Rexford Chase Nicholson

NONFICTION

The Day the Whale Blew Its Nose in My Face

This is a true story, and I do not want it to be a spoof, but we humor ourselves sometimes to deal with our pesky anxiety. That said, I can’t help giving a nod to the humor writer Dave Barry’s line, “I’m not making this up!” I was fifty years old when I learned I had the ‘big C’, cancer. I found out when I finally went to the doctor to find out about an annoying, not-so-little red and black sore on my upper left arm that itched like crazy and hurt deep in my muscle whenever I scratched it.

My doctor told me it was malignant melanoma, which is one of the fastest spreading cancers. He then informed me that if it had already spread through the rest of my body (he actually smiled when he said this), I’d be dead in a year, and they could do nothing except help with pain. Then he told me he would have to take a sample, a biopsy, of the surrounding flesh to see if it had already metastasized; and, if it had happened, it would be ‘lights out’ for me.

(Er … ah … sniff, snorkel, snort …) “Do you mean me being dead, Doc?”

“Yes, and I do mean dead, the deep sixed, gone-zo my poor little beleaguered not so patient patient.” No, I lied, he did not say that (being a man of science, he was not that obtuse. I only thought he said it).

Then he said, “Come back in a month (four weeks?), and we’ll take it out and send it into the lab to see if it has indeed metastasized, and two weeks after that we’ll get the results. And then, we’ll know if you will live or if you will die.”

Say what, home boy!!?? I might have one measly year to live!? But I must wait for six weeks to know for sure!? I may be standing here dying at this very minute, and you say wait six weeks!?

What am I supposed to do for six weeks!?

I tried not to panic, but I panicked. My world was sliding into darkness, and I was going crazy with fear. I reached out into the unknown, trying to grasp something, anything, anything real to occupy my mind during the time I had to wait calmly (not!) to certify my impending death.

The next day, after a long, anxious night of fever-pitched entreaty for divine intercession, something unexpected happened. It came in the afternoon’s mail. It was a misdirected invitation to a three-day conference for Baptist ministers in Andover, Massachusetts, seven hours from my little Downeast Maine community. I would have preferred a six-week stint as a makeup artist for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, but when you’re hopeless, you take what you can get.

Here is when things get a little weird, or supernatural, if you believe in such things. ‘Focus on the Family’ organized the conference specifically for overworked pastors who were stressed and close to burnout. I was none of the above since I was no longer a Pastor. I had retired and was working a day job in temporal bliss and not expecting cancer. I must have been on some list somewhere in this digitally pervasive world. However, since I had just of late offered up my fervent prayers to our Divine Being, and since I love a freebie, my not so humble me was not going to correct their mistake. So, my wife and I jumped at the chance to get away from my panicky fear that I had only one last year left to live.

Was that God answering my prayer? Read on, you’ll find out.

The conference was for Baptist Ministers, and if you know anything about Baptists, you know they shun any outward signs of emotion (so as not to crack their hard shell). But that did not stop God. Right in the middle of his sermonizing, the conference leader called out my name and asked me to come up front to the platform. I panicked. What’s up with that? Did they find out I was an interloper taking advantage of their freebies? Nope, they called me up front so that three hundred Pastors could pray for me. Who knew? How did all these staid, self-controlled Baptists step out of the norm and reach out on my behalf? You tell me.

When the three-day conference was over, and it was time to head home, my wife suggested we go on a whale watching tour out of Nantucket. I was in no mood to do it but felt it would be a noble thing for a dying man to humor his wife. And, since Nantucket is right next to Andover, I said, “What da hey, let’s go for it!” That was when I found out I am prone to seasickness. The boat went up and down, up and down. Unfortunately, my stomach’s contents went down when the boat went up and up when the boat went down.

The boat captain said he found a large school of shrimp under the water (where else). He said that the coast of Nantucket was a well-known feeding area for North Atlantic Right Whales, and that’s why they had a thriving whale watching business, gee, how apropos.

Once out in the rolling swells, while I was trying not to upchuck in front of strangers and possibly get arrested for polluting the ocean, and while we were circling around above the shrimpy little whale bait area, waiting for a whale to show, an old lady shouted, “Thar she blows!” Not being a certified whale watcher, I thought ‘Thar she blows’ meant someone had passed a huge gas cloud from their backside, and she was warning us to stop what we were doing and hold our noses. So, while I was wondering what she really meant (and hoping it was not obscene), I hesitated for too long and could not get to the boat rail in time to see the denizen of the deep because it was already packed three-deep with over-excited, bluish-white-haired, camera-clicking whale voyeurs.

