Water.
I’ve always loved the water. Family lore has it that my mother had to fight and tug to get me out of the bathtub as a baby. Somehow, before I turned two, I had mastered toileting, much to everyone’s surprise--at least that is how the story ran. Now, not so much looking back as imagining back, I attribute my precocious behavior to the will to stay in that tub, stay in the pool, stay in the lake, so I wouldn’t have to get out to pee—although in the last example, I confess to a joy at peeing any time I chose. In the other spaces, holding it became my mantra. There was no reason to call me out of the water. My parents only did so when there was an actual reason—and I only got out to pee. I was not a barbarian, after all.
Water.
The first place I remember pushing myself to find my own strength, usually in a pool. It’s the place I most associate with setting my own goals, in relationship not to someone else’s performance, but to my own. Memory is elastic, I know. If I lay claim to specifics, there’s no test I can access most of the time. Am I combining memory and imagination? Harvesting family lore? Applying more mature interpretations? Filling in gaps for the sake of the narrative? Leaving out context because it’s confusing? All of these and more. Nevertheless, the memories matter.
I remember the stage of my water-play that I now characterize as “weightless.” At five, I could retrieve coins from the bottom of the pool, in the shallows or in deeper water. I could do a handstand, maintaining position with my toes pointed, for as long as I could hold my breath. I was content to play alone, truly alone, or alone in a crowd. I could swim without splashing and hold my breath without puffing out my cheeks. I could pretend to be flying like Superman as I glided along the bottom. There was no end to the options.
Water.
My dreams were of myself as a dolphin, racing, staying ahead of or alongside boats full of tourists. I was the attraction, not the onlooker. I was gliding, flying, diving, playing, smiling. “We’re going to L.A.,” my parents would say. “We’ll stay in a hotel.” My first thought, “With a pool?” My parents would both smile, “Of course.”
The walls don’t define a pool. The walls were symbols of turning points, not boundaries or stop signs—no matter—as long as I’d keep swimming. Pools are forever if you swim long enough.
The green two-story house on Delores Avenue in San Leandro wasn’t ours. But the 32 x 16-foot pool in the backyard was where I learned to teach. Dad rented that space for Jack’s Swim School each summer. I already knew how to swim. At nine, I often joined my dad in that pool as he taught five-year olds something more than simply how to swim, but more pointedly, how to be at home in the water, how to soak up the freedom of movement and the independence embodied in floating without aid or fear, and of propulsion without any inauthentic cause but their own movement.
Parents congregated under the green corrugated shelter nearby, within view, so as to witness the magic as their children assumed new identities as able swimmers. It didn’t seem like school, as Dad knew children, having never forgotten what it means to be one, and he knew fun, which was a prime mover in his own life. I never saw a child resist his invitations to push forward or to take a risk, or to return his smile with equal alacrity or to doubt his faith in them through any reticence to perform. He’d instinctively inspire, banish the natural fears of the little ones, distracting them masterfully with a patter of Donald Duck or other kid-friendly voices. They’d willingly dunk, float, wiggle, kick, dive, roll over, wink, turtle-float, blow bubbles, or extend themselves in any way he suggested. Within eight lessons, they’d swim, their little arms self-governing, their little legs productively and rhythmically kicking, their heads steady, their eyes open, their little heads turning to take their breaths in sync with their arm strokes, their coordination certainly having been boosted alongside their senses of accomplishment.
I got to demonstrate each and every phase, then join in, and sometimes fill in, channeling his mastery, albeit without the flawless Donald Duck voice—and the lessons about teaching and learning were etched in my DNA, to be transmitted someday to my own children, I hoped, or etched at least in my literal memory, and thereafter in my most creative pursuits, and luckily, not just in a pool. It was among my dad’s most meaningful gifts to me, as it set me on a path I have followed from then on.
Water
In the ocean, lake, river, or pool, I’m no tool user. From early on, it’s always been about freedom from the constraints of equipment. Feeling the water with my hands, my head, my body, my legs and feet--not craving the rush of riding on a board or balancing on single or double water skis, not even needing to wait for a free ride on a wave, body-surfing. All of that is fun, too, but the real joy for me is ME in the water is moving via my own effort, making the time there as natural as it is on solid ground---so that swimming at a normal pace is no more tiring than walking.
