The Deep End

There was no wind that sunny blue morning as I walked across the bridge toward the city. The waterway was mirror calm and reflected puffy white clouds that connected the sky to the upper harbour. On one shore a stack of flattened cars waited to be shipped out by barge, and on the other, tugboats in drydock stood shrouded in ghostly plastic with masts that could be steeples. When I peered over the railing at the green water below, I could make out the shadow of the bridge but I was so high up I could barely see myself standing on it. There were flashes of moving light under the surface and for a moment I thought it could be the white marks on a killer whale but we were too far into fresh water for the seals they preyed on. Every time these underwater shafts of light appeared, the bridge shook and when I turned round, I realized the lights were reflections from the high windows of double decker buses that passed over the bridge. The focused rays pierced the green water, turned yellow, and were reflected back to the underside of the bridge. I didn't want drivers to get nervous if they saw me looking over the railing for too long so I carried on walking toward mid-span.

Expanses of water show us an upside down version of ourselves, or they wind-scramble us until we are lost in a turbulent universe. We look into a swimming pool and see playful rhomboids dancing on the bottom, into green lakes where dancing sunbeams stream into the depths like a yellow borealis, or at the ruffled blue one waters of a Van Gogh impasto, and finally into black water where there is nothing but mystery and shivers. Water is a necessity of life so it is not a surprise it exerts an attraction. Lying on a beach in the aftermath of a storm, it is impossible not to be seduced by the eternal beat of the waves breaking.

I had an early relationship with water. My grandparents had retired to a house beside a lake where my family spent every August. August was the hottest month, a time of peaches, corn on the cob, hot dogs, roasting marshmallows, and my birthday. My first experience with lake water was when my mother sat me down on the pebble beach with my feet in the water, where I was unexpectedly knocked over by a wave from a motorboat. I got water up my nose and probably screamed bloody murder but it wasn't enough to make me afraid of the stuff. If somebody held me from behind I could dip into the lake and blow amusing bubbles, making all the slobbery sounds I wanted, and be pleasantly shocked when my flailing arms splashed water in my face. When I learned to walk without help, I could wade into the water without anyone holding hands with me as long as I kept my feet wide apart because our beach was rocky. Every so often I would step on a sharp stone, lose my balance, and plop down on my backside. If I fell down while I was wading, the secret to avoiding pain was to keep my nose above water. One summer when my parents came back from a weekend away to Grand Coulee Dam, they brought my brother and I white rubber diving masks with yellow lenses. We spent the next two summers peering into the underwater world with no danger of water getting into our eyes or noses.

The first steps toward real swimming meant putting aside the face masks and learning to exhale through our noses underwater. We called this bobbing, like it was a sport on its own, learning to duck our heads under and breathe out our noses while we were still submerged. For the first while I kept my eyes closed because the fresh water stung, but vision wasn't necessary for the exercise. I'd worry about the eyes later. My swimming goals at that stage were about not getting a noseful.

The next hurdle was treading water. I was a kid who panicked if I was over my depth. At first I tried the technique in shallow water so my feet could reach the bottom when I started to sink, but once I mastered the art of staying afloat, it was a small step to stretching out, kicking frantically with my feet, and paddling my arms underwater like a dog digging a hole. I was surprised to get from A to B on the first try.

The dog paddle is not a very dignified way to swim, and this was put into focus by my aunt, who did a graceful forward crawl. She could glide through the water like a swan, careful to make minimal splashes with her feet, as one after the other her arms rose like a graceful wing. Her gently cupped hands pointed straight ahead before they dived underwater ahead of her like dolphins that have barely broken the surface. I had already learned the breast and sidestroke from my genteel English grandmother in her heavy ruched bathing suit, but the way her daughter, my aunt, did the crawl, was the right way to swim, much more elegant than the childish dog-paddle. I tried my aunt's Australian crawl but struggled to time the breathing correctly. I could only do two strokes with my face submerged before I got confused, so I gave up trying to be as good as her, and settled for an easier version of the stroke that kept my head above water and allowed me to see where I was going.