Happiness is: Not Drowning

Friends, good morning from Winchester, Virginia, where your good friend  Sarah is missing her morning swim. 

 

You have to understand something about me, though….I have an incredibly strong phobia about drowning.  I am terrified and thrilled with the ocean and the sea.  I am 87% confident this is how I will finally succumb and give up the last of my 9 lives.  Lord knows I have already cashed in 5 of them, what with the tornado, being hit by a semi truck trailer, the flight from Laguardia airport that never should have taken off and immediately had to do an emergency landing, some random episodes in Brussels, and various other ‘adventures.’  Two years ago I almost got pulled out to sea by a super strong undercurrent off the coast of Maui, and that made me realize it was time to face one of my fears.

 

Learning to swim as a kid included being thrown into the deep end as my uncle Peter yelled, “Now Swim!”  This was repeated enough times that eventually I learned how to doggy paddle, for self-preservation, after mouthfuls of water and feelings of sheer panic.  Eventually I figured out the breaststroke—without my face in the water, the backstroke, and how to do handstands under water, but I never learned the crawl.  Not properly.

 

This past summer I had made a pact with myself that when I returned from my business travel to Australia and Japan that I would learn how to swim like a grown-up, or, more accurately, like the 7 year olds at the pool at the gym that I watched with envy.  They were fearless, these kids, and I felt like a flailing cow in the water around them.  I signed up for lessons at LifeTime Fitness with Coach Lance, who is the Triathlon coach.

 

He had me buy fins. He had me swim with a floaty board with my hands extended and my feet kicking.  Then he had me buy goggles and do the same thing without my hands extended but instead at my side, relaxed, as my feet kicked.  Back and forth, back forth across that pool, me constantly thinking I would drown and panicking as I tried to take in as deep a breath as I could each time I surfaced. 

 

Then he gave me a PVC tube, about ½ inch (1 cm) in diameter, and he told me to hold that in front of me, both hands attached, as I kicked and had to pull my head up out of the water to breathe.  Next step was sessions where he had me wear a full on head snorkel, with the tube coming off the center of the front of my head, rather than off the side, like you do when you scuba.  I am scuba certified through PADI, so I knew how this breathing worked.  

 

Finally he had me wear fins, wear the goggles, wear the snorkel, and use the PVC stick, as I switched hands over and over, each one individually grasping the stick held out in front of me as the other hand scooped/stroked the water.  In between all of this, 5 year old Ashley cheered and clapped, saying, “Yay, Sarah!  You did it!” as I made it in 2 breaths up and down the almost Olympic pool. I thanked her and wondered quietly to myself if her hot dad was single.  Every day we practiced with that damn stick, with that damn snorkel, with those damn fins. Every day I felt clunky and mechanical, wondering when I would finally learn to swim.  Every day Coach Lance would send me emails saying, “All in.  I believe in you,” and I would go back and face him and that pool and my fears, every day, over and over, until we got to the last lesson.

 

At our last lesson, Coach Lance, as usual started by saying, “Sarah, I am so excited for you, I am so excited for you to learn so much.”  I laugh at him every time he says it, because he says this to the 5 year olds, and I feel like a little girl when he says these things, even though I am secretly pleased to have a Coach that really coaches me and pushes me and believes in me.  He is the very best coach I have ever had.  Today was our last lesson.

 

After his usual “excited for you” speech, he said, “Take off the fins.  Take off the snorkel.  Set the board aside. Swim 2-25s (two lengths of the pool), and breathe as often as you need to."  And then, like a little stingray, like a chubby little flounder, like an eel, I did.  I swam and swam and swam my little heart out, breathing to the left, then breathing to the right.  I looked down at the bottom of the pool in my pink goggles, I felt the water come up over my pink swim cap, I felt my strong legs kicking, kicking, kicking from the hips as my belly button turned left, then right as I breathed and swam.  I felt my head finally be under water enough that my glide was just right.  I felt my hands come up out of the water and then scoop and stroke the water until they briefly rested at my side before coming back up to do it again.  I felt my heart beat strong, I felt my lungs take in water, I felt myself spitting out water I had breathed in, and I did not feel panicked, I felt strong and powerful and like a little fish.  I felt free and joyful and so happy that when I reached the end of the pool and touched the wall, I was smiling even before I came up out of the water, which whooshed right up behind me, I had such a strong stroke.  I could swim.  Finally, finally, I could swim.

 

Coach Lance clapped and cheered the last meters of my swim, and he practically fell into the pool when he ran over to fist bump me.  The other athletes who were there at the pool with me each morning—the super hot triathletes who had coached me on stroke and breathing, on what type of gear to buy and who had commented each day on my swimming to encourage me---they all stopped and cheered.  I felt like a 7 year old girl, but I felt happy from tip to toe, I was so very proud that I finally, finally had done it. I had learned how to swim.

 

Friends, today’s happiness comes from facing one of my most shameful fears:  not knowing how to do something most of you are really good at.  I never took swimming lessons before, because we could not afford it.  I knew I loved the water---you cannot get me out of the ocean when we vacation.  This is the reason the top of me is tan and the bottom of me is not so much---because I am almost always in the water, and you cannot get me out, I love it so much.

 

Today, I hope you think about something you always wished you learned how to do, and I hope you go do it.  I feel like a champion, even though I am still a chubby little flounder, but I am in that water, and I am a swimmer. I could not be more proud of Lance for being such an excellent coach, and I am just the littlest bit proud of me, too, for following through and doing something that made me so scared for so long.  When we are grown up, sometimes we are the only ones who can pat ourselves on the back and say, “Atta girl,” and that, today, is what I am doing for myself.  May you, too, have the chance to Atta Boy and Atta Girl yourselves, because you are worth it, and it feels so good.

Wishing you lots of love from Virginia,

Your Good Friend Sarah