Seaworthy Vignettes

 

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Jaws was released the summer I spent in Jacksonville, Florida.  After watching that monstrous shark on the big screen, I was too scared to swim in the Atlantic and spent my time lounging in my new green string bikini by the apartment pool. No way was I going back into the ocean, even if I knew the movie creature was mechanical.

            “I wouldn’t hang out there anyway,” said my boyfriend Chris. “Think of all those animals peeing in the water. Yuck.”

            Maybe he had a point.

            Meanwhile, I watched Chris attempt to float in that pool, but he could only drift down to the bottom, holding his breath just long enough to make me unsure whether he’d resurface. As the previous Michigan collegiate wrestling champ, he had no body fat and no buoyancy. Years later, in Salt Lake City, for the first time in his life he could float on the top of the water. The salt held him up. “Look at me!” he kept yelling. “I can float!” He was ecstatic, until discovering every imaginable orifice of his body was filled with saline.

2

In Hawaii I joined a boat tour that moored several miles off the Pacific coast. I loved snorkeling on my own, away from others who swam together in clusters. Peering at multicolored but unidentified fish, I felt at peace with the warm, gentle blue waves against my skin, focused on a momentary connection to the nature that surrounded me.

            Thinking it was time to return, I swam back to the small yacht and began climbing up the ladder. An attractive Hawaiian man, probably in his early twenties, offered a hand to help me up the ladder. In a quiet, gentle voice he said: “You might want look at your suit.”

            My purple one-piece that shaped my body perfectly, still tied behind my neck, was now circling beneath my breasts, leaving both of them totally exposed.  

            After pulling the suit back up with one hand, I tried to climb up as if nothing important had happened, then scampered off to a bench on the side.  Embarrassed? Yes. But I didn’t tell my traveling partner about it until the noisy boat started up again. I knew she’d laugh, and she did. She guffawed and didn’t stop. “That image…” she said.

            At least the other passengers were drinking too much rum for her to explain what was so funny.

3

When staying in Yelapa, Mexico, I usually took a large tourist boat that left Puerto Vallarta early in the morning and returned (without me) late in the afternoon. If you missed it, as I did once, the only option was joining a small vessel with enough room for ten locals and me in its hull—plus the chickens and other baskets they carried, so full that the water was only a couple of inches below us. Every time anyone moved or stood up the boat rocked dangerously. I wanted to yell “Stop moving! Sit down!” but my Spanish skills were inadequate and no one else seemed concerned. I remembered stories of whales occasionally tipping over this boat and held on tightly to my brand new camera as I eyed the shoreline. Swimming to it looked do-able, but I worried anxiously and breathed little until my feet were firmly on Yelapa’s beach.

            At breakfast the next morning with several locals who worked at the nearby cantina, I asked: “Are there any sharks out there?”

            “Only small ones. It’s safe for swimming.”

            Only small ones? I didn’t go in. Instead, I watched young girls and boys laughing as they tried to sell pies to beachgoers, until they tired of their tasks and placed the leftover wares their mothers baked onto the sand and ran into the water to swim, unafraid.

4

In Haiti the call of the ocean outside of our small hut on the beach was too loud to resist. It was 7:00 a.m. and the water was already warm.

            I jumped in and swam quite a distance. The gentle waves cycled against my body as I exhilarated in the blue and green colors, and the salted water that surrounded me. If there is a heaven, it must be like this. Sometimes I felt little prickles on my legs, but I knew they were that old fear of sharks, returning to ruin my pleasure. It’s your imagination. You can do this. There’s nothing bothering you. It’s all in your mind.

            I continued swimming, pleased with myself for conquering my old fear. Jim, my swimming companion, turned and headed for shore. “Why?” I asked. “It’s so beautiful here.”

            “Because there are jellyfish everywhere, and they’re stinging me.”

            So much for my new resolve. I swam back right behind him.

5

In my teen years our next door neighbor’s toddler drowned in their backyard pool. I remembered the sounds of the ambulance arriving, the pain of that moment, and that we didn’t see their family members outside much anymore.

            So, when my daughter was a baby, I signed up for those mother-daughter classes at the YMCA, feeling some discomfort with the technique, but I was determined to keep her safe near water.

