I’m alone in my twenty-four-foot fishing boat, 40 miles at sea, on a flat, glassy ocean.

The engine is off. No other boats in sight. Just sky and water, blue on blue, stitched together at the horizon. I’m kneeling on the deck, fixing some small problem, a fitting, a line, one more minor aggravation in a long human career of them.

Then, without any sound I can name, I feel it: I’m not alone.

I stand up, look around, and there, right off the stern, a huge dark head rises out of the water as if it’s been waiting for me. I’m in awe. It’s an enormous whale, bigger than I’ve ever seen.

Water sheets down its skin. The head hangs there, solid and impossible, like a boulder lifting itself out of the sea. Then I see the eye, big as a basketball, maybe bigger. Deep and dark and steady. Not blinking. Not flinching. Just looking straight at me with a kind of recognition I can just barely grasp.

We stare at each other for thirty seconds or so. It feels like a very long time and no time at all. No rank, no religion, no story to hide behind. Just one old human and one ancient creature from another world, holding each other’s gaze on a vast, quiet ocean. I feel like I’ve taken a quantum leap into a parallel universe. I know how that sounds, but that’s what it felt like. Make of it what you like.

I don’t have any theology ready. What I have is gallows humor and a peace sign. I raise my hand in a V and solemnly say, “Save the whales,” while thinking … Holy crap, it’s bigger than my boat.

The whale doesn’t move a muscle. It doesn’t leap or sing or nod. It just stares a few moments longer while I hold my breath, and then it sinks back down, it’s great head sliding under the surface like a curtain closing on another play I didn’t know I was in. The ocean smooths itself over and a giant swirl subsides, as if nothing happened.

I’m still standing there, bemused, when a few seconds later I feel a tiny weight land on my head.

Little claws shift on my scalp. A small bird hops down from my head to my shoulder and then to the steering wheel. Soon it’s pacing back and forth like it owns the boat, exploring everything. We are forty miles from shore. The world has gone dead quiet, like it’s holding its breath. What is this little bird doing so far from land?

The whole thing is so unlikely that my mind goes straight to where it has gone my whole life: mystery. First the whale and now the little bird.

Yia Yia.

Of course it’s Yia Yia who has come to visit her favorite grandson. My Greek grandmother, who lit candles and crossed herself while talking to Christ in that Lowell kitchen, is now, for a moment, a bird on my steering wheel, staying just long enough to turn strange into funny and then into strangely comforting. It finally hops back on my shoulder as if saying goodbye and then flies off, disappearing into the horizon. I think, Gosh, this far from shore, I hope that bird knows what it’s doing.

The spell breaks. The ocean goes back to breathing. The boat rocks gently. Somewhere below, the whale goes on about its day. Somewhere beyond memory and imagination, my grandmother is either smiling or telling me to put on my coat.

All I know is that it’s a strange, peaceful day on the water and for a few quiet minutes the question “What’s real?” doesn’t feel like a puzzle to solve. It feels just like this.