Learning to Float

"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.  When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown.  Instead you relax, and float." ~ Alan W. Watts

It took me a very long time to learn how to float.  When I finally figured it out, it was one of my favorite, most relaxing things, though I haven't had much of a chance, lately.

The first time, I was around the age of 6.  I had a best friend when I was 6.  Her name was Maggie.  She lived a short city block away.  I met her around the time I was 4.  In those days, even when I was 5 years old, it was not unusual to walk by myself to her house.  These were different times.  One summer day, I accompanied Maggie's family to a little lake by the mountains.  I recall Maggie's mother telling me that this lake was salty, and this would help me to float.  Maggie's mother set me upon the water on my back on a hot August day (I seem to think it was August).  To my delight, after a couple of tries at relaxing, I was floating!  I recall not knowing how to stop floating, so I just kept floating, happily looking up at the sky.  Maggie's mother was not far away.  Eventually she helped me come out of the float.  The afternoon at the lake went really well.  Trust came to me easily.

The second time, it was a couple of years later.  Maggie had moved away by then and I was with other neighborhood kids.  We were dropped off by a parent at a "swimming and tennis club" nearby.  It was not fancy, just swimming and tennis, and this family belonged to the club, so I was able to be their guest.  The pool was very loud and crowded.  And I can't even quite remember who it was who set me up in a float - but it wasn't a parent or adult.  It worked, and I was floating on my back again.  I can't remember any adults very close, just lots of kids (surely a lifeguard as well, but not very near).  Even so, I was "kind of relaxed" (not like on the lake, which one would think would have been scarier, but it wasn't).  I floated for a short while, and then all of a sudden a splashing boy came wildly by and he intentionally "dunked me" (or so I thought).  It wasn't very deep, but deep enough for my height, and there were too many kids around.  I thought in that instant I might drown.  I didn't know how to get to the surface.  To this day, I don't recall how I did, but I did, coughing and sputtering, and then I somehow got myself out of the pool.  And didn't go in again.

That was the end of my trust in floating.  For years after that, I might get in a pool just to walk in shallow water, but I wouldn't even try to float.  Nor did I want to. 

I was somehow brave enough to be an assistant for the swim team at least part of high school, but I was mostly in the back room typing up results on a manual typewriter, and on carbon copies (where you couldn't make a mistake).  I rarely went close to the water, and nobody knew I couldn't float or swim.  I did become a good typist, however.

The years passed.  I was a young adult in my first job in my 20's, and I had heard of a swimming teacher who could teach anyone.  Sure enough, this teacher was wise - she was patient and nurturing.  She gave me things to hold onto and also kept me steady.  At some point, I was floating again, but she never left my side.

She used to hand me empty milk jugs to hold onto while floating.  They clearly (in retrospect) did no real good whatsoever, and I had enough education at the time to know this.  But this wasn't about "logic".  It was about trusting, and they gave me security.  Well, one day, I was holding on to a single milk jug, and she said to try to let go of it.  And I did.  She wasn't holding onto me or all that near.  I was floating!  It took all that time to learn how to trust the water again, but it was actually trust that led to trust. 

 

 

 

Lake photo by Susan Larison Danz