Tale from the Deep End

So… you know those childhood memories that we all have. The ones that seem so laden with meaning and significance. The ones that were certainly pivotal moments sent as valuable lessons. The life altering ones. We all have a few. My first one is from when I was five. Five? How can anyone possibly remember anything that happened at the age of five! Unless of course said person is six. Well, I’m sure the story has been embellished by my overactive imagination, the occasional dream, maybe a film here and there… I remember once sharing the story with my father, the protagonist of this tale as it so happens, and he also looked a bit confused. Maybe he was surprised that I remembered. Maybe he was shocked that he had dispensed such sage advice. Maybe the moment wasn’t worthy of the brain space for him because it was simply a father passing on clichéd wisdom to his kid. But regardless of his wonderment and the unlikelihood that my memory of this event should be so vivid, it happened. It definitely happened. Because I refuse to accept that I could fabricate anything so well that it would leave such a lasting lucid imprint on my way of viewing the world.

It all started on the Brooklyn Bridge. I think. I was spending the weekend with my father, his wife and her son, my stepbrother. We got along just fine. We weren’t biological siblings, but we fought and made up like the best of them. Our sibling rivalry was authentic enough. We were all headed to the YMCA for a swim competition that my father had signed my stepbrother and me up for. Sidenote: I have no problem ending sentences with prepositions, and will do so. Frequently. Nevertheless, I will always question, for myself, whether or not it’s feasible to avoid them. So… back to the bridge. I had been swimming since I was a baby. My mother tells me that she threw me in the pool when I was one during a Mommy and Me swim course. It was the 70s. Sink or swim, baby! I could imagine it was traumatizing for her. But the good news is: I swam. And I‘ve loved the water ever since. So all three feet of me, I was on the small side, had no qualms about entering a swim competition. That is, until I saw the pool.

When we got to the YMCA, we headed to the sign up area, which happened to be in the pool area. The Olympic-sized pool area. Maybe it wasn’t Olympic-sized. But in my mind’s eye, at three feet small, it was Olympic-sized. And I panicked. My stepbrother panicked, too. And then he backed out. Maybe he hadn’t been thrown in a pool as a baby. My father, picking up on the scent of panic in the air, told me that I didn’t have to go through with it if I didn’t want to. I’m pretty sure a large part of me didn’t want to. That much I can’t remember. But I decided to do it anyway. I was there. We were all there. And, even at that tender age, I was a people pleaser. And I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. Not that anyone ever hinted that they would be disappointed if my scrappy three feet didn’t find their way into that pool. But I knew that it would definitely be cooler if they did. So I told my father I was going to swim.

He arranged for me to have a spot in an outside lane. That way I would be able to hold onto the wall if I needed to. Made sense. Then the announcement came: swimmers, take your mark. I walked over to my spot. I was wearing a red bathing suit. Did I even own a red bathing suit at that age? The devil is in the detail. And for whatever reason my brain stored this story with me in a red bathing suit. I could offer some psychoanalytic interpretation involving lifeguards and superheroes in red spandex bodysuits saving lives and saving the day. But I’m sure it’s simpler than that. Maybe my bathing suit was indeed red. So there I am on the jumping block in my red suit, and the whistle blows. I jump. And now the Rocky theme song is playing in my head. Now. As in present day. Not in the pool. Because it wasn’t at all Rocky-esque in that pool. For all my years of being exposed to water, I was not yet a particularly good swimmer. My journey across the pool and back was a spastic mix of dog paddling, gasping, grasping for that wall, smacking limbs against the lane barriers, going under, breaking the surface… It was a fight to the finish. Me versus the water. The water won. Or at least it showed me who was boss. If I didn’t place last then I placed second to last. I got out, or maybe was pulled out, of the pool. My stepbrother was pointing and laughing. As any true sibling would have. “You lost!”. Yep. In full on flailing style.

I don’t know how long the taunting lasted before my father stepped in. This whole story is about the moment my father stepped in. He looked at me and he looked at my stepbrother and then he said the words that I have held on to for all these years. And I really mean held on to. It’s not as if I was actively embracing his insight at seven or ten or even fifteen. But somewhere, in the deep recesses of my brain it burrowed in. Hibernating until the moment for me to receive this message, and its full value, was ripe. So… back to the edge of the pool. Me in my red bathing suit. Wet, cold, a bit battered from the defeat. And my father says: “She didn’t lose. She won. Because she tried. And every time we try, we’re a winner.” I warned you that it was clichéd. And maybe it’s a message that has become so overused, now that parents applaud their children for everything from tying a shoe to putting away a stuffed bear to flushing the toilet. But for me, years later, it resonates. On that day it was nothing more than the ammunition I needed to point out that my stepbrother, in fact, was the loser. But now, far removed from that moment and that childish impulse to tease, I see this as a lesson everyone needs to embrace.

We so often defeat ourselves by not trying. Be it a new job, a new city, a new relationship, a new hobby… We never make it off that jumping block. For me, at five, that plunge was nothing more than a swim competition. Years later, I’d like to think that it triggered something inside of me. A programming of sorts. The switch that made me the type of person who was more afraid of not trying than of trying and losing. Not to say that I haven’t more often than not shied away from doing something because the thought of making a complete buffoon of myself was too daunting. But I’d like to think that my five-year old, red bathing suit clad self often manages to prod me into taking the plunge. Smash, thrash, flash and flail be damned!