Standing At The Water’s Edge

My father taught me to swim when I was eight years old, which was old by Florida standards. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to learn, it was just one of those things that got pushed off, delayed by other weekend plans or strange and unexpected home repairs. When we finally started practicing, we started small. He taught me to float first and then how to kick, while lying on my stomach and holding onto the pool’s edge. After I mastered those techniques, we moved onto swimming, which I practiced by lying across his overstretched arms. I would alternate the strokes — left, right, left — while kicking wildly in place. I don’t remember how many lessons we had, but one day it clicked. I was swimming, and I was elated. After that, I wanted to be in the pool every minute of everyday, and thankfully my dad was almost always willing to oblige. I would swim and retrieve weighted diving rings and do front-flips, backflips, and headstands, all while making sure he was watching. When we played together we would splash my mother, who was sitting in a lawn chair nearby, or he would hoist me on his shoulders and trudge through the pool. I would giggle and laugh because I knew what was coming, and he never disappointed me, always throwing me up in the air or dunking me beneath the water’s surface.

We were always laughing. We were always together.

But by the summer of 96’, things had changed.

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