Do you swim? I do. I think I have been doing this all my life… Maybe even pre-life… backstroke in the womb! I come from a long line of swimmers. But we’ll start with my mother.
She spent a lot of her growing up years around lakes because my granddad raced D-hydroplane boats on the weekends. She had to know how to swim. And she could swim… Like a fish!
When Mom had the three of us kids, she taught us to swim along with half of the kids in La Junta. (Her good friend, Frances Keck taught the other half.) But I digress.
I take you to my brother and me in the midst of junior life saving in La Junta, Colorado where our mother is one of the two instructors. Everyone is doing great and powering through this course. Yours truly is maybe powering through this course. I can do the laps. I can save the victim in that water. I can do everything but one thing that is required to pass Red Cross Junior Life Saving. I cannot float dead man.
Yep. I can’t do that dead man float to save my soul. The swimming was really tiring but the dead man float was impossible. My mother would try to make me feel better by sharing that I could breast stroke better than anyone… which is ironic since I had for many years, no chest at all! In fact, I would watch my voluptuous girlfriends float like lily pads and wonder if there was something about their chest that made it possible for them to lilt above the water like that while I did not. But again, I digress.
The last day of the swimming course was fast approaching and I still couldn’t do this thing. I could see that my mom is getting pretty worried that her daughter (the instructor’s daughter… How embarrassing for her) was about to flunk junior life saving. So she hauled me into the pool alone one morning, and I worked like a son-of-a-gun to do this float.
“Arch your back, Carolyn.” “Don’t move your hands, Carolyn.” Don’t move your feet, Carolyn.” (I’m thinking, “Don’t swallow half the water in the pool, Carolyn.”) Shoot, I’m choking and taking in water like the Titanic but my mother is so focused on the fact that her daughter can’t float, that was apparently a mute point. After about an hour of this, I was thinking, “Please God, drown me or my mother… take your pick, but end it!”
Well nothing seemed to make me float and the day of the test showed up. I just wanted it over so I could go home, and hide in my closet in humiliation. I’m passing my friends and they’re saying, “Can you do the float?” I’m thinking, “Not only no but hell no.” But instead I just nod a decline.
So the testing proceeds. All goes well and then the dead man float. Everyone agrees to let me go last… Everyone including my brother pass with flying colors. They jump in with all their clothes on over their swimsuit and swim to the bottom to peel them off… then up to the surface and do the float for a certain amount of time. Now me. I am about to jump in when everyone shouts, “Look it’s Jimmy Born.” (Now Jimmy Born is the fire chief and some kind of awesome swimmer. We all sort of look up to him like the God of Water.) I am told that Jimmy will be giving me the last part of my life saving test.
Yeah… no pressure. Just take your test from the God of Water, fail in front of your class and humiliate your mother and yourself. And then I die.
Jimmy told me to jump in and I did, fully clothed. He jumped in with me. I sank like a rock and so did he right along side of me. I stripped the clothes off in nothing flat and swam for the surface with Jimmy not a foot away and right next to me matching me stroke for stroke. I started the dead man float. And, it went pretty good. I arched my back and didn’t move a muscle. I lay perfectly still in the water and sank just as perfectly about four feet under the surface. I stayed there hoping that if I sank but still did the time I might pass, which of course is sheer folly. I even hoped I might miraculously float to the top and win the prize. But no. I stayed there, four feet down and drowning. (Headline… Swimming teacher’s daughter sunk like stone and drown in the La Junta Municipal Pool!)
As all of this was racing through my head and my lungs about to burst I felt a strong hand yanking me up to the surface. It was Jimmy hauling me up and telling me to swim to the side of the pool, which I did. I squared off my shoulders preparing to become dog meat. But no!
I learned that day that Jimmy Born, God of Water and fire chief, can’t float either! He told the instructors to just pass me because I didn’t have enough body fat to float. Then he told me that some day I would probably float okay but it wouldn’t be for a quit a while.
He was correct. It took me three pregnancies into marriage and family to develop enough body fat to float. Now I can do it very well. I swim often and enjoy the sport more than ever.
Tonight I swam the mile in our community Olympic size swimming pool; and, I leave you with this beautiful image of life in the water.
I had just finished my last lap. As I sat on the edge of the pool catching my breath, a little girl about four years of age skipped over to the shallow end and took one step down into the water. Her tree trunk chubby legs bowed. She pulled her swimsuit aside at the crotch and let it go. Yes, friends, she peed into the pool water! As she gleefully put her swim suit back into place and skipped toward to her daddy who is paying absolutely no attention to her at all, I looked at Hubby who was still swimming laps not five feet from where she was. I thought to myself from the side of the pool, “God, I’m blessed!”
May your swimming adventures fill you with joy, and float you in clear clean water.
Best… Carolyn Thomas Temple