In the water, it took me a moment to figure out why my laps felt so chaotic and dizzying. It wasn’t just that I’d had breakfast not long ago, it was the churning of the ice-cold waves. They have a way of lurching and rolling so you can get seasick as you swim. Your horizon is not the calm, flat, artificial blue of the public indoor pool, it chops and changes and every time you poke your head above water it looks different.
My swimming companion went white. White,
even, under the kabuki mask of waterproof sunscreen laced through his stubble. “I’m
really having trouble,” he admitted. What melodrama, I thought.
I would do two more of the 50m laps. One
was fine. Then the waves, being wild, threw up a terrific spray. I was bobbing,
I was flailing. I was trapped by blue – sky above, deep, salty water below, to
my left, to my right. Not landlocked now, I was waterlocked. Throwing an arm
around a skinny lane rope was helpful as hugging a strand of dental floss; it
sank, I went under, I flailed, I breathed in salt water. I repeated this
action: bobbing, flailing, watching arcs of ocean spray toss me under again. It
was sort of mortifying. I was feeling too stupid to call for help. I was
astonished by the situation. “But I can swim,” I thought. “I can’t drown
because I can swim.”
I flailed myself over to the concrete edge
of the pool and grabbed it. It was solid, and I breathed.
No comments:
Post a Comment