Our seventh morning in the hot natatorium. I sat in a white plastic chair above Ford, my sundress sticking to my legs while beads of sweat trickling down my cheeks. Meanwhile, naked with resurfaced anxiety, Ford threw pleas of desperation at me through chattering teeth and purple lips. And I could immediately identify with this feeling of his. I disappeared into my mind, where an abysmally blue open ocean dropped beneath me. I remembered looking down beyond my suspended feet at a shipwreck, one hundred feet below. I remember the way panic feels in a racing heart, chattering teeth, trembling body , and a wild shallow breath that I couldn’t uncoil.
I coached him at breakfast, an hour before class. He bent my positive vibes backwards and refused to go. Today I decided not to talk so much, but to firmly remind him of the challenges and the fact that he was, indeed, going to face them. Still, there he was in the water, panicking.
One boy floated on his back, waiting for his turn to swim in the deep water. He spat a stream of water towards the ceiling. The girl beside him made ape calls to an elderly man running in the next lane. The third girl silently stared at Ford. And Ford, for his part, was negotiating as best he could in a frenzied squeal: “Coach Heather? Coach Heather? I’m scared! I want to go to the little-deep side! Please can we go to the little-deep side?”
I wanted to have magic hands to rest on his shoulder and ease his fright. Instead, the best I could do was clench my fists and shove out my thumbs, pinning my grin from one ear to the next, shouting “That was even better than the last time! Way to go!” It was agonizing for me to watch him worry, though I knew his pain, in the face of all my applaud. As if I owned part of the problem. Did I do something wrong? When, of course, the very real fear is his own acquisition, because he is his own person and he is four. I can’t blame myself for everything, as hard as I try and as egocentric as I probably am.
But he did it. He jumped into the pool today, smack onto the pool noodle and splashing the teacher’s wide smile. I was suddenly able to breathe, and the world started turning again. I wrapped him with praise in a warm white towel and for the rest of the day he greeted everyone, everywhere, by inquiring,
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT? I HAD MY SWIM LESSON THIS MORNING AND I JUMPED INTO THE DEEP END!”
