It is again 100 degrees here in California, and I wish I had a lake I could jump into tonight.

It’s really a miracle I like to swim at all.  I was a skinny little girl and didn’t have an ounce of fat to hold me up in the water.   We took swimming lessons at our little lake in Illinois.  It was a private lake and there were few houses at the time, but I was so shy that even knowing all the kids in the swimming lesson class, it was torture for me to be in an organized group instead of just splashing around in the water having fun.   It was essential, of course, but I hated it nevertheless.   Especially when it was an overcast day – we’d all stand there shivering with our lips turning blue. That didn’t happen too often, but I remember it very clearly.   Blue lips!   At any rate I learned how to swim in spite of it all, and was glad when I didn’t have to go on.  Of course there were kids with big shoulders and long arms and they were the stars, and the teacher’s favorites and they thought they were hot stuff and went on to life saving and all that.   My only goal was to be allowed to swim out to the raft, where all the fun happened.

You could jump off the raft and if you held your legs straight and went down like a bullet you could sink down a foot into the muddy bottom.   It’s amazing what kids will do without a second thought – I cannot possibly imagine having the nerve now to allow my legs to go into that mush.  Again, I can remember the feel of it and we’d come up laughing and bragging, eyes big, about how far down our feet went.  Gives me shivers to think about it really.   Ewwww.

I never did learn to dive off the diving board though.  They taught us to dive by sitting us on the end of the pier, put out hands over our heads and stuck our head between our legs and then we “dove” in – more like falling in head first.  Eventually this progressed to supposedly the same movement standing up.  I more often belly flopped.  I am very happy jumping into water thank you very much, and I always holds my nose when I do.

One day as a teenager I got the idea to swim across the lake.  It is probably a distance of half a mile, but I had never done it before, so it was probably a bit foolish to try, even if my shoulders were a little bigger and I had developed…um…floating devices.   My favorite swimming stroke to this day is the elementary backstroke, which involves a froggy kick and sweeping your arms up the side of your body as if you are taking off your shirt, then making a “T” and bringing your arms back down to your sides, a lovely graceful movement that is easy and makes you glide across the surface.   The elementary backstroke was taught to us as a “resting” stroke and indeed, it works every time, even in the near drowning situation in Hawaii a couple of years ago. 

So I started off across the lake.  I still remember that day, too, with great fondness.  I was all by myself in the middle of the lake, crawling, breast stroking and elementary backstroking my way across the lake.  It remains one of the favorite moments of my life.  Totally alone, no noise but my own breathing, the gentle slap of the water against my face, the sense of power and courage that emerged from my always-sort-of-scared self.  I was blessed that day, in the middle of that lake. 

That is where I return when I lap swim now.  I forget that I am looking at cement and smelling chlorine.  I only see the trees awaiting me on the opposite shore, the gentle green-blue waves with a glint of sunlight on each one, the earthy smell of the lake water calming me.  I only hear my breathing, the sloosh of the water, my body gliding along effortlessly.  (I took a lesson before I began lap swimming from a local instructor, and he told me I should be feeling like I am swimming downhill, then I know I am doing it correctly, and also “this isn’t the Olympics, Mary – slow down, enjoy yourself.”) This is why I am ecstatic that my gym has a pool that is opening within the next week.  Sometimes I have to actually stop myself from continuing lest I not be able to move the next day, because I get into such a hypnotic state.   

When I am feeling down, a walk at the reservoir, a yoga class, Zumba, and God knows the treadmill just won’t cut it.  I want nothing more than to get into the pool and let my imagination take me back to the little green lake under the Illinois sky, and I swim back and forth, back and forth, and before you know it the water has swept away the tearful tension in my eyes and my blues are left behind in the water as I climb out and face life on land again.