We were snorkeling in Cozumel in May of 2017.  I watched as our guide dove down to the sandy bottom, looked around and then shot back up to the surface.  Her legs were pinned together as she propelled herself upwards using only the massive fins on her feet.  In her skin suit and with her long black hair trailing behind her and the huge fins she looked all the world for a real life mermaid.

I wanted to go down there.  I now know I CAN go down there while snorkeling and even know how to perform the now-not-so- terrifying snorkel clearing procedure once you get back to the surface.  Maybe I should have just learned to do that, but no.

”2018 is the year I am going to learn to scuba dive” I confidently proclaimed on a Facebook in January of 2018. I don’t remember exactly how I got hooked up with local divers but I started conversations with them.  First question: Am I too old? (“No”)   To this I now say “bullshit” but only where my instructor can’t hear me.

Through many conversations and much reading, I decided I didn’t want to die scuba diving and therefore I knew I wanted private lessons and was willing to take as long as it took to learn thoroughly and pay what I had to pay achieve the goal of not dying underwater.  I knew intuitively that panicking underwater would kill me just as surely as running out of air would, even if I had a 3/4 tank of the life giving necessity left at my disposal.

I had dreams.  I would wake up in the morning, see that my fellow facebook scuba group members were meeting at 7 a.m.in Laguna and if I hurried I could make it to do a little shore diving.   I would dive shipwrecks.  I would have a sea lion swim up to my face like a boxer puppy and look at me with the same wide-eyed goofiness that I had come to adore in my boxers.  It would all be so magical.  I would also not die in the process.

I met with Ashley, my forever instructor (I say that because apparently it is going to take forever for me to master this), on a beautiful day in August 2018 at a burger joint in Laguna.  Al was with me because I wanted him to feel comfortable that I would not die.  I listened to her plan, her philosophy (“I will not let you die”), how much it would cost, etc.  I remember telling Al after I signed the papers “This is probably going to cost about $1500 with lessons and equipment.”

Any divers who just read that sentence could have five extra air tanks and would still perish due to involuntary breath holding from laughing so hard.  You’ve just learned the most important rule in diving. Don’t hold your breath. Ever.

Later on I would tell Al: “Well, if this is the cost of a nice cruise vacation, if I only do it for a year or two it will have been worth it.”  After 37 years and more than one expensive hobby under my belt (musical equipment runs a close second to diving equipment), he just nods his head,  It’s not a permission thing, by the way.  It’s our money.  I just like him to know I’m aware there might be a funeral to pay for some day.

I left Laguna with a belly full of burger and a wallet empty of everything.  I had my learn to scuba manual which I had to read, take tests and then meet again with Ashley.  I couldn’t wait to get at it, but we were headed to the Baltic and other places for five weeks so I would t start actual lessons until October.

A word about Ashley.  If you have followed my FB at all you know this woman is brilliant, fearless (4 tours in Afghanistan, go figure), unstoppable (I’d have quit long ago had she let me, which she hasn’t and won’t) , and apparently is happy making about a buck an hour after all the time she has spent/is spending with me.  Most importantly she has not let me die. Or give up.  A recurring theme in my journey is me bitching about how hard it is and I don’t think I can do this and surely I’m going to die since I can’t breath (I’m on land) and Ashley just watches me have this adult meltdown, not saying anything and when my respiratory rate has returned to normal she says “ready to try again?”  As if she didn’t just hear me all but say “I’m quitting right here and now.” This is a woman I hate to love and love to hate  – I  sure I’m not the only one and she wears that reputation more proudly than any Army medal she may have earned.

Again, she hasn’t let me die. There are skills one must learn when diving, most of which in retrospect are easy as pie in the pool sessions,  not so much when you have to demonstrate them in the ocean.  One such skill is taking your regulator (read: source of life and happiness, that which brings the air to your lungs) out of your mouth, not hold your breath but let little air bubbles float out through your pie-hole and then put it back into your mouth, purge the water out by using the wonderful button made for that purpose or forcefully do it yourself and then start to breathe again,  Ah!!!!!  Air!!!!!  They key phrase there is PUT IT BACK INTO YOUR MOUTH.  Only once recently when demonstrating that skill, combined with another one,  I couldn’t seem to open my usually big fat mouth to get the whole thing past my lips to make the obligatory seal. (Not the animal, the seal that allows the air to go into your face and not out and up to the surface, thus deferring death for yet another dive.)

You haven’t lived, literally, until you’ve had Ashley slam a regulator into your mouth and not let go until you’ve regained your composure, gotten your lips around the whole mouthpiece and realized you could breathe.   One of her students found out after a training dive that she’d been a Master Sergeant in the Army and remarked “no wonder she’s so forceful” – actually, son, she’s just not going to let you die on her watch.

This Part I has gone on longer than I intended, so I will stop now.  I’m realizing that this journey is going to take up quite a bit of blog time and space.  The more I remember about this past 9 months-that-seems-like-years – well, the more I realize how much I have to put down for personal posterity.

So more to come later, including the story behind this piece of advice: when you are diving and slightly panicked and holding on to the buoy line for dear life (totally unnecessary but as I said…slightly panicked) do not grab your instructor’s snorkel while she is trying to help you.

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