Swimming With Sharks

My brothers and I were in grade school when my mother decided it was time for us to learn to swim. The swimming pool at the YWCA was bright blue with chlorine and gave off a fierce scent of chemicals that made my eyes tear and my throat itch. The pool room was cold and wet and hollow with noise, the sounds of voices and splashing water bounced back and forth on the walls and hurt my ears. My mother handed us over to an instructor and walked away.

It was a new experience and though I felt mildly wary, I don't remember being afraid. We entered the pool as directed and followed instructions - both my brothers took to it immediately but I hung back, not ready to join the fray and not completely trusting of them or the teacher. After that first lesson, they were both practically swimming like eels and jeering at me for swimming like a stone. The instructor assured me that it was perfectly safe but I began to feel shut in and trapped in a waterstorm of screaming children and blue water with no ground beneath my feet. I fought the water and when he let me go to try a stroke on my own, I panicked and went under, breathing water and choking, flailing and seeing my brief life flash before my eyes. There was no dignity in drowning in the YWCA pool but for a few seconds I was sure that would be my destiny. He brought me up gasping and desperate for air, coughing up chemicals and shaking with shame, my eyes burning and my throat raw. The second time was worse since I now knew he would let go and I tried to avoid the water but it flooded into my nose and mouth and I went down in a swirl of airless terror, blinded and unable to breathe. The third time I didn't fight, sinking calmly and holding my breath until I reached the bottom of the pool, then exploding with fear at the water above me and my inability to reach it. I went deaf and became only dimly aware of where I was, then he pulled me to the surface and into the fluorescent lighting and wet air resounding with my brothers laughing and taunting. Enough for the first time, he finally said and let me climb out and run for the safety of the dressing room.

There were several more excruciating swimming lessons, different instructors worked with me and tried a variety of methods, there were more group sessions and even one on one private ones in a quiet, empty pool but in the end nothing worked and I was sorrowfully deemed unteachable. My mother was humiliated and furious and my brothers had ammunition that would last them years. I was simply grateful it was over.

There were other attempts over the years - dear friends and husbands would shine with confidence but fail and shake their heads, my daddy would try and give up with a smile and a philosophic hug, but I never learned to swim and after a time I accepted it as a limitation and not a defect. There's a world of difference between the water above and the water below.