By Shoney
Lately I’ve been focusing on getting my legs and my lower body higher in the water and trying to kick harder so that I can hear the water splashing. When I try to kick, it is hard work. I have to stop, panting by the edge of the pool. I think of my legs as so powerful from years of running, but in the water they are not nearly as strong as on land.
Beth taught me to swim on my back with both arms up in the air, then down into the water, trying to kick twenty times between each arm stroke. It’s called double-arm backstroke. I can kick about ten times before I have to move my arms again which is an improvement — it means I can hold myself up on my back and move in the water just by kicking, which isn’t something I could do before.
Swimming – I have a hard time writing the word when it applies to what I am doing because it is so clumsy – on my back is easier for me than on my front. When I am on my front I can’t breathe on my left side, though I can on my right. This frustrates me. I wonder if I will ever figure it out.
I’m looking forward to the day that I go to the pool as my touchstone, the way I go to running. I run for comfort, as meditation. It reduces anxiety and allows me to mull over ideas and gives me pleasure. Since swimming doesn’t come naturally to me, I go to the pool often, five or six days a week. Sometimes I think I should get a prize for going so frequently.
Recently one of my mentors, a professor who changed my life by helping me become a teacher, a better parent, and a writer died unexpectedly. I thought about him while I swam – stunned by his death. Then I did what he would have advised, I wrote about it. He helped me become a better teacher by modeling good teaching, by helping me find/hear the voice of each student. He made me a better student too — by appreciating my background and all the quirks that make me who I am. He believed I could accomplish my dreams — he dreamed them with me and was invested in my accomplishing them. He allowed me to envision my future best self through his eyes.
I cried while swimming.
I think Beth sees the swimmer in me, even when I don’t — and she honors who I am, and where I am each week. She holds the vision so I can become the swimmer that I am meant to be.
Dear Shoney: Yes, I have been doing this all along. I am certain that you will be a swimmer. ~ Beth
Fast forward twelve months: It’s January, 2014, just over a year since I started working with Shoney. She started to swim laps after I broke my pelvis in January, 2013, and could no longer teach her. She got up to 32 laps of backstroke and freestyle. When I finally returned to work and happened to see her swimming, I cried. She looked like a swimmer instead of someone who was learning to swim. I was floored. To have worked with her has been one of life’s greatest gifts to me. It was truly an honor.