A Road Less Travelled

I don’t swim. I’m rather fond of water, but only up to a point, and that point is about at my chin. Wandering around in shoulder high water is rather fun. Putting my face underwater is a horrible experience, not because of the actual water, but because of the suffocating panic which assures me that the water is trying to kill me and I’d better find some air NOW.

I had a week of swimming lessons once. All I remember is desperately thrashing around in the motions I’d been told to use, hoping that if I thrashed hard enough I would beat the water into submission and it wouldn’t kill me. (This probably says something about my approach to life in general. Over the weekend I had a chance to use a Wii for the first time, and while it was a lot of fun, spectators were continually reminding me, “It’s supposed to be a tennis racket, not nunchucks. It’s supposed to be a baseball bat, not a sword. You look like you’re trying to kill the ball.”)

So, when someone at our church offered swimming lessons, I thought, “Hey, that would be nice. I’d like to not feel like I might drown anytime I get near water.” I also had a wordless thought that went along with that, which was along the lines of, “Oh, no, I have to do battle with the water again.”

I practiced kicking off the side of the pool, something I don’t remember learning in my way-back-when swimming lesson experience. I figured out that I wasn’t going to drown because the pool was only four feet deep. (I knew this when I got in, of course, but I also had to figure it out as I went. Water can be sneaky, you know…) Then, one time when I kicked off I felt something I’d never felt before. I was moving through the water, and the water was holding me up.

I wasn’t thrashing. I wasn’t even moving, except by momentum. I was just slipping through the water near the surface. I don’t think I’d ever believed it was really possible until that moment. I’d probably still drown if you threw me the ocean without a life preserver, but give me few days. I’m pretty sure this whole swimming thing could actually work now.