Help!

In aquatic school they taught me to save a drowning person by diving underwater. I came up behind them as they flailed and splashed, leveraged their chin above the current, pulled them against my body and swam them back to shore, all while doing a reverse stroke so they weren’t kicked in the process. Once on shore, I released the water from their body, closed their nose with my right hand and blew into their mouth to bring them back to life. 

We role played this situation so often I could have done it in my sleep. The victim swam to the middle of the lake, began thrashing and pretending to drown, yelled HELP and off I went! I swam straight out with eyes fixed on the victim, about five feet away, the underwater dive, the turn of the head and the carry back to shore. Piece of cake. 

What they didn’t teach me is that people don’t say help when they’re drowning, because folks have not taken a class in correct victim behavior. They just get a quiet look of panic and bob above and below the surface until they disappear. 

I was working as a life guard and teaching swimming at a girls camp one summer when a young woman right in front of my chair looked silently up at me with a lonely puzzled expression. Her eyes darted from me, to the sky and back to the water. Her arms moved slowly up and down as the print ruffle on her bathing suit made busy swirls around her legs. She tried to propel herself over and over without success. 

Finally someone came to my chair, I think that girl can’t swim, they said, I think she’s in danger of drowning.

I looked down as if coming out of a trance and immediately saw the truth. I jumped in, pulled her to the side, put my hands around her waist and lifted her above me, until she sat safely on the edge. Water dripped from her cap and mixed with tears that ran from her young blue eyes.

Why didn’t you yell help, I asked? I was right in front of you. Why didn’t you call out to me?

She had no answer. 

Sitting by the pool today I thought about that moment all those years ago, and the deeper truth it held – the realization that people don’t yell help when they need it most, they retreat into silence, fear, shame or self-protection. They become private at the very moment they need saving the most.

The last third

I bought water from a machine in the basement of the ice skating rink, but could not open it. My fingers no longer grasp or close. I asked a stocky farm woman to help me out. She twisted the bottle open with ease.

Isabella asked me to lace her skates, really tight, Ma, but I could not. Not only couldn’t I pull the laces snug through the golden eyelets, I struggled to tie a bow at the top. She gently took the task away from me, as I spoke of scouting the room for a person who could do the job for us.

There was a moment when I felt tears surfacing. Is this where I am now? Is this what is next?

I had my astrology chart done today by a woman my age, who kept talking about us being in the last third of our lives. I wanted to say, speak for yourself, I’m only in the middle of mine. I am young with lots of projects stacked on the table, other countries to visit, and dances to dance. But tonight at the skating rink I had a sad moment when I joined her in the last third of my life.

I am told that if I give up chocolate, desserts, tomatoes, citrus fruits and all things wonderful, and replace them with medicine and oils that I might have a chance to get my fingers functioning again. It’s worth a try.

Neptune’s Realm

Swimming is an experience of surrender and allowing. You give yourself to the water and it holds you in return. I used to be an instructor. My lessons were for endurance swimmers, the ones who wanted to go long distances, and find the soul and beauty of the sport.

The most common thing I noticed as a teacher was the way students battled the water. They came at it like an enemy to be conquered. They wanted to fight and win, each stroke becoming a determined fist that sent waves ceiling-high in a great calamity of motion.

No, No! Treat the water like a lover, I would tell them. Be gentle, caress it with your hands, merge, let it hold you. Men would blush at this analogy, taking a step back to assess the sanity of their instructor.

This is not lovemaking, this is a sport, they’d protest.

Oh, but it’s not so very different then entering the bed of a lover. You must give up the idea of fighting. Enter softly, stroke, glide and rest; find a rhythm for your breathing. You can swim for miles that way. Between each effort, after each stroke, rest with equal time. You’ll swim without tiring because rest and work will be equal. Move through the water like the spring equinox, where the day is equal to the night.

My lessons were not for the competitive spirit. If they longed to be first, be the biggest or the best, I was not their girl.

 Swimming is a transcendent sport. It invites you to slip quietly below the surface into a world without corners. If you go tenderly and with acceptance, you can heal emotions, energize the body, cleanse the spirit and come back rested.

Water is a living breathing force deserving respect. If you can think of it that way, if you can enter it that way, then she will nurture you, then you can have a longstanding relationship. If you don’t understand these things, you will burn out quickly. She will spit you out.  Just like life, one must find the quiet gentle places where we can rest and glide, if we are to support our efforts and survive. Thrashing about only brings exhaustion.