My first husband, the painter, and I and our Persian cat traveled from Fire Island to New York City, we were headed to visit my mother-in-law at her place on East 62nd Street.

The boat we motored from our little dock to the ferry quay sank, with all of our possessions, including the husband’s paintings.

I saved our cat stuck in her carrier with its front grill quickly filling with water. She clung to my head, welded there with claws sunk into my skull. Just before all our bags slipped beneath the waves, I saw my purse, and I snatched at it, figuring if we lived we would need it.

Luck was on our side and the tide swept us to shore. Watching us, though powerless to help, were a platoon of firemen who escorted us to their firehouse. They dried our cat with a towel and gave us cups of coffee and then drove us to the mainland, dropping us at a train station. We rode the train to Penn Station and there we transferred to the subway.

The lady at the booth refused our wet dollar bills. But we explained we had just seen death face-to-face and begged her and eventually she relented and sold us two tokens.

When we got to my mother-in-law’s apartment we found her having tea with a handsome gentleman. 

Like a Vaudeville duet the husband and I, still hyped, recounted our story, each filling in details as we went. We spoke hysterically, our look was that of refugees, and our cat had an Afro from the seawater. Meanwhile the good-looking gentleman merely yawned, thoroughly unimpressed.

He introduced himself as Peter Beard, a man who would slice his own skin for blood in which to dip a quill to sketch the pages of his diary. And then he told us that on his recent trip to his camp in Kenya he had been charged and gored by an elephant he was attempting to photograph.

Perspective is everything.

Image by yet another talented Serb NENAD ANDRIĆ

For more CHRISTINA OXENBERG