Treading Water

Here is a little-known fact about me: I never learned how to swim.

As the oldest child of immigrant parents who were afraid of everything, I was held back in all athletic activities. Rollerblading, team sports, skiing, class field trips to go canoeing . . . I didn’t even learn how to ride a bike until I was in high school! So as you can imagine, gym class was a nightmare. I never got picked for any teams because my hand-eye coordination was an utter atrocity and I couldn’t run without stumbling over my own feet. The teachers took pity on this floppy, bespectacled noodle of a child by letting me sit on the bench during kickball or simply crawl across the parallel bars during our gymnastics unit because I was incapable of doing anything else.

Fast forward many years to 2024, my year of joy. My year of purposeful discomfort. My year of trying everything that terrified me.

I made myself sign up for an adult swim class at a local gym, and even though my knees were shaking at the sight of the six-lane, 25-meter lap pool, I got in anyway with my swim cap and goggles that were so new, they still had brand stickers over the eyes and my instructor had to say, “Um, hang on, Julie,” and remove them for me.

Here’s what freaked me out about swimming. Underwater, you can’t breathe. You can’t see well. You can’t hear well. You can’t speak. And if you are a petite person of barely 5’4” like myself, the deep end might as well be a yawning chasm. All of this, combined with the generational fear I inherited, made for an intimidating experience. I don’t like water going up my nose at the best of times, and here I was, voluntarily shivering in a pool as my kind but tough ex-Navy teacher insisted that we dunk our heads, fully, five times to begin. “I will be checking the tops of your heads to make sure they’re wet,” she warned us.