The Breeze February 2015

wearing shoes they got cut to shreds on the oysters.
It was a full moon and the tide was coming up fast;
they had perhaps an hour before it overtook their
bit of high ground. They saw a shrimp boat, yelled,
screamed and waved their arms, but to no avail.
Soon pieces of the wreckage began to float by,
then the boat itself, completely submerged except
for the Bimini top. While the kids huddled together
on the broken boogie board, the adults debated
what to do. Joe was for staying put, but Michelle
knew the storm wasn’t over and wanted to swim
to the wreck. So they put it to a family vote: Sepp
wanted to swim, but little Bode was so freaked
about getting back in the water that he started to
cry the only tears anyone would shed during the
entire ordeal. The vote was tied 2-2.
But then came another momentary lull that
allowed them to see a distant dock, and they
decided to make for it using the Bimini top as an
intermediary rest point. “When you have your kids
with you, you can’t be scared,” said Michelle. “You
have to be strong and do what you need to do.
When we were in the water I thought if we could
just manage to hold on, all of us together, we’d be
good.”
After perhaps another 30-40 minute swim they
made it to the capsized boat, which was to be
their salvation: a few minutes later DNR cruised
by to the rescue.
Soon they were safe
and sound, huddled
in blankets and
deposited on dry
land at Alljoy Beach.
The next day a friend
opened her private
clinic even though
it was Sunday, to
dress their cuts
and give them
tetanus shots. The
Pearsons’ two-hour
life-threatening trial
was behind them.
“We will never put
ourselves in that
situation again,”
Michelle affirms.
“In retrospect, we
should have just
gone to the nearest
dock and tied up like
everyone else did. Thank God for our life jackets;
I don’t know what would have happened without
them. There’s no question about it—someone was
watching over us.”
As she reviews the many little twists of fate, her
faith only increases. They hadn’t brought their dog
that day because the kids didn’t feel like watching
her; Michelle is certain the fifteen-pound terrier
wouldn’t have made it. Some neighborhood kids
whom they’d invited couldn’t go, sparing another
nightmarish possibility. And Michelle herself
almost didn’t make the trip because of other plans
that ended up falling through—this was a saving
grace in itself, because she’s not sure the outcome
would have been so positive if Joe had had to
handle the situation alone. Although they lost their
boat and everything on it, things could have been
so much worse.
In the aftermath, they found themselves somewhat
disinclined to take up the offers of friends who
invited them out on the river, but nobody had
nightmares or post-traumatic stress. Even
Bode, the littlest survivor, was excited (although
apprehensive) when Michelle booked a 5-day
cruise to the Bahamas over Christmas in hopes the
last of his fears would dissolve. Life goes on, and
there is always a bright side.
“The experience made us so bonded,” said
Michelle, who owns Interior Motives in Bluffton
and has lived in the Lowcountry for 22 years. “Even
though Joe and I are divorced, we went out to
dinner together with the kids that night—we had
to eat, and Mom and Dad needed a drink at that
point. So we’re sitting there and I said, ‘Ok guys,
we need to talk about what happened today. We
are so lucky to still be here together.’ We told the
kids how proud we were of them for being strong
and pulling through. It’s a really good memory.”
Though they haven’t gotten another boat—and
don’t have any plans to—that doesn’t mean they
fail to appreciate the river. Several weeks after
the incident, they started getting calls from Alljoy
residents who salvaged washed-up items from
their boat. So one evening they went down to
claim them, then took a golf cart to the very dock
they had seen during the storm.
“There was a beautiful sunset,” Michelle
remembers. “Dusk, the water’s calm, everything
was so peaceful. I told my kids ‘Look at this water—
do you really want to give this up? This is where we
live, look how beautiful it is.’ That brought some
sort of peace.”
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