The Water Will Hold You

Slipping into the pool for the first time in nearly two years, it came back to me—the sense of well-being that I find in the water. Every time I return there's a relief in knowing that the water will hold me gently floating or gliding lazily on my side. It takes such slight effort to move.

Having been pulled under in the surf not long after we moved to Ventura, California in 1958, I was terrified of the water. My mother, who had learned to swim on a Montana lake and loved the water, piled my brother and me into our Ford station wagon and drove us to the Mill School pool at the edge of town. Recognizing my fear as I tiptoed across the shallow end of the pool, the instructors were kind and patient, teaching me to trust the water and eventually how to swim. 

From then on swimming pools were the centerpiece of our summers. The smell of chlorine always takes me back to the Buena High School Pool where my brother Jimmy and I spent entire days helping with swim classes in the mornings, hanging out in the afternoons and returning in the evenings for one last swim.

My favorite pool memories are of learning synchronized swimming. I was never a fast swimmer; water ballet suited my aquatic skills far better than competitive racing. I felt graceful as a mermaid. Our dances were choreographed to popular songs and to this day I can't hear Percy Faith's version of a "Theme from a Summer Place" without wanting to lift my arms in a slow arching backstroke. Sadly, the song usually starts playing in a grocery aisle or a crowded elevator. 

 Last week when I first went back to the pool it was happily busy—a couple of kids playing with their mom, a woman teaching a younger woman to swim and a pair of older women doing slow laps. Eventually they all departed; the empty pool was all mine. The water did what it never fails to do. I felt secure and calm, sleek and refreshed.