this one is about swimming lessons, after a fashion...

"eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. the river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. on some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. i am haunted by waters. --norman maclane


whence come the highest mountains? i once asked. then i learned that they came out of the sea. the evidence is written in their rocks and in the walls of their peaks. tt is out of the deepest depth that the highest must come to its height. --friedrich nietzsche




why did the old persians hold the sea holy? why did the greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of jove? surely all this is not without meaning. and still deeper the meaning of that story of narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. but that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. it is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.  --herman melville




i was thinking about the last time i taught swimming lessons, the other day.  i used bonnie's parents' pool--one of my favorite pools in the whole world.  i only had one student, and she was five.  and i had nine weeks in the pool, with this little cherub, before i left home for college.  


there were days that summer when the only thing that was constant and made sense was teaching this blonde child how to swim.  there were days when being in the pool with her was the only reason to not sit down in a corner of my room and quit.  the great thing about teaching swim lessons to a five year old is that they are usually too busy to notice or mind if you're having a bad day or cried all morning.  they are usually just so excited to be in the pool, none of the rest of it matters.  and so, for two hours, every day, five days a week, i was in the pool with the happiest kid in the world.  


she was such a fast learner.  we could have been done in two weeks.  but my student's momma insisted that her child needed more time in the pool, insisted that i be the one to do it, kept paying me, kept trusting me in ten feet of blue blue blue water with her most precious gift.  the little swimmer moved quickly from bobbing in the shallow end to learning to kick her feet and move her arms at the same time.  she got really good at blowing bubbles, but when it came time to learn how to alternate breaths on each side, she picked up a funny little head-wobble when she swam.  she looked so emphatic, shaking her little blonde head side-to-side in a "no-no-no-no" fashion for a couple of days, until she figured out it's a slow, non-scary thing to drag your face out of the water when you need a little breath.  i laughed a lot watching her spazz out, wriggling like a little worm on a hook. 


by the end of the summer, the kiddo could do two strokes, float on her back, and regulate her breathing.  she could swim a whole length of the pool, too.  we were both surprised when she did that, because i don't think either of us were entirely sure she could... when we would swim lengths, it was usually left to right across the shallow end, not up and down from shallow to deep. that way, i was in front of her, with my feet on the ground, the whole way.  it was a good system.  


but one day, not long before the end of that summer, she seemed ready to try a long lap.  she could tread water, so she knew what to do if she got scared and needed a breath.  i promised i'd be right in front of her, just like always.  she took a big breath, and we started swimming.  the shallow end petered out pretty fast, and so i was swimming, too, face-up, under water (a trick i mastered in elementary school, known in the above-ground pool world as "mermaid swimming"), with a hand just barely touching her little kid tummy.  her face was in the water, and she was blowing bubbles, and my face was about two feet below hers.  she knew i was right there, and while she didn't grab for my hand or my hair or panic, her big baby blues were locked on mine, even under the water.  we finished our lap, and both sputtered up for air giggling and wiping the hair out of our faces.  


when i think about that summer, i can still taste the tears.  fifteen years on, and there are still moments that bring me to my knees, days when i would give or do or be anything just to go over five or six life questions with my darling dad.  but there are also days when the smells of chlorine and gold fish crackers and coconut sunblock remind me that we take the bitter with the sweet.   


the little girl i taught to tread water in the deep end of bonnie's parents' pool taught me to tread water in the deep end of my life.  that's the unvarnished, honest truth.  it's humbling to admit that a six year old kept me from drowning.  but that's the unvarnished honest truth, too.   i'm hanging out with her and her momma for the first time in many moons, this weekend.  my little swimmer is a grown girl, now, and a freshman at my old university.  i'm inordinately proud of that.  i'm inordinately proud of her.  and grateful.  very grateful.  


mil besos,
rmg