In Water

People who know me well know that I love being in water. Yet I have never been asked if I sometimes feel afraid in water. The answer is yes, at times I have. Once I even felt terror.

Most of my water memories, though, are happy ones. Extremely happy. It’s a happiness that continues to wash over me as I wade—sorry, couldn’t resist—through my eighth decade on this watery planet. Being in or near water just feels good. (More on the terror later.)

From my mental filing cabinet, inside the folder labeled Water, I can pull out joyful musings and funny anecdotes, a few flashbacks of fear, plus snippets of acute embarrassment.

Below are some of my stories, in no particular order.

Underwater hilarity

In a swimming pool in New York City, I am riveted by a young woman swimming in an adjacent lane. As she glides through the water, her strapless salmon-colored bikini top starts sliding towards her navel. After a lap or so, I look underwater and see her girls escape captivity. They are free—the strapless bikini top now relegated to cummerbund status!

The swimmer continues swimming the (ahem) breast stroke, apparently oblivious to her pendulous state. I try hard not to die laughing underwater.

She leaves the pool before me. When I return to the locker room, the sad salmon bikini lies abandoned in a corner. I notice the label, a fancy designer brand.

Perhaps the suit was only for sunbathing.

Fear of amputation

I am swimming with my brother in the quiet tributary of a river near our farm. We swing from a rope tied to an overhanging tree branch and drop into the water. Perfect summer fun—until a neighbor kid shows up and warns us about a huge snapping turtle that lives in that part of the river. He says it can bite off your toes. Even your whole foot.

I scream, and my brother and I scramble up the riverbank to safety. We do not swim there again.

Then one day much later, the kid announces with a smirk that he made up the whole story. There was no snapping turtle.

Not funny.

Earliest water memory

My brother is one year old and I am four. At the time, our old farmhouse has no indoor bathroom, so our mom bathes us in a large metal wash tub set on the kitchen floor. I sit in the tub, splashing water at my brother. He likes it and I am delighted. Whether or not he peed in the tub, I can’t say. I am only aware of loving the water.

I suppose our mom had a wet mess to wipe up.

A much worse mess

When I was eight years old, I invited my younger siblings to frolic in a mudhole near our barn. My suggestion was not out of the ordinary as we often cooled off from the summer heat by climbing into the large water tank in the barnyard. It was filled with cold drinking water for the cows. We ignored the biological slime and chunks of green guck that floated on the surface, and felt refreshed.

At this point it’s important to mention that immediately prior to our mud bath mom had gotten us scrubbed and presentable for a Sunday picnic the following day. Our skin was clean and our hair washed. Being the oldest, my hair was in curlers.

The mudhole by the barn was deep enough from recent rains, and muddy from the cattle tramping through. We stomped into the water, splashed around, and literally slathered ourselves from head to toe in muddy glory. So much fun!

Until … we presented ourselves in utter filthiness to mom. The photo says it all.

Mom cried. I was old enough to realize that I had been extremely irresponsible. As best I remember, I did not frolic in mud again.

Photo caption: Mud bath with my younger brother and sister, my hair in curlers.

Tom and Eileen, part 1:

When I swim in a pool, I don’t count my completed laps. I time myself on the clock, which frees me to contemplate. I wander through different mental landscapes, solving problems or writing stories in my head. Occasionally, I think about Tom and Eileen Lonergan.

My husband and I meet Tom and Eileen—fellow American expats—years ago when we are living in London. They have a rambunctious black Lab puppy who leads Eileen on wild chases through Kensington Gardens. Once or twice, I meet up with Eileen for lunch. When the four of us chat at a party, they seem like a happy couple and talk about wanting to have kids. Later, we lose touch with them. Someone tells us they joined the Peace Corps.

Tom and Eileen, part 2:

While still living in London, we learn from newspaper reports that Tom and Eileen make their way to the Great Barrier Reef and go scuba diving. There they suffer an unthinkable tragedy. The dive boat accidentally leaves them behind in the Coral Sea. Abandoned for days, they are never found.

Tom and Eileen, part 3:

I swim laps and think about two divers in the ocean, surfacing to discover that their boat is gone. They scan the vast horizon, 360 degrees, and see no boat. Or maybe a tiny boat, now very far away.

I try to imagine the harsh alone-ness that hits in a moment like that. Probably not panic at first, because surely someone will realize two people are missing and turn the boat around.

I swim and contemplate what I would do in their situation. How would I react? How long could I stay hopeful?

