Lifeguard Jeon

° F O U R °

I make sure to check the sign on the fence outside the beach: Lifeguard schedule. I have enough going on in my head without seeing his gloating expression if he sees me again - if he recognized me at all. I don't tell Irene what happened. She'd probably think it was funny and if she tells her friend Jin, they'd both be convinced I am totally clueless.

But now Irene wants to go walking on the beach. She's sun-phobic, so she's only goes at sunrise or sunset.

"So wear sunscreen."

"That doesn't stop the damage," she says. It's obvious she's been over this before. "It just slows it down. Anyway, I like the beach after everyone has gone home." She slips on sandals and reaches for the straw hat hanging inside the door. "Want to come?"

Seven o'clock - he'd be off duty. I put on running shoes and go with her. The only people we pass on the beach are a woman asleep on a towel and a couple under an green umbrella with a sleeping baby between them. Joy walks with us, every now and then stopping to sniff things on the beach. Irene does that too, in her own way. Every so often she kneels down and unearth something like an archaeologist - a chunk of frosted sea glass, a shiny rock, or an strange shell. Then she holds it up to study it, deciding whether or not it has "the origin" - she says with a small smile - to make it worth keeping.

Her prize shell, which she keeps in a black showcase box on the coffee table, is called a rose murex. It's a rose color twisted shell with a bumpy and smooth surface. It's bigger than my palm. 

"Kids found it pretty and strange," Irene chuckled when she saw me examining it.

"It's unique in its own way."

She nodded. "That's right.

° ° ° ° °

Something in the water catches Joy's eye, or maybe her nose. She runs in searching for it, but when the waves come back in she darts out, as if she's afraid of their power.

"Do you swim, Irene?"

"Almost every morning, if the weather's good."

"I want to start swimming in the ocean, too."

I have to get over my nervousness about going past the waves. I'm a decent swimmer now. It'll just take practice.

As we walked along, I turned to Irene. I don't know that much about her. What I remember most are the postcards she'd send us with foreign stamps from places around the world she visited, like France, Hawaii, and Samos. I'd tack them to my bulletin board and search the globe, pretending it was a game and I had to figure out where in the world she was off to.

Now that we're out together, it's easier to ask her about herself.

"How come you don't work in an office like my mom?"

She closes her eyes and shake her head.

"Not the office type," she says. "I used to work as a nature teacher and talk to kids about life. We'd go on field trips to the park and I'd teach them about plants. I showed them how to recognize scallions in the wild, rosemary, mint, all kind of things," she says.

"I bet you could survive in the wilderness."

"I did, at least for a few days."

She took an camping trip, she says, and was part of a group that learned rock climbing and survival skills. Then everyone went off on their own to camp out in remote areas to test themselves.

I thought about the animals and bugs. "Weren't you scared?"

"At first - and that's the point," she says. "But you learn to rely on yourself and it gives you a chance to discover you hidden strengths. If you're never challenged, you don't find out what you're capable of."