Dot came whooshing towards me with a yelp. I yelled, “Do you need help? ” She screamed “Yes!” And at that moment I scooped her up before she hit some rapids. Dot is a pig-tailed goggle- wearing 96-year-old Granny and had gotten swept down some rapids before she floated into my life, all turned around disoriented legs flailing. Now, I was only in this spot at the exact right time because I had dropped a camera into the water (don’t ask) and because @jennacolephoto had invited me to California to document her and her husband on the Yuba River . Isn’t that something? This Dot came into my life in a way I couldn’t ignore, and I told her how earlier in the year I had lost my own Dot, my Grandmother’s best childhood friend and cousin, how I had lost touch and she had died with me owing her a phone call. Dot didn’t have an answer to that, because there isn’t one. But isn’t that something? I lost one Dot and saved another .
Since my Dad died in June, grief lives in my throat every day, on my skin, and woven into my days. Grief doesn’t leave even though I’d like it to. But that day, just a month and a half later, Dot barreled in as life herself. LIFE. The Lifeiest life. 96 and hiking in, nude swimming with a granddaughter who had broken her out of her new assisted living facility. Life slapping me in the face, or in this case, demanding to be rescued. Dot is the skin I find most beautiful, her spirit filling the river canyon; the energy I want to emulate. Jenna and I stood amazed at this woman, mouths hanging open, arguably the most beautiful woman we had ever seen. Life on the verge of death, making me look her in the eyes. When I asked Dot if I could take her photo, she said “Of course, you can take my photo, everyone always wants to take my photo. And you can splash it everywhere, I have been naked on a redwood on the cover of a magazine”.
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