Some people feel born to water. The phrase “getting along swimmingly” captures an easy free-floating feeling. I imagine a combination of drifting and wriggling downstream in a buoyant, tropical river. When Maia and I went to Peru, we spent a couple nights by the Amazon, deep in the jungle. As the “go everywhere, do everything” girls we were, we both felt that the trip would not be complete without actually swimming in the Amazon. So we did. And promptly came down with awful dysentery no other lodge guests had contracted. We were blissfully ignorant, I suppose. We had not watched the nature shows, or the fishing shows, or the medical peril shows that all educate people about the astonishing variety of monsters that lurk in warm, muddy waters. I’m not sorry, however. The discomforts of a day of illness have faded, but the memory of bobbing about supported by warm brown water with greenery all around remains tactile and Technicolor. I can see vividly the soft orange carrot that floated by us, tendrils disintegrating into the water, its flesh becoming one with the water.
Other people are quite sure that the only purpose of swimming is remaining alive in the water, which they know to be an alien and hostile environment, however much they may have enjoyed splashing in the bathtub or in the backyard wading pool. Playing in water is quite different from being in over your head. Very young, certainly before I ever went to school, I walked out into a lake, deeper and deeper until, eventually, I was underwater. My father had been walking alongside me, but up on top of a wooden pier. Tilting my head backwards, I could still see him through the water. It’s just a memory fragment. Perhaps I just walked back out calmly? Perhaps my father fished me out? Perhaps panic came later? Older, a roughhousing game led to brief panic once and it was not pleasant.
In high school, I did lifesaving for one six-week rotation. I remember the two main instructions: First, never jump into the water and try to life-save anyone. That is not what you expect to learn in a lifesaving class! . Second, if you are in the water and the drowning person understandably goes for your head, which is after all the highest ground available, you should swim down, down, down, then swim away underwater far from the panicking person. “They won’t follow you underwater,” our instructor told us. We practiced this maneuver by trying to climb on top of a classmate. I got away easily from my partner, but when it was my turn to play the drowning person, my partner didn’t get away so easily and she panicked. She was so devastated by the experience that she sat at the edge of the pool the rest of the six weeks. A year later even, if we passed in the hall, she would quickly look the other way. To this day I am not sure whether I should still be carrying guilt for what I did, even though it was exactly what the teacher had told us to do. Or maybe I saved her life because the scare she got might have prevented her from rashly swimming out to save a drowning person. I certainly hope that she eventually recovered enough to experience again that other swimming feeling, the one where the water supports you and you slide through it easily, like an eel.
interesting experience you got. you had a virginia woolf moment there, too. i am drawn to water. i learned how to swim late in my teenage years, but i never had the confidence to swim, even in the pool. i can sometimes do a lap or two doing backstrokes and i can swim if my life depended on it probably. but then i'd probably remember all those dreams i had about me drowning. and who is the pretty young lady in the photo?
@summerfield she's a girl from the marching band. This was taken at their nighttime pool party back in July. Guess I'll have to read some Virginia Woolf one of these days...
lovely picture, great lighting. At school my life-saving lessons included diving for bricks whilst wearing my brother's pyjama's (I only had nighties) and swimming back to the side with hand under the drowning person's chin. At canoe club it was very much save yourself. We also learnt by heart, "Reach, Wade, row, throw" if no deeper than knees wade, if you can reach don't get in the water, if a boat handy row towards, and if all else fails throw something in preferably holding onto the other end. thank goodness I have never needed any of it. I love to swim whereas hubby sinks like a stone and is very nervous. I too am still thinking about reading Virginia Wolf... one of these days.
@francoise@barneyone - the tragic ms. woolf drowned herself by putting bricks in her coat pockets and walked into the river. wonder what went through her mind while she waded to her death.
