We walked to the car like we were leaving a store without buying anything. Empty handed casually moving onto the next place, I turned off the music inside the car as she started it up. I preferred some quiet before we went to see my friends finish the race. Because Jeni was still wondering how to react, she was silent as well.
The sun traveled across the interior of the silent car as it made it slow transition into night. Tom's ghost sat in the back seat without a seat belt in the spot where Franny would usually sit--backseat, passenger side. This way, it was easier for me to understand his whispering rambles. When I would look back he would gain eye contact with me. It only took a few of my glances for him to start in on me, "Your daughter was wrong. You can't learn to swim any more than you can learn to die."
"You can learn to die," I thought to myself, "We die every moment."
"You don't learn to die."
"You mean the 'you' Steve or empirical 'you'?" My reflections started to truly sort the details of who I truly wanted to be.
"You, Steve."
"You're wrong," My head turned no, delivering the opposite of the nod, "you're wrong, you're wrong. You learn to die, you learn to live."
"That doesn't even make sense."
I become increasingly frustrated, "You think that if I fear then I'm living? When I feel that it's my last moment living, that's when I give myself over to chance and I can truly live."
"YOU decide what a full life is?"
"No. Something else does."
He grabs onto my front seat's shoulders and hunches forward, "I'm the one who's dead, don't you think I would know?" Tom leans back and returns to staring out the window of our family sized SUV, sitting next to Ian's baby seat. "I'm dead, you're not."
"I'm at the moment right before death every minute."
"I was too."
The silence in the car was making Jeni increasingly uncomfortable. She inspects my face and she sees me looking out the window, with a few tears. This short cry marks the second outpouring of this kind on that day.
June 29, 2007
Dear Amy,
You remember how Jessica and I saw the snapping turtle in the water at Fireman's Park? He returned to me in a dream! As I was treading water in Lake Monona
Lately, swimming has been a chore. The struggle is so much that it gets frustrating. When you feel like you're going nowhere, you really don't. I'll go for a while and see that I've gone nowhere and just tread water to catch my breath. Bored by swimming and the useless 'swim until I'm out of air' routine got very, very tired. It was only until I would see weeds reaching up to me from the bottom of the lake would I get spooked, then suddenly flip myself over. I wouldn't go far from the shore, but keep building up my number of strokes.
When I met up with Jess for swimming today, she told me, "It's like one of those underwater cameras on Discovery. Looking at them, floating by."
I snapped back, "It's like a dark abyss of death."
She laughs and yells back, "It's like a camera on the Discovery Channel!"
"Dark abyss of death!" I yell back.
We sigh, understanding we're here for a reason. She instructs me on very simple things. This is a great departure from the other swim coaches who suggest changes to your technique in plurality. She easily gives instruction while we tread water, even when her body exemplifies what she's saying, "When your body is in the water swimming, your butt and legs need to come out of the water. Don't kick so much. You're kicking way too much. Let your legs rest."
I practice a few strokes without the use of my kick. It feels like I'm crawling across a floor, dragging my lifeless legs along. She sees another problem and explains while we tread water in the middle of the lake at Fireman's Park, "You need to push your chest out more. Try and push it out more like this," she thrusts her chest into a Superman-like pose, "It will make your legs float much easier. Try it out. We'll start for the shore."
After a moment, my body decided to get into this position. I get it. After it locks into a full chest and no kick, my arms engage and go nowhere but pointed straight. My body begins to roll easily. I abandon the typical flailing stroke and left only breathing. My body thinks nothing but this form. My mind goes blank and I'm breathing on both sides, gliding through the water faster than I've every swam before. I'm floating on top of the water like I did when I was under deep hypnosis, but I see that I'm controlling this. I'm gliding. I'm powering through this thing. The weeds that were reaching up to me were a subject of a Discovery Channel special being shot underwater, but I wasn't thinking, so I couldn't keep telling myself that. I was gliding. I was flying. I had all the time in the world to breathe, look, and stroke. The technique was suddenly embedded into my memory.
My head tucks up to spot. The shore line is about ten feet away! I'm looking around and I can't believe it. This is the thing that you're told will happen, but I was skeptical. This was the moment that people said will come when you least expect it. At this minute, my Ironman finish line was not only a reality, but swimming was something I was enjoying! I was