COLUMN ONE, a regular feature in the LA Times, is very often
the first item I read each day. Always
good, sometimes it is touching, bringing tears to my eyes. Other times it moves me to anger, and then,
like today’s, it just downright makes me laugh.
Today’s column by writer Kurt Streeter wasn’t intended to be
funny. It is about how he learns to
float in water, a feat he believes to be totally necessary so his young son won’t
grow up with the fear of water that he himself had. The column shows us the emotions he
experiences as he participates in a class of five women and one man (him)
taught for 5 nights by a fellow referred to by his students as “the Swim
Whisperer.”
What made me laugh is that I was reminded of my mother’s
efforts to float, and how, throughout our whole life, if my sister and I wanted
to illustrate the dramatic end of a success story, we’d say a cryptic “She
floated!” and then we’d burst out in laughter.
Here’s our story
Mother was a Kansas girl, being raised in the little wide
spot on the road called Caldwell, a mile north of the Oklahoma border and
almost due south of Wichita. I know
when she was 7 years old, about 1918, her family came out to Newport Beach, CA
for a week-long vacation to see if California weather would help her father’s
health, but apparently it did not, and until she moved to Long Beach in 1930,
whatever water she played in (and I don’t ever remember her talking about it) was
either a lake, a river, or a public pool.
I was born in Long Beach, California in 1935 and my earliest
recollections of being in the water were from the time I was about 5 years
old. I don’t know if my father could
swim either; I think not, because we always were taken to some kind of a lagoon
when we went to the beach, an area where there were no waves, just still,
shallowish water where we could splash around to our hearts content, watched
carefully by mother and daddy.
At that time Long Beach had a very sheltered lagoon that
bordered the Municipal Auditorium. (See
above postcard.) That is where we always
went if we took an outing to the beach. However,
for most of our swimming lessons mother took us to the Long Beach Plunge down
near the Pike. She especially loved the
Plunge, because she didn’t have to worry about sand and sunburn. She never was crazy about the beach or about
getting a tan.
I can see my mother so clearly in my mind’s eye. While those old bathing suits of the 20s
that covered everything up from the knees to the neck were out, 1940s suits
were modest one-piece Jantzen or Cole form-fitting suits. On mother, who was quite thin, they really
weren’t very form-fitting. I
looked around on the internet and found a suit that was something that my
mother would have been wearing about that time; she also never got in the water
without a bathing cap with a strap under her chin to hold it in place. Here’s what she would have been wearing:
Of course neither my sister nor I could remember the
specifics of our swimming lessons. But
always it started with mother demonstrating to us how to float. The problem was that she herself wasn’t very
good at floating and, in fact, couldn’t swim.
While trying to float, she would always raise her head up to make sure we were
watching, which caused her “center of gravity” (her rear end) to point down toward
the sandy bottom -- and under she’d go!
Not wanting to scare us, she’d always turn her back to us and wipe off
her face so when we saw her we’d see the smile, not the fear of drowning, in
her eyes.
She would do this several times, and then she’d say it was
time for us to try. Of course we were
little and really didn’t know what it was we were to learn, but she’d stand
next to us, keep her hands under our little fannies, tell us to “keep our head
back” (which of course was exactly what she couldn’t remember to do) and after
a few tries, she would tell us to practice by ourselves. She’d go get daddy to come watch us while she
put herself through her self-taught routine.
At some point she actually became able to float, but it was long after
we mastered it.
Until we were old enough to go to the beach, or the YWCA
swimming pool (the Plunge was shut down before we ever became old enough to go
by ourselves), she always accompanied us and always gave us a demonstration of
how she could float. Ginnie Lou and I
weren’t particularly interested in floating, since we picked up dog-paddling
very quickly and later added a few more efficient strokes to our repertoire.
But mother was as proud of her float as she could be. She never learned to swim – I think probably
it just wasn’t all that important to her, not having grown up around
water. She certainly didn’t see that the
rest of her life was going to be focused on the beach, the way my sis and I saw
our lives heading.
Many years later Jer and I bought a house with a swimming pool. Mother came out to see it, and I invited her
to bring her suit so she could take a dip.
Well into her late 60s by that point, she no longer even had a swimming
suit and not being a very brave or brazen woman, wisely declined to go skinny
dipping. I phoned my sister that evening
after mom went home and told her that I’d invited her to go swimming. My sister burst out laughing and said, “Can
she still float (It makes me wonder what things I don’t know about that my kids
are going to get a laugh over when I’m gone!).
***
So today when I read about Kurt Streeter and his efforts to
float (yes, he was successful too!), I just had to remember that it just isn’t all
that easy for some people, and Kurt was to be commended for tackling a
thorny problem and then telling us about it.
“Congratulations, Kurt,” I say, “Way to go!.”
Here’s his story; it’s worth reading.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0810-swimfear-20120810,0,2389032.story
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