Blue Enough to Swim In

Sky blue enough to swim in.


I was on my way home tonight, another beautiful night in Southern California, when the sky was so blue it made me want to swim in it.

I always loved the water. I was a swimmer when I was growing up and was in the water every chance I got. I was the kid who would ride his bike to the public pool every day and spend 3 or 4 hours just playing in the water, content as can be.

My mom taught me how to swim, and it was a traumatic experience that I still remember. She might as well just have thrown me into the water and said "Now, swim boy!" No, she's not that cruel. But it felt like she was that cruel when I was little. Looking back, I can say this was probably the first time I was legitimately "PISSED OFF".

Here's what she would do. She'd leave me on the wall of the pool, and back out into the water maybe 3 or 4 feet. Then she'd say "Swim to me, c'mon!" And I'd launch off the wall and dog paddle towards her with the clear goal of making it that 3 or 4 feet.

And then she'd start to back up. She'd do it slowly, but I KNOW she was backing up. I may have been little, but I understood by this time that when a person is standing behind where they were originally standing to start with, they have backed up.

That was annoying. But then she'd deny it! "Mom, stop backing away!!!" I'd shout at her, as I panted for air, certain that my next breath would be my last. "I'm not backing up, J" she'd say calmly, as I'd see her take another small step backwards and the distance between us would increase slightly. I'd be furious.

I always made it to her, of course. I didn't drown. But it sure ticked me off.

In spite of this lesson of measuring trust in cautious cups, I still fell in love with the water. I've always been a solitary kind of guy, and the water became my quiet and peaceful friend. The pool could have been packed from wall to wall, but if I was under water and the sounds were muffled, I was in my own private heaven.

In 8th grade, I joined the swim team. I was desperately looking for a group activity that I could do well, and so far I had failed completely at both little league and baseball. The only thing I liked about little league was the pizza parties after the Saturday evening games. The only thing I liked about basketball was that I got cool new high-top shoes.

There's no way to be nice about it; I was fat in 8th grade. I wore "husky" sized jeans. My mom used to take me to Farm and Fleet, and we'd try on off-brand jeans. No brand names for me, I didn't even get Wranglers. No, we went straight to the off-brands, like "Spangler" and "Lavi Krauss". Seeing how I was shaped like a pear at the time, there was nothing I could do but buy the "husky" sizes. We'd walk toward the register, and mom would make some comment on my weight, and I'd want to eat my feelings of ugliness and fatness. So what if that's how I got fat in the first place?

I think everyone in my family was surprised when I decided to go out for swim team. I think everyone in my family was a combination of dismayed and amused when they found out that we actually wore Speedos at swim meets. Pear-shaped little guys should NOT be put into Speedos.

Incredibly, I was innocent enough that I didn't care too much about being fat and in a speedo. And I was in denial. There were fatter people than me at school...I wasn't that fat after all. I did displace more water than the other guys on the swim team, but I didn't really care.

Workouts were hard, and I wasn't very fast. I wasn't very streamlined, either. I had a nice collection of 6th place ribbons by the end of the summer. Still, I always enjoyed being in the water. And at the end of most practices, they'd let me swim for 5 or 10 minutes in the deep end.

I've always had a thing for wanting to fly. Floating and swimming, immersed in 20 feet of crystal-blue water, I felt like I was flying above the ground. Over the next 3 summers of swimming competitively (and getting better every season), I treasured the moments when I'd fly over the bottom of the deep end, holding my breath longer and longer each time. And when the sky is flawlessly blue like it was the other night, I sometimes imagine that I could dive right in if I wanted to. If I just jumped hard enough, I would break the surface and be immersed in the blue.