Swimming Lessons Life Lessons from the Pool, from Diving in to Treading Water

I. Getting in the Water Getting in the water is easy: Just walk to the edge and jump in, or slide in, feet first. You can also fall in the water face first, or dive in smoothly, with ever-growing confidence and skill. WHEN SHE WAS FOURTEEN and I was forty-four, my daughter, Jennifer, taught me to swim. Jennifer had just finished wearing braces on her teeth, and, thanks to a lower jaw problem, I had just begun. Dire medical necessity, not vanity, mandated that I wear those braces just as I was struggling to cope with menopause, my daughter's puberty, and my husband's midlife crisis. Overwhelmed by these circumstances, I needed diversion, distraction-escape. I had grown up a swimming illiterate, terrified of the water. Now I was also terrified of wearing braces on my teeth at such a preposterous age, and of seeing my life slip by with some long held dreams unrealized. There was nothing I could do about the braces except endure and survive. But, it occurred to me, I could take charge of the dreams. Many of my dreams had come true, especially my wife and mother dreams, but others haunted me. I had always wanted to write, to travel, to make a lasting, positive difference in the world around me. Some of my more whimsical dreams were pinned to childhood heroes-Isaac Stern, for instance. I love music, and, although I play the piano and the organ, I had dreamed of playing the violin like Isaac Stern. Then there was the Ginger Rogers dream. I have danced the cha-cha, the waltz, the Texas two-step, and the jitterbug, but I had always dreamed of swirling across a stage like Ginger Rogers, ballroom dancing, ballet dancing, tap dancing, even clog dancing my way to the stars. And I used to dream of swimming like Esther Williams, "The world's most famous and glamorous swimming star," as she was described on the cover of her 1957 book, Get in the Swim. I was a senior in high school in 1957, not daring to aspire to fame or glamour. I just wanted to know how to swim so I wouldn't have to sit forlornly on the edge of the pool. People usually learn to swim, tap dance, or play the violin when they are young. But as I found myself middle-aged and simultaneously being outfitted with braces and bifocals, it came to me that I had nothing to lose. I might as well be twelve again. This could be my chance, perhaps my last chance, to go after some of those childhood dreams-to learn, however belatedly, to fiddle, tap dance, and swim. As much as I revered Isaac Stern and Ginger Rogers, I gravitated toward Esther Williams. I decided to take those long-deferred swimming lessons. I grew up in Waxhaw, North Carolina, a very small town where there was no swimming pool. Swimming lessons, if there were any, consisted of being thrown by a well-meaning parent into a murky pond or into the deepest pools of Twelve Mile Creek. "Swim," came the order from the safety of shore. "Now, swim!" The words echoed in the ears of frightened children as they fought against the mysterious power of the water, simultaneously learning to fear the water and to distrust the adults in their lives. A child can no more swim on command than she can speak or read or play the violin or stop being afraid of the dark. Nevertheless, countless desperate children have survived that abrupt abandonment to water over their heads. Some swallow fear along with muddy pond water, and muster a clumsy dog paddle in the struggle toward the shore. Some flounder and have to be rescued. Some never get into the water again. Others learn to swim by the book. Still others take to swimming in spite of everything, creating unorthodox breast strokes, swimming ever after with their untutored heads held defiantly upright in the air. Fortunately, my parents did not throw me into the languid depths of Twelve Mile Creek or the swampy clutches of Massey's Pond, but neither was I taught to swim in a proper swimming pool, officiated over by trained inNiven, Penelope is the author of 'Swimming Lessons Life Lessons from the Pool, from Diving in to Treading Water', published 2004 under ISBN 9780156027076 and ISBN 0156027070.