In truth, I was just not paying attention. I was watching the sky change from blue to grey while the sea rolled up and down, up and down, as I was trying not to hurl. While everyone was watching a big fat shrimp gorging ‘Righty’, I was seeing the sky fill with menacing black clouds. “She’s blowing up a storm, Captain,” I shouted, “we got to head her for port!” But no one heard me because the tourists were busy elbowing each other aside for the best spot to click their cameras. Then I remembered I was on a whale watching tour boat that was going up and down up and down, and that my stomach’s contents (three hot dogs, a banana-split, and an extra-large cream soda) wanted out of the whole sorry mess.

Apparently, right by the side of the boat (which I could not see because of the triple-thick barrier of blue-haired grannies) there was a huge Right Whale rising and diving with its giant mouth scooping up poor helpless little shrimp by the tons. (One wonders where they get all the shrimp. Or if they did not eat so many, how long would it take for the ocean to have shrimp glut?)

Anyway, lucky for me, it was too late to get to see where the whale was feeding and splashing and spouting like an undisciplined, narcissistic third grader at a school picnic. Besides, I am too antisocial to elbow my way through a stout, overexcited crowd of silver saints with bowel control issues.

Then something great and/or weird and/or serendipitous happened: a voice spoke inside my feeble mind, and not my voice. How? I don’t know, but it said, Go to the other side of the boat. Before I could think the usual doubting Thomas thoughts, I did it! I went! But why did I do it? I did it because I did not think to not do it. That was new for me since I overthink everything. This time, I obeyed with empty mind fog because I was fearing the storm.

I was sure nothing would happen (except maybe me barfing into Captain Nemo’s Garden). And sure enough, nothing happened. No! Wait! I lied … something did happen. A miracle happened. That big black little baby of a Right Whale dove (or dived, depending on how persnickety you want to be) down under the boat and came right up to where I was leaning over the rail, ready to barf from going up and down, up and down. (I am not making this up!) As I was hanging over the rail staring down at the water thinking it was a suitable time to rid myself of my stomach contents, suddenly, right there, not six feet below me, and before I could shout, “Thar she blows!”, the whale came up and blew its nose, right into my face. Yuk!

I mean, she blew a full shot of waterlogged whale snot right in my face and drenched everything: my face, hair, and all my brandy-new L. L. Bean super elite sports apparel. It was unbelievable, and therefore, of course, I couldn’t believe it. I doubt you believe me either. But I do not care because it really did happen, and I do not need your ill-informed opinion, anyway, so there! But look, it is too weird and too crazy to make up. And even if you do not believe me, I don’t know you, so get over yourself.

Have you ever looked down directly into a whale’s nose? The only ones I can think of who might have also experienced this are Gregory Peck, Captain Ahab, and many other assorted whaling sailors from centuries ago. And I am the only one who lived. So, ha, ha, right there, huh? Right there!

Anyway, what does a whale’s waterspout smell like? I bet you don’t know that, either. Yeah right, you don’t, so don’t lie. And, stop thinking negative thoughts about me and listen up! Whale breath smells like fresh, wonderful shrimp, and that makes perfect sense since they were sucking up the innocent little baby bloomers and chunking them down, as it were, by the tons. I smelled the overwhelmingly beautiful smell of fresh raw shrimp (sans the horseradish sauce, of course). But still the whale’s breath was fresh, and clean and wonderful. If you love shrimp like I do, you would be smiling like I was as I wiped my face on the sleeve of my brandy-new L.L. Bean, green, blue felt-lined parka, with a hidden waterproof zipper pocket for my wallet. Anyway, I felt very privileged to be someone with such a unique experience in this replicated, stereotypical Andy Warhol world.

