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My Life in the Swimming Pool
I have discovered that I do some of my best work while swimming in the pool. I think of this as the unbearable lightness of swimming against the almost imperceivable current. This got me to reminiscing about an experience that took place more than half a century ago…
It was the summer of 1960 when I first learned to swim. We were at the Riviera Hotel in Palm Springs for a long weekend, my mother and the man she was dating, David. That pool looked like the entire Pacific Ocean to five year old me. My birthday was coming up in less than two weeks and this trip was presented to me as an early birthday gift. I was impressed and ready to dive in. The missing element was being able to swim.
Over the following four days I had more fun than I knew was possible. I splashed around in the shallow end, put my face underwater but didn’t open my eyes, and made many new friends. In the pool I couldn’t tell if some of them were boys or girls or kids or grownups but it didn’t matter. I was in my own kind of Heaven.
At night when my mother was tucking me into bed in our hotel room I remember telling her it felt like I was still in the pool. I could feel the water all around me and the motion from the waves created by so many people swimming simultaneously. She put some drops in my eyes, itchy and red from the exposure to so much chlorine.
