Short Distance Water Conduct

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In lieu of finding blog-worthy things in the suburban limbo in which I currently exist, here is a glimpse into the life of a swim teacher (me). It's almost impossible to describe these kids (or in some cases, adults) as they test out unfamiliar waters, some wild and uninhibited, melting seamlessly with the aquatic world, and some stiff and unnatural, paralyzed by fear.

There's the 4-year-old Indian boy who stands on the deck, his toes clinging to the edge of the pool, willing himself to leap into my waiting arms in the 3 1/2 feet of water below. Instead he just hops in place when I say "Jump!" Trepidation keeps him from stepping forward on his own into the water he'd already been swimming in for half an hour. He can only get himself to hop once or twice and then stumble backward, saying, "I can't do it! I am jumping!" When he does go for it, he clings to me with the pinching, clawing fingers of an animal outside his element.

In another class I teach a boy the same age, who seems to be trying to fuse his very molecules with the shifting water. He is weightless, fearless, and does not listen. He's constantly submerged, opening his eyes and mouth, trying to fill himself with the swirling freedom and fluidity that this unearthly environment provides.

Then there's the little girl who can't grasp the concept of blowing bubbles. She'll begin to lower her face to the water, exhaling, exhaling, her tiny mouth curled to release only the slightest whisper of air, and then as soon as her lips reach the surface she opens wide and with a quick and mighty inhalation, fills her delicate lungs with water.

A 6-year-old, new to swim lessons, carefully tried lowering her mouth, then nose, then eyes into the water, and before long she was gliding off the steps, kicking and emboldened and strong. Half-way through her first day, she suddenly started cheering, "I love swimming lessons! This is the best day of my life!" Success.

The other day I spent a delightful 30 minutes with a teenage girl with Down syndrome. Her favorite thing to do was go under water together, sit on the bottom, then wave at each other before twirling around in circles, coming up for air, and doing it again. Again and again. She stared at me through her enormous snorkel goggles and I marveled at the pure silence surrounding us, the simplicity of the moment. It was the kind of fun most people of a certain age don't allow you to have.

At the end of that day I swam back and forth across the deep end with a bookish 9-year-old boy who loved to chat. We discussed butterfly kick, and after giving it a quick try, he returned to the wall and proclaimed that, after backstroke, butterfly kick was his "favorite short distance water conduct." This is a direct quote. I laughed and commented on his choice of words and, after swimming another lap, he popped his head up and said, "If you're wondering about my vocabulary, it's probably like that because I spend 99% of my time reading books above my grade level. Mostly fiction."

Lattes, Lazers, and Little Girls

 Having spent all my money on 7 weeks of travel with my beloved, I am for now reduced to settling for whatever odd job I can squeeze a few bucks out of. The other day, it was babysitting. I found the family on craigslist. The lady of the house said her mother was in town to help with the kids while she recovered from surgery, but she needed back-up for the day. So I went.

She answered the door with stiff, shiny arms and a lavender velcro towel fastened around her chest. Moving around the house in quick, jerky motions, like a robot, she introduced me to her kids and her mother, a large woman who wore black stretch pants and reeked of cigarette smoke. The surgery, it turns out, was "voluntary." Soon her arms would be free of sun damage and the freckles she's always hated. That day, though, her arms were freshly lazered, and looked like uncooked sausages, red greasy speckled bloated sausages. She smelled like chemicals.

Scattered around the floor amongst toys and giant, life-sized stuffed animals, were two sweet little girls and a rolly baby boy, the girls made even sweeter by the entire ginger bread house they were allowed to eat for lunch. "You sure you don't want a sandwich, girls? I have cheese and salami here..." grandma said, trailing off. "I swear ya haven't eaten any real food today! Oh well..."

I was just grandma's helper while mom oozed medicinal ointment all over her bed upstairs, so I stayed out of it. At one point, grandma got us Starbucks. She said "latte" so many times I'm convinced she doesn't know any other kind of coffee beverage. "All Starbucks is, anyway," she said, "is just reeeally strong coffee." She laughed, then added, "with steamed milk!" She kept laughing to herself, seemed to think she'd made either some kind of joke or a very shrewd observation. It wasn't long before I could no longer figure out how to respond to the things she said.

Grandma brought her latte from her solitaire game on the computer to the bench on the front porch. She went out there pretty frequently with cigarettes and a romance novel. "The kids don't need to know I smoke," she said. "But when they get older, hell if I'm gonna run outside all the time to do it!"

Mom appeared downstairs every so often, usually to pick at cold orange chicken in a plastic takeout container or tell me more about the benefits of plastic surgery. I was relieved when she suggested I take the kids to the park. We spent a blissful hour, free of mindless (and I mean mindless) adult chatter, playing on the swings and doing gymnastics in the sun.

On our way home, the 5-year-old picked up big fallen leaves off the ground and collected them in a little bouquet, saying it was a bird. "No," she said, "it's two birds. They're flying... when two birds fly together, it's called a celebration."

She said this like it was total, unequivocal fact. And for some reason, this little sentence made the whole day worthwhile to me. It reminded me that so often, it's the kids we should be listening to. All day I'd been hearing chemicals, lazers, tobacco, caffeine. And here she was, the little one. All sugar and leaves and sun and cartwheels. Still young enough to speak in poetry.