In the swim
Monday, January 31, 2022 at 10:42PM This time of year, swimming tends feature in the news, its joys and its terrors: the delights of family beach holidays and their dark shadow side – the number of people who drown every summer in our girt-by-sea, pool-bedecked nation.
I applaud the way swimming is part of the curriculum in Australian schools, the availability of lessons at the local baths, where we trooped dutifully when our kids were tiny, the Nippers programs that further inoculate littlies from drowning.
My primary years were spent in India in the 60s, where there were no such opportunities. I was aware of one swimming pool in the city of three million where we lived; male and female swimming times were segregated and mum, my sister and I had the place to ourselves when we went for a cooling dip. I’ve no idea what proportion of the Sub-Continent’s population can swim these days; back then, it was an unusual skill.
I learnt to swim in the Anglesea River on a rare trip to Australia at the age of five but had no practice worth speaking of, no regular waterside holidays until we moved to Melbourne to live in year 8. It was not a happy time. I was awkward and out of place, had no familiarity with the lingo, the clothes, what was cool for girls on the cusp of teenager-hood.
My peers, naturally, had been in and out of water as long as they could walk. I weaselled my way out of PE lessons involving swimming any way I could, and I have never caught up.
As an adult, however, I learned to love it. If there is a body of natural water around, I’m in – oceans, rivers, lakes and streams, even the dams on my daughter’s property, which aren’t, strictly speaking, natural, but they certainly aren’t chlorinated.
At my beloved beach, I swim morning and evening, although ‘swim’ might be stretching the truth a little. I have a healthy respect for the waves and I know my limitations; I barely go deeper than my waist. I am always tentative in water, never adventurous or bold. Despite that, I have a ball. I jump and frolic, splash and float, dive through breaking waves and bob to the top of unbroken ones. I cannot stop grinning. I adore it. It is the activity that makes me most carefree. Late adopter I may be, and I won’t win any medals or adulation, but despite her slow start, this sexagenarian gets in touch with her inner child in water in a way she rarely does elsewhere.
Reader Comments (1)
Full immersion delight - I share your joy :)