Learning to Swim
She was three when I signed my daughter up for swimming at our town’s picturesque pond. The lessons were led by a group of bronzed adolescent lifeguards whose names every child spoke with reverential authority. They glowed, leading the kids through warm-up exercises and then obediently into the June-cool pondwater. Every kid, that is, except mine.
That first season my daughter never set so much as a toe in the water. Instead she excavated the beach and resisted with mule-like immobility every cajoling, coaxing, and commanding attempt to get her in the water. The next year she agreed to wet her feet, and the season after that she allowed her teachers to pull her, queen-like, around in the town canoe, but still refused to wade past her waist. As someone who could vividly recall fish nibbling my calves in a similar small town pond, I could relate. Love of lake swimming was not in our genes.
Swimming has always scared me. Whether it was sunburn, snakes, sharks, or seaweed, I could always conjure something to worry over. But I also loved being in the water. In my best friend’s pool I loved feeling weightless when I floated on my back, marveled at the power of my arms parting the underwater curtains and the graceful engine of my feet, so much less clumsy than on land. Still, anxiety thrummed in the background. My fear prevented me from diving, from learning anything more than the basic strokes, from staying in as long as I wanted. As an adult, I mourned the summers of unblemished joy my fear had cost me. I wanted my daughter to grow up differently, able to take risks and have fun, free from fear, free from the obligation of being perfect on the first try.
I admit, I bribed her: When you learn to swim, I said, we can spend a weekend at Great Wolf Lodge. We switched to the clear green chlorine at the local gym, where the only fish was my daughter, who beached herself on the steps and wouldn’t get off. A few weeks later, breakthrough: Her teacher brought out a set of balls that glistened like bubbles, delicate and irresistible. My child waded into the shallow end after them, calling over her shoulder, “Mom, look at me!” Like a seal I sat on the sidelines and clapped. Week after week she pushed herself, first walking through the water then dog paddling, her neck straining to keep her face dry. Watching her felt as good as facing my own childhood fears would have, as good as traveling back in time and reclaiming all those lost summers. The first time she put her face in, I felt like the mother of Michael Phelps.
That day I happened to have a hair appointment. High on borrowed youthful exuberance, I asked the stylist, might she make my highlights blue? A few weeks later, my daughter swam from one end of the pool to the other. I twirled a teal streak around my finger as I watched her splashing, grinning, and diving for rings. I was overwhelmingly proud of my kid, but I regretted the hair. I felt like everyone could see me trying to hold my vanishing youth, slippery like a fish, and just as easily spoiled.
After her lesson, my daughter ran up. “You did it!” I exclaimed, offering a high five, but she had an announcement. “Guess what you and me are?” she said. Water dripped from her eyelashes. “What?” I asked. She leaned in, the secret bursting.
“Mermaids,” she whispered, and touched my hair.
—Lucinda Bowen
Littleton County Road
