Recently Bob and I bought wet suits for safer winter kayaking. They’re like spray painting every billowing nook and cranny of your body with rubber. I look like the Michelin tire man with a bosom.

Wearing these, we launched our tandem kayak in Barnstable and paddled toward the Sandy Neck lighthouse.

“What is that?” Bob said from behind me, pointing to something in the bay. Never a good question to hear about anything either on the water, or growing (or crawling) on your skin or on the side of the road.

It was a fin. A big shark-sized fin. I panicked. “Let’s get away!” I screamed. Bob got annoyed. “OK,” I said, turning toward him. “We’ll stay and watch it.”

Suddenly his face got really red. “It’s coming at us!”

We couldn’t paddle away fast enough. “Geez – Bob. This is the death do us part stuff!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Figure something out!” The fin was getting closer.

“Like what?” he shouted back.

“Some sort of male thing!”

“Like what?” The spray from our flailing paddles soaked us.

“Protect me! Scare it off!”

He turned toward the fin. “Boo!”

“Very funny,” I said. “You’re the man. Fix it! Do something!”

“I don’t want to.”

“This won’t get better by itself!”

“You don’t know that for sure. It might.”

In 2 seconds, we were standing in front of the lighthouse. I have no memory of getting there. But now we were faced with paddling home. That didn’t appeal. “Let’s just live here, Bob. We’ll start a new life.”

“Come on,” he said. “It’s getting dark.” We got back in the kayak, bickering.

And then, as with most arguments, all our marital issues came out.

“You’re a lunatic.” (Guess who said that?)

“That thing could kill us,” I said.

“You think the cat will turn on the toaster oven and start a fire. To you, everything could kill us.”

“You always assume things will be fine,” I said.

“It’s a better way of living.”

In a huff I said, “We’ll paddle near shore so we can jump out if we see the fin.” By now, it was dark. New to winter kayaking, we had foolishly timed this trip terribly. We slammed into a rock.

“We’re too close to shore,” Bob said.

“If you want to go further out, you can leave me here.”

He thought about that  . . .  seriously.

We couldn’t see. We kept hitting rocks and bottoming out so we needed to get out of the kayak and pull it across the shallows. We were cold and soaked and scared. I knew it was time to put our bickering aside and be there for each other.

“Apologize and say I’m right,” I said.

“No.”

The next day I called the Audubon Society and spoke with Bob Prescott. I was my eloquent, calm, controlled self. “FIN!!!!” I screamed into the receiver.

“An Ocean Sunfish,” he said, after hearing my description of the fin swaying side to side. “They won’t hurt you. They eat jellyfish.”

At any rate, we made it home that night and peeled off our wet suits. We put on our flannel PJs and laid down in front of the fireplace.

“A beautiful day,” Bob said, snuggling next to me under the comforter.

“A nightmare,” I said, cuddling back.

“You remember the darkness and the creature. I remember you and Cape Cod Bay.” He fell asleep. I kept cuddling.

As I watched my husband in serene sleep, I thought about his approach to life and vowed that I’d try to be more like him. Frankly I don’t find it easy, but I think it is a better way of living.

I fell asleep too, after I got up, tiptoed into the kitchen, and unplugged the toaster oven.