Soggy Embrace

Porca miseria! THE FLOOR IS PLUMMETING; in a few more strokes, the bottom will be almost TWO STORIES down! If it wasn’t for all this water in the pool, my palms would be sweating.

I stop swimming and latch my elbow to the lane divider. It looks like nobody noticed my flailing. The swimmer in front of me is almost at the end of the lane. Soon, she will be coming back around, completing her ‘circle-swim’ on the half of the lane closest to the wall of the pool. The life guard sits on her perch above the bin that contains the swim fins as she chats with the lad standing besides her, or is she texting? The instructor has her back to the big pool I am in and is watching the shallow pool.

Then, I remember how I got through high school P.E.: I cheated. I swim the width of the lane, away from the flimsy lane divider and to the sweet comfort next to the solid wall. I swim to the ladder, climb out, and slide back into the shallow pool.

If the depth of that pool freaks me out, how will I ever swim in the ocean?

~~~

In the early months of 2011, I set out to relearn how to swim, with the goal of swimming in the ocean, like my father. The first time I get back in a pool, it feels comfortable. The water surrounds me like a soggy embrace. However, putting my face in the water still reminds me of the overwhelming awkwardness I felt more than twenty five years ago, during the summer my father enrolled my siblings and I in swim school.

I was in junior high; the other students in our class are half my age, so the instructor separates those of us with permanent teeth from the rest of the class, and quickly we are jumping off the diving board, a hundred miles from the surface of the water. Then, we swim the length of the pool back to the shallow side. I swim without breathing until I’m half way down the lane and my feet can touch the floor and I can take a nice, comfortable breath.

At the end of last year, in the month or two since the scene described at the top, I’ve gotten more comfortable in the water. Although it still feels unnatural to feel the water surround the contours of my ears, nose, and mouth, I can go a few laps, even in the big pool. Now, it’s time to build up to open waters. Hope it doesn’t take another twenty five years.