I Feel Like a Fish...

The door swung open to steamy air. I hate to swim, my breath whispered to the pool. You see, I've built a narrative for years.

It goes like this...

...I hate to swim.

Standing at this posh therapy pool, pretty statues and plants around, I recalled the young girl who dreaded flip turns and the dark deep blue of our old YMCA pool. My mom let me quit swim lessons once she was convinced that I could reasonably save myself.

Years later I became the mom of two competitive swimmers. When I asked one of my sons what he felt like in the water he looked brightly up at me...

...Mommy, I feel like a fish.

A fish, I wondered...a fish...well, not me...

...I hate to swim.

Ah yes, the irony, the irony, oh the irony that swimming is one of the main cardio sports available to me since my leg amputation. So to noone in particular, swinging the pool doors open last week, I muttered of course...

...and with a whole lot of stubbornness, I determined to get to that water, only confused about how I would get there. Hands gripped tightly on metal rails, I sort of flopped into the water at the bottom of the ramp.

Other women floated and bobbled with all eyes on me. No matter, I thought. As they fell from my awareness, the water took me in, like an old friend. I swooped backwards and forwards, under and over, flipping unpredictably...as my shorter leg has changed my balance. Whoops and cheers began to come from somewhere in me, and one of those other swimmers shushed me and my instructor. It was a quiet, serious sort of pool, I guess. But to me, it was filled with an African drum, a billion decibels of joy that day.

In my different body I submerged in water and was made new, a baptism. Floating, I pulled my little leg up and held it like a baby, looking at that long scar, like a medal of honor, of victory. I can look at my incision now, but for a lot of weeks I couldn't. And I will never be rid of that scar or the memory of that injury. So how could one be cruel and judgmental to a body that worked so hard for me, for my life? Rolling and preening, there I was in that pool filled with this terrific love for my sweet body and how far she had taken me.

But all those years of "hating" to swim...what were they about?

Perhaps a self-consciousness that was never about the water at all. Perhaps I had wished my body to be different or more or better somehow. Perhaps I had convinced myself it was the water...when it was about me and how I was living in my body. Many of us know the times that we bolt into a pool, for that water to cover us. The times we pull and twist and fidget our suits, hoping it can hide parts of our bodies we don't like as much or not at all. The times we hide in a towel on a beach, envious of those around who look like they don't give a damn.

A few days later, Peter and I walked around a lake. He shook his head and said under his breath...

...Some conversations I will never get out of my head.

I asked what he meant...he said that he had just heard some women complain that their botox hadn't taken, as we walked by them. I didn't have much to say back to Peter, as he held my arm to help me over some rough patches of ground. We had better things to speak of than to dwell on that conversation. But a voice in my head said...well botox is alright and even fun perhaps, if we are happy and it makes us happier...but if we are sad and it makes us sadder...

...we might want to hop in those healing waters to find out if our narratives are true or...