hits the waves first, followed by his muscular body, then his tail fin. He keeps his eyes on us as he slips beneath the water, as if to say, “What’s up, kids?”

He is toying with us, this dolphin, swimming laps around us with a buddy. He’s trusting that we’re not there to harm him, and so we all hang out in the glistening waters of the Atlantic for a while. After a few minutes, the friend eggs him on, and he leaves us.

Breathless.

It was a top-10 moment for Amy and me, as we sat on our kayak off the Jersey Shore, watching these two dolphins from no more than five feet away. We found ourselves amazed at how, in a moment’s time, something so extraordinary can happen.

Throughout most of our lives, things don’t change a whole lot from one moment to the next. But then there are times when the dolphins appear out of nowhere, and we’re given the chance to open our eyes, take it all in, and savor.

There are also moments when things change dramatically for the worse. Take David Wright, a supremely talented New York Mets baseball player, who awaited a pitch on Saturday afternoon from San Francisco Giants pitcher Matt Cain. Wright has seen a lot of fastballs in his life, even faster ones than Cain’s 93-mile-an-hour heater. But this one had a different trajectory, and as it sailed at Wright’s head, the Mets third baseman was unable to dodge it. Five days later, the concussion fallout has Wright resting on the disabled list, hoping for a full recovery.

It all changed in a moment’s time.

Our most glorious, and most trying, moments often come at us without much notice at all. But what we do with those moments afterward – that’s what makes us who we are. For my wife, seeing those dolphins was not enough. She came home and told our kids all about it, told her parents and my parents about it, told her sister, told the hot dog guy at the beach. Sent a status update to her Facebook friends. She wanted to share the moment with others, perhaps brightening their day a bit. This wasn’t a moment she wanted to keep only to herself.

As for David Wright, he had already prepared for his moment of extreme pain, although he didn’t know it at the time. The New York Times published a story just two days before Wright’s injury about a new baseball helmet that Rawlings is developing – one that the company claims can withstand the impact of a 100-mile-per-hour fastball. Some of the major-league players interviewed for this story said they would never wear the helmet, as it’s too bulky and has too much padding for their liking. Wright, on the other hand, said this to The Times: “If it provides more protection, then I’m all for it. I’m not worried about style or looking good out there. I’m worried about keeping my melon protected.”

And two days after the pitch smashed into his helmet, and he was sent to the hospital, and the Mets worried for their slugger – two days later, there was David Wright at Citi Field shaking the hand of the man who had thrown that ball. Publicly displaying his forgiveness to the young fans out there who had wondered how their hero would respond.

The melon. That’s what David Wright wanted to protect. It’s also the name for a part of the dolphin’s body, at the front of the head. It’s used to communicate, via sonar. To share.

They come at us, these moments – sometimes faster than a fish in the ocean, or a 93-mile-an-hour heater. We can’t accurately predict them, try as we may.

But we can think an awful lot about the way we’ll handle whatever we get. That, in the end, is what people notice about each other.