And I bet you do not know what a whale’s nose looks like, do you? Yeah, that’s what I thought. So, what does it look like? Guess what? A whale’s nose looks just like your nose, or my nose, or any other nose. In fact, except for being flat and almost level with the surface of the back of its head, it looks exactly like the plastic nose you pin on Mr. Potato Head. (That is so ridiculous, you must know I am not making this up.) Yup, it is just like that, a flat-nosed Mr. Potato Whale Head. So, why is a whale’s nose in the back of its head instead of on its face like yours, you ask? I am glad you asked because I know something you don’t know, so Ha! Well, simply because … Er, I guess … ah … um, well, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because God made it that way (ya think!?). Maybe it had to be that way because if it was in front of the whale’s face, when the whale inhaled, it would be sucking sea water into its lungs and drown. Yes, that sounds right, good thinking, Rexford. So, God said, “Leteth the noseth be puteth in the backeth of the whale’s headeth! Thus, whenceth so evereth he doth inhaleth he shall not drowneth or haveth to beach himself and dieth.” God is so creative, don’t you think?

Now, although this story is funny and weird and true, I want to say how privileged I feel to have actually lived it. That is because there is a deeper story hidden within this. Now, you may ask, “What could possibly be salvaged from such a fragmented circumlocution?” I am glad you asked.

The hidden treasure in this story has to do with prescience. It has to do with intuition, with the sixth sense, the knowing without knowing how we know. What this experience taught me (while I was on my wonderful serendipity-free Pastor’s conference and whale watching tour and while I was living my last dying year) was to act upon that still small voice that comes from within. That voice that comes uninvited, without apology, and without worrying whether we obey or not. That intuitive voice has no agenda; it just comes and says what it says, and then it goes as if by chance. But now I know it’s not chance.

Has this prescience ever happened to you? I will bet it has. And just like me, I bet you did not pay any attention to it at first. Who would or could initially trust that irrational knowing that comes from inside yourself? It jumps into our thoughts; it is a voice we don’t have, and it comes from somewhere we don’t know, and we are not inclined to trust it.

The deeper meaning of this true, weird story is the validation of the Spirit’s inner voice. Since the whale experience, I have come to pay closer attention to that leading. I am not saying I trust it completely, without reservation. I reserve the right to have reservations, and I always will. But I no longer discount that inner voice out of hand, without pause. I have learned to better hear my inner spirit being. We receive this spirit voice in the most supernatural, healing, life-giving way that we could never imagine.

It has happened occasionally for me in times past when I was not listening. But since cancer and the serendipity Pastor’s retreat and the seasick whale trip, it happens surprisingly often now. So, now I listen more. I have been sensitized to the unseen world, and because of this, I hear the voice even more. I have learned that if one wants to listen to that inner voice, and if one gives it more credence as our life experience grows, and if we hold off our doubt a bit longer, and listen a bit closer, it becomes a very valuable tool for health, protection, and new, insightful knowing. Since this very concrete experience of listening to my inner voice, I have seen things happen before they happen — both mundane things and earthshaking things. Yes, it is weird, but weird isn’t always bad. I have validated for myself that there are many things beyond the everyday material world about which we don’t know. I have found we can sense the supernatural, the beyond normal, ordinary things, if we exercise that part of ourselves that can see beyond the banal and pedestrian.

So, my story starts with a retired old minister who gets a diagnosis of cancer’s threat of death and cries out to his God for mercy. Then supernatural things begin to happen. First, he receives an invitation to a conference he has no right to go to. Next, he gets prayed for by a large group of Baptist Ministers who are not outward about their religious practices. Then he goes on a whale watching tour, which he is not really interested in, but goes anyway, at his wife’s insistence, where he is half sick and nauseous from the ocean swells. Then he gets shut out of the chance to actually see a whale because of the dark clouds, signaling a storm is coming. And then, out of the blue, he hears a voice in his head, go to the other side of the boat. Then, up comes the whale who blows his waterlogged shrimp-scented breath right in his face like some kind of supernatural baptism from the deep. Now, if you cannot see the mysterious hand of God in all that, then your life must be dull and burdensome to you. And not just to you, but also, maybe a bit burdensome to those who love you.

You may never feel like Ahab or Gregory Peck, or have the unique experience I did, but you can learn to be more aware of that certain guiding voice that comes from somewhere deep inside, where someone/something cares about you and works for your good. I sincerely hope you find it, and I wish you good fortune going forward.

Finally, just so you know, all of this took place 30 years ago. I’m here today to share my experience because the melanoma was removed before it could spread. And I am happy to say, I am still here to praise my Father Creator.

Rexford Chase Nicholson writes poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction portraying his 82 years of pain, struggle, joy and deliverance. He watched and listened and learned. Now, at last, he is compelled to share.

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Image: Right whale blowing with classic v-pattern… by NOAA Photo Library, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.com. Modified by Veronica McDonald.