When I swim, I can shut out the world on land and experience a tranquility of isolation. I find it soothing, perhaps a submerged memory of being quiet and floaty in the womb.

I want to believe that in the end Tom and Eileen, with a tranquility of isolation, were able to accept that death was coming.

But, no one knows.

Clueless at college

I sign up for a half-hour swim at the university natatorium. I have no idea how the system works. My high school did not have a pool. I have reached the age of eighteen without ever having experienced lap swimming.

I suit up, walk out onto the pool deck and jump in the water. Ahhh! It’s wonderful to be swimming! I swim back and forth a few times. I quickly figure out that I’m supposed to keep in one lane like the other swimmers are doing.

Soon, the lifeguard is talking to me by the edge. He says I have to wait my turn. He points at the two or three people sitting off to the side, waiting.

“Oh, I thought they were resting.”

I get out, go to the locker room and get dressed. I am too embarrassed to ever go back there.

Aquatic learnings (from firsthand experience)

1. Try to avoid swimming laps behind someone whose swim trunks ooze soap suds.
2. Try to avoid swimming laps behind someone whose feet churn the water like a riverboat paddlewheel.
3. Try to avoid swimming in murky river water teeming with bloodsuckers.
4. Waiting one whole hour after eating, before being allowed to swim, is a myth.
5. Try to avoid getting stung by jellyfish in the Sea of Cortez. It really hurts.
6. When swimming in an outside lane, try not to kick into the side of the pool. When you break a toe that way, it really hurts.
7. Try to avoid swimming when professional male athletes are swimming in adjacent lanes. They swim exceptionally fast and aggressively; you feel invisible and pathetically overpowered.
8. When you go to a swimming pool and notice two below-the-knee prosthetic legs propped against a bench on the pool deck, you are thankful for your tremendous good fortune to swim with your own two legs. You feel immense admiration, inspiration, and goodwill towards those who swim without legs.
9. When you are eight years old and visiting your classmate at her family’s cabin and someone is trying to teach you to dive off the end of the dock and you keep belly-flopping over and over because you are not bending at the waist, your friend’s mother will decide that you are constipated and give you an enema.
10. When you arrive at the pool during a pandemic, it’s important to remove your mask before jumping in the water.

Escaping terror

A desolate beach on Prince Edward Island beckons me. There is no lifeguard and no other swimmers. But I am young and carefree, and the sun is hot. I wade up to my waist into the cool water. After a shallow dive, I come up for air and start swimming away from shore. My sunburned skin chills and awakens. It’s a gorgeous day to be in the water.

Soon the depth of the water increases and the water temperature drops. Almost without paying attention, I realize that I have moved quite some distance from shore without much exertion. The force of the water grows more powerful. In the next second it dawns on me; I am being dragged out to sea by a strong rip current.

Suddenly, I am afraid. Very afraid. Some instinct tells me not to fight the water. Panic cannot take control of me. The water will win.

I am using all my strength to stay afloat when I decide to swim across the direction that the invisible force is pulling me. How that decision comes to me, I can’t say. But it is the right thing to do.

I swim out of the current into calmer water and make it safely back to shore.

Gratitude

A lot of the credit for my love of the water goes to my mother. She made sure that my siblings and I (while in grade school) were signed up in the summer for free swimming lessons at our town’s outdoor public pool. Mom and my best friend’s mom took turns driving us into town to the pool.

The water was always freezing. Our teachers—high school kids—were strict and intimidating. I wore my orange tank suit from the Sears, Roebuck catalog. That swimsuit still ranks as one of my favorite swimsuits ever—and by now I have owned a lot of swimsuits!

Knowing how to swim opened up a world of experiences for me. Besides the aforementioned mudhole and cow tank, I have swum in community pools both indoor and outdoor, private club pools, YMCA pools, Boys & Girls Club pools, school pools, hotel and motel pools, ponds, rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans.

I have swum in Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, England, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Aruba, British Virgin Islands, The Grenadines, South Africa, Austria, and of course the U.S. (in at least eleven different states). Someday I will try to calculate how many total miles I have swum so far.

I read once about a reclusive village in Cuba where the residents rely only on water for healing. I guess I also rely on water for healing—although clearly not to that extent. For me, given the choice between swimming or getting a massage is easy; I choose swimming any day!

On a warm, sunny day when the ocean ripples and sparkles, the earth seems happy.

And if I can go for a swim, life is good.