Swim Lessons

Swim lessons. A phrase which conjures up a lot of memories. A lot of pain. A lot of chlorine.

I’ll never forget those summers at the Blackridge pool learning to swim. Given my maiden name of “Fish,” there was a lot riding on my ability to learn how to swim and swim well. So swim lessons were in order. And I had many lessons.

A little background about the Blackridge pool…

It is not heated. As in “this is a freezing cold pool” in June and half of July.

At 9:00 a.m. the water was even colder and that was when my swim lessons took place. I walked down to the pool with my towel around my neck, my goggles on my forehead and confidence that was shattered every day when I walked back home, through the scary woods and up the big Williamsburg Place hill to my house. Why was confidence shattered? Because I couldn’t “get” the breathing under my arm on the side thing. And everyone else did.

So the lessons continued. The tears continued. And then swim team sign up began. The question was not “if” I was going to swim on the swim team it was when. It wasn’t my choice. Mom signed me up and off I went to practice every morning, despite the fact that I still didn’t “get” that breathing under the arm on the side thing.

So I doggie paddled my way through practice after practice that first summer on the swim team. I embraced the icy cold waters of the freezing cold Blackridge pool each morning and pretended I was the next doggie paddler in the Olympics. Until the first race. I think I was 6 years old. I remember vividly standing on the wooden starter block (the ones my dad made in our garage), scared to death. Diving was no problem, although I still hadn’t figured out how to dive with my goggles on. That was what the cool kids did–dove with goggles on.

But there I was in my sunburst red and white Blackridge swim team suit, shaking like a leaf on the starter block. I remember seeing my friends, my family, my fellow teammates. I remember thinking to myself….can I make it? Can get all the way down THERE without having to breathe? That was the only way I was going to save face afterall…swim the 25 yards without taking a breath. For if I took a breath the whole world would know that I was still a doggie paddler. I still couldn’t swim like everyone else. And that was not going to happen.

So the gun went off, I dove and I swam. Without breathing. The whole 25 yards. And I won. I won every race that summer. I never took a breath. I was too stubborn to learn how to swim the right way so I figured out how to win “my way.”

That strategy didn’t last too long. Once I won all my races and was deemed a “super speedy 8 and under,” I was moved up to swimming 2 laps. I couldn’t do that without breathing. I had to learn. I had to suck it up, take the swim lessons and get it right. If I was going to be a swimmer, which I fully intended to be, I had to conform and breathe like all the other swimmers in the freezing cold water. I had to let go of my pride and show the world that I was a doggie paddling “super speedy 8 and under” that was determined to learn to breathe.

I think about those moments when I first started swimming every time I am at the pool with my boys and when I take them to swim lessons. I see my stubbornness in both of my boys during swim lessons. But, like my mother, I sit and I watch. I wait for the moments when great strides are made and a face goes in the water and the arms move one at a time reaching out, pulling back. And the legs start to kick in tune with the arms.

Swim lessons are life lessons. Learning how to put it all together in life and in the pool takes practice. Some days, like today, I think I still need some swim lessons.

How about you?

Sometimes God calms the storm. At other times, he calms the sailor. And sometimes he makes us swim. ~Author Unknown

What goes around comes around, just like a flip turn. ~Author Unknown

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up. ~Abraham Maslow

The water is your friend. You don’t have to fight with water, just share the same spirit as the water, and it will help you move. ~Aleksandr Popov

It’s a good idea to begin at the bottom in everything except in learning to swim. ~Author Unknown