            “Hold your baby an arm’s length away,” said the instructor. “Then bounce them up three times above the water. This tells them what’s going to happen next. On the third bounce blow gently on their face and pull them down into the pool. They’ll automatically close their mouths. Then let go and they’ll instinctively swim toward you.”

            It worked. We practiced for the remainder of the class. Each time I blew on her she’d close her eyes and mouth and shake her head a little before I pulled her under. Am I being a mean mother? I don’t know, but she is swimming, and a little farther each time.

            “They’ll maintain what they learned,” said the instructor, “as long as you keep swimming with them.”

            That turned out to not be an option. We moved to London. The water in the only pool we could access was freezing. Swimming in it was painful. We quit.

            When we returned to Berkeley I signed Alicia up again for swimming classes at the Y. She began lessons with other five-year-olds while parents sat outside the room, watching through the window and talking among themselves. One day, the teacher was on one side of the pool working alone with a little girl. The other six children were practicing their “kicks” while holding onto the cement siding.

            Somehow, Alicia kicked too hard and propelled herself about five feet away. I watched her go under, once, then twice. It looked like her baby lessons were working because she moved a little closer to the edge. As she went under a third time, my mommy impulses finally took hold. I threw open the door and pulled her out. She sputtered, said she was okay, and went back to her kicking exercise, but holding on noticeably tighter.

            My heart still raced more than usual, its beating probably heard even over the voices of children laughing and playing. From that day on, she clung hard to the teacher whenever they left the safety of the wall. Fear had kicked in.

6

On March 6, 1987, 193 people died when inner and outer bow doors of a ferry leaving Zeebrugge, Belgium were inadvertently left open. With some trepidation, Alicia and I took the same boat, leaving from the same town, months later. There was a supervised play area for children. I signed her in, then sat directly outside, reading a book. If the vessel was cursed and something happened to it again, at least I’d be close by, hoping to mitigate the disaster together.

7

In Jamaica, after attending the wedding of a close friend, my nearly teenaged daughter sat on the beach as I crouched in the ocean a couple of feet away. The blue-green waves were increasing in intensity. As I sat on my haunches, feet firmly on the sandy floor in water a foot or so deep, I tried to stand up. The waves were too rough and pulled me back down. Laughing at the absurdity of being so close to the shore yet unable to reach it as the waves tugged harder, I realized: These are the rip currents I’ve read about. I couldn’t fight them; any effort kept me in place, without progress. Feeling a mild panic, I dropped to all fours and somehow managed to crawl my way back to safety.

8

The Women’s Cancer Resource Center held an annual Swim A Mile at Mills College in Oakland. I volunteered for several years: setting up, tearing down, picking up donations, collecting monies, counting laps for swimmers, setting out food – the list was long. One year I decided to prove to myself that I, too, could swim a mile. It made sense to begin before others arrived, as my gopher skills were needed once the day’s festivities began.

            “I’ll get someone to count laps for you,” the event director volunteered.

            “No, I’ll just keep track myself.” I knew the other volunteers were needed for last minute preparations.

            The pool was relatively warm when I jumped in. Although I had numerous lessons as a child (easily passing everything except jumping off the high board), I was a solid but lazy swimmer, no longer wanting to get my face wet, and speed was boring. I glided slowly in what I hoped were graceful sidestrokes, alternating with floating, dog paddling, backstrokes and breaststrokes. I was focused, but aware of the sunny sky overhead and distant voices from others near the pool.

            The only problem? I enjoyed swimming so much that I kept losing track of how many laps I completed. The solution was to return to the last one I remembered for sure, and to start counting again from there. I finished, but it’s likely I really swam about 1¼ miles since I kept counting over just to be sure.

            Some swimmers took advantage of free practice sessions in the weeks before the event. Not me. In fact, I hadn’t been in a pool for years, even though I loved swimming. But at 60 I finished, not out of breath, and proud.

            And now? No recent swimming adventures for me. I’m still seaworthy, but I’m not loving how I look at seventy-six in a bathing suit. That’s reason enough to choose weightlifting over laps in a pool.

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