How was your Mother’s Day? Union Grove personal banker Chris Nielsen celebrated hers in the Bahamas, swimming with a new friend — a sweet, clever dolphin named Clifton.

Chris’s son Zach and his fiancée Destiny started planning a vacation for the three of them on Carnival Cruise Line about a year and a half ago. “My significant other gets seasick, but Destiny knew I really wanted to go on a cruise,” Chris said. “I had told her that one of the things I really wanted to do was swim with dolphins.”

The trio flew to Jacksonville, Florida, and then hopped another plane to catch the five-day cruise. They were entertained the entire time they were on board the ship, Chris said.

“They had trivia night, bingo — we did all kinds of stuff. There was constantly something to do,” she said. An ongoing murder-mystery activity had them collecting clues throughout the cruise. “We were one of the winners, so we got medals!”

But the dolphin swim was the highlight of the trip. Chris, Zach, and Destiny spent 30 to 45 minutes with Clifton.

“You go out in the water, and they motion for the dolphin to come over,” she said. “And anytime he’s feeling tired or done with it, he just swims away for a little while. When he did that, the guide said, ‘Yeah, he’s on union break right now.’ That was pretty funny.”

Clifton swam up and “kissed” all six tourists in Chris’s group and also let them grab his fins and hang on so he could swim them around the small lagoon area. He would also push the humans with his snout while they lay on paddle boards.

“It was pretty amazing. He was so smart!” Chris said.

Because of stormy weather, Chris didn’t get to kayak and scuba dive later on. But she did bring home a huge conch shell from the Bahamas as a souvenir. “I could tell they’d just collected it — it was pretty smelly inside,” she said.

And of course, she brought back great memories of swimming with Clifton, too.

“It’s kinda fun to reminisce now that I’ve been back at work a couple of weeks!” Chris said. “It was really pretty cool.”

Photo: Zach, Destiny, and Chris with Clifton.