I learned how to swim by the unrecommended method of throwing a kid into a pool and seeing what happens.
Here's what happened:
My first “swimming” lesson was when I was 5 and consisted not so much of swimming but of the “superman” maneuver. It was practiced at local club , where us kids were encouraged to push off from the sides and “glide” with arms outstretched until momentum prevented us from going any further. .
For some reason, I remember pool shopping only because I was to fascinated with the colorful plastic tubes and surf boards. My swimming classes were usually on the weekends and my father always made sure he was there in the pool
with me since the pool had no access point or ladder, he could stand at the side and lift me over the edge.Not yet being a swimmer, my mother blew up an inner tube for me, and tossed it in the pool. Then my father swung me over and tossed me at the tube. His aim was good, but remember that I was small, and I passed neatly through the donut hole and was quickly sinking towards the bottom.
My mother was around to see what promised to be the first jubilant splash, looked on, horrified, as the little me seemed to drown before her eyes. And, there being no ladder yet installed, and me being out of arm's length, there was no way to reach me. So she just stood there and watched.
I flailed my limbs but they just sliced through the non-resistance of the water. My little round body went down, down, down, and though too young to understand the mechanism of breathing, I felt the burning of water in my lungs, which seemed to scream up! up! Up! Somehow I managed to reverse my sinking body and I broke the surface of the water, spluttering and coughing. When I had sufficient breath, I yelled to my mom “Did you see me? I swam! I swam!” and she muttered her praise while looking at my father guiltily out of the corners of her eyes. I should have been a little pink blob on the bottom of the pool but instead I was clinging to the siding screaming at others to join me in my newfound splashy freedom. A smarter kid might have clutched to the inflated tube, but once I had defied death that first time, I wanted to go deeper, faster, longer.
Many years later, many swimming lessons later, I consider myself to be a strong swimmer, which is a good thing because this time I have been tossed into the metaphorical deep end, and once again, the flotation device is just out of reach.
Life throws you into these sink-or-swim situations and it's amazing how powerful our sense of preservation is. We paddle on, no matter how many waves crash over our heads, no matter how many stitches we have in our sides or how tired we get. But what happens when you are thrown into the dark and forbidding water not alone, but with a weaker swimmer?
These are the moments in life that are infinitely hard: the days when we've just been treading water; the days when we've been slipping under; the days when we can barely keep our heads above the water line. I don't want to drown while trying to save someone else, some days I don't even know that I can save myself, and yet I can't not try, I can't. So I'm trying not to drown, not to let either of us drown, but it's hard. It's hard enough to fight the current on your own, but with the extra burden, progress is slow, and sometimes the undertow is stronger than I, and I feel us both being pulled back out toward the uninviting expanse and I think how nice it would be to relax my muscles, take a few deep gulps of water and let swirling water suck me under. But other days I see the shore, or I think I see it, on the horizon, if I squint real hard and ignore the burning sun. I stroke through the water like crazy, hoping to feel the sand between my toes before long, and I tell myself to just keep swimming.
I am trying hard not to drown. Oh yes, life's a beach.
