Learning to Swim
A couple of weeks ago I started taking beginning swim lessons. (What, did you think this title was a metaphor?) I’m in my mid-forties and have survived just fine so far on the theory of just not going in water that’s deeper than my head, but my daughter started swim lessons the week before, and the place she’s going takes adults too, so okay, fine, it’s a thing we can do together. Maybe you’re reading this and you’re an adult non-swimmer wondering what it’s like to learn these new tricks as an old dog, or maybe you’re a lifelong swimmer with morbid fascination about how someone manages to avoid learning to swim for that long in the first place.
So, this wasn’t my first time taking swim lessons. (Begin flashback.)
My mom, to her credit, signed me up for lessons one summer when I was, I wanna say, seven years old. It was probably at a rec center pool, and my grandma was the one to take me there, which means it must have been during the week when my mom was working. I remember being pretty excited for the first lesson. The instructors had us all get in the water and hang on to the edge of the pool and practice kicking while they supervised from outside the pool. I was having fun kicking my legs, and after a while of that I think I had the idea to let go with one hand for a second (my daughter’s daycare teacher asked us where our kid got the daredevil gene from, and as I’ve thought back on events in my early childhood, I’ve realized with dawning horror that it’s definitely me), and suddenly I was floundering in the pool over my head, and as far as I was concerned I might have been in the middle of the ocean. I remember not knowing whether anyone had noticed I was in trouble, or could see where I was to rescue me, and frantically trying to wave my hand above water to signal for help. I was pretty sure I was going to die. At some point I was hanging on to the side of the pool again and able to pull myself out of the water; I don’t remember being rescued, so I might have been not that far from the edge and managed to latch onto it again. I also have memories of blood in the water, which I think were the result of a loose tooth that got jostled while I was thrashing around in terror.
After that, I just didn’t progress any further in the swim lessons. Each time I got to the pool, the smell of chlorine made my stomach sort of clench up; a very literally visceral reaction. I held onto the edge and kicked; I did not let go again, and I refused to put my head in the water, which meant I didn’t proceed through the curriculum, and after a few more lessons the class was over and I hadn’t learned anything. I never really talked to my mom or anyone about the whole “I thought I was going to die” thing, because I don’t think I had the words to explain that whole experience properly, but there were no further attempts to try to get me to learn to swim. I was perfectly happy to float around on an inner tube or splash around in shallow water, but anything that involved being submerged or unsupported in water over my head was right out.
(Flashback over.)
Taking swim lessons this time around brought back the familiar stomach-clenching feeling as soon as the smell of chlorine hit my nose, but I was determined to mind-over-matter it as best I could. Some part of my brain believed, illogically, that my body just didn’t have the buoyancy required to swim, because the couple of times in adulthood that other people had tried to teach me to float, I followed their instructions as best as I was able and my head still wound up in the water – but be that as it may, if it didn’t work this time, it wasn’t going to be because I didn’t give it my best try.
We started with floating, and the teacher did the One Weird Trick that made it work: he stood behind me and supported my head so I could fix my form (i.e. fight the impulse from every part of my body to clench into a ball) until I was able to actually float on my own, and, crucially, believe that I could float on my own, which helped my body not want to clench into a ball. Every now and then I was even able to convince myself to open my eyes and take a breath.
Last week I had my second lesson and at one point I opened my eyes and I was watching the ceiling go by as I kicked my way down the lane, and I realized that I was actually doing the thing; my nose was staying out of the water, I was able to breathe, nothing holding me up but the water, and I was moving. It felt like a magic trick. If you’ve been doing this confidently your whole life, this probably sounds stupid, but until that moment I had still very much believed in my lizard brain that this was a physical impossibility, and seeing evidence to the contrary was… well, a unique feeling. A good one.
Do things that scare you.