Open Water

This chapter summarizes a phone conversation between the narrator and the woman, who has gone on a trip. The narrator describes watching a dog play in the snow for the first time in its life. He remembers that his grandmother saw snow for the first time when she was in London waiting on his birth; the experience prompted her to pray for her family. On that same day, the narrator’s pregnant mother survived an armed man threatening the bus she was on. The protagonist says that while he is not a religious man, this kind of story makes him want to pray—and he is praying for his parents to have a safe return to London from Ghana. The glow of the night sky after a snowfall makes him want to touch it, so he prays instead. He prays for the woman’s safe travels.

She describes being alone on a warm beach, in a place that must be in the Southern Hemisphere due to her noting it is “[s]ummer in January” (21). She needed a vacation and the space to breathe, though this trip required her to try to develop her relationship with her father.