Family Lore—and Water
Fan Lake, near Spokane, is beautiful. At the right season, mid-summer, areas near the edge of the large lake are shady because of overhanging trees. Farther out, in any direction, all the way to opposite shores, the water is blue-green, depending on the cloud formations above, if there are any clouds, and if it’s a day without wind, the surface is as calm as a backyard pool’s. En route, we pay a visit to meet my dad’s, and our, Uncle Art, the last surviving sibling of my long-dead grandfather, for whom I am named but whom I never got to meet. The time we spend in Salem, Oregon, is supposed to be the main reason for heading north. It’s a strained visit, and even at 11, I somehow understand that it has been many years since my dad has seen or communicated with this “new” relative, whose face seems familiar, anyway. There is a story there, but it remains secret, having its origins in a generation that has passed. It’s a relief to leave there and to drive farther north to Spokane, although it’s not clear why. I’m not yet wise enough to know that someday I will regret my lack of knowledge about family fractures.
The only geographic reference point in my mind is Fan Lake. Nana Ann, Dad’s mom, went to summer camp there as a girl, and the mark she left for us to see was a plaque above the doorjamb of the lodge about having won the cross-lake swim in 1917. I wanted to swim the lake then and there, to channel Nana, to imagine her joyful emergence from the lake to claim a medal--but I settled for a dip and a quick daydream about her victory as other plans were already in play. I’d visit it again many years later, on leave for a weekend from reserve duty at Fort Lewis, to meet up with “Uncle Bud,” my dad’s best friend from childhood—not really my uncle—and to picnic at the lake with him to hear about the times he and my dad had stolen away from home or school in their teens to drink beer and wrestle with cute girls at that very spot. Lots of daydreams were fueled by the visit to Fan Lake.
Back in Hayward, I was now in possession of a World Series baseball signed by nearly all the ’59 Dodgers, a gift from yet another mystery-man, Old Doc Cowan, a Spokanite and life-long friend of Nana’s, who had met us for lunch and insisted on gifting marvelous items to me and Susie, likely in honor of his long connection with our grandmother, who had disappointed him in leaving Spokane those many years ago, a year or two after losing her husband. It may have been arguments over the inheritance or over the future of the shirt shop owned by my grandfather and one brother that occasioned the split from her husband’s family. It didn’t matter that I was a Giants fan—the Dodger ball would remain in my hands all the way home, a two-day drive, and then have an honored place on my dresser. It was Fan Lake that I would think about for a long time, the memory of that visit brought back to me each time I looked at the baseball perched on my dresser, rather than anything else, even things that should have rated questions.
With a move from the flatlands of Hayward and its post WWII suburban poverty, not an oxymoron, even then, to the Oakland Hills, with tree-lined streets and curving roads lined by greenery, came a graduation of sorts, from backyard swimming in other people’s pools to swimming in my own back yard and then to thinking collectively, as in “What’s it like to be on a swim team?” I had come home from my new school having met several guys I definitely wanted to have as friends. Three of them at a lunch table talked incessantly about their swim team and their coach. Knowing nothing about competition, but confident that I, too, was a swimmer, I joined in. I would learn soon how far behind I was, literally, when it came to racing. Luckily, I was right about my basic skills, right enough so that hard work would even the field for me, or the pool, as it were, eventually.
I pestered Mom and Dad for some weeks about finding a way to join a team. It would mean a daily ride from Mom, after school. It would require her to pack up the new baby, too, twice, actually, to deliver and pick up. All this was made easier when Susie assented to joining, as well. That plan was aborted within weeks when I developed an ear infection and had to sit out for two weeks. By then, Susie had moved on in her own interests, and I had to decide whether to push forward myself. It was one of those times when the easy road would have been a shaping source of shame—as I had been placed with the younger age group in work outs, resulting in a bit of teasing as I played catch-up for months before finally breaking in to the appropriate lane, literally and figuratively. Pride replaced shame in that very moment when I “caught up with my age group,” and I was glad a pool was the setting for the discovery of my own discipline.
Luck was in play, too, I thought, but actually, my dad had known that his old friend, Jack Croghan, who coached the Flying Fins, was going to be good for me. Gruff, gravel-voiced, and direct, Coach became the rubric for my success. After each set of a workout, I’d steal a look, hoping to see signs of approval. They were rare, but so were any loud outbursts about working harder, which were certainly the norm for most others. I came to understand that if my interactions with Coach Jack were confined to a poker face on his part, I was doing something right. On even more rare occasions, he would point an index finger in my direction as I finished a set, and then flash a thumbs-up and an almost imperceptible smile. That was enough for me. I’d push harder and harder, anticipating that simple gesture. And later, as a coach, myself, I had a pair of Jacks to emulate, my dad, who always lifted up, inspired, and buoyed anyone within sight, and Coach Croghan, whose hard-earned twitch of a smile was enough to validate extreme effort. The water was a universe of its own, and for me, it remains so today.