Diving In

The first time I learned how to swim, I was four, and we were living in Monterey, California. My mom sewed my sister and me matching bathing suits with robes, and we worked our way from the shallow end of the pool to where we couldn’t touch on our preschool tippie toes.

When I was twelve, I took lessons again. We weren’t a Club Med type of family, and my swimming skills stood no chance in the dirt of our summer camping trips, so I had to start my instruction all the way back at the beginning. I went to the Y and was placed in a class where the second oldest student was eight. Although not the first or last time in my life when I would feel out of place, certainly one of the more notable. Painful was the free time at the end of every lesson when the little kids would partner up to throw balls or dive for rings at the bottom of the pool. Painful was the time when two girls mistook my teenaged acne for chicken pox. Painful was the time when we were practicing dives, and I belly flopped on top of the floating hula hoop. So painful, that I never dove again. And I stopped my swimming lessons shortly after that.

This summer, my daughter and I drove south to visit my mom in her new home in Arizona. Actually, we drove south to visit her swimming pool. We stayed for a week, and during that week, my daughter put me on a strict, three times a day swimming schedule. Aside from the maddening task of applying sunscreen to both of our bodies that often, having a pool all to ourselves was a stupid if you don’t take advantage of it opportunity. We grew fins and gills. I invented noodle surfing. My daughter blew bubbles and drank a lot of chlorinated water. And I taught myself how to dive again.

Baby dives start on the knees, with the nose pinched shut by two fingers, the body pitched forward so that the top of the head touches the water. You have to fight your body’s natural reaction to not fall into anything head first, and to trust that the water will catch you instead of the side of the pool. Once you have taught yourself to fall forward consistently, you stand, and triangle your arms over your head, biceps pressing against your ears. Bend in half at the waist and ignore gravity as you fall headlong once again. Belly flop a time or two until your stomach gets too numb to feel the sting, and feel ridiculously proud when your mother cheers for her 33 year old daughter.

I’m going out this Thursday night with my sister, to a happy hour hosted by one of her former colleagues. She needs to network, and I’m going mostly for the moral support. I vaguely remember what it is like to worry about what I will wear to a social event that didn’t include four year olds. I vaguely remember the fear that my hair will not cooperate and that I will say stupid things. But I’m going for the moral support, so I’ll probably leave the high heels at home and simply take mental notes on the ambience. For a woman who is just a bit terrified by the idea of getting back out there, it’s a small, reasonable step. Most of my time these days, after all, is spent doing very slow laps in an area of the pool where the water is bathtub warm and untouched by the turbulence from other swimmers. So this is my plug my nose, on my knees, baby dive. I’m predicting that I’ll allow gravity to convince me to keep my head up, and I’ll most likely belly flop. Several times. Actually, I'm anticipating months of a raw, stinging stomach until the day I stop hesitating when my toes dangle precariously over the edge of the water, and falling the wrong way seems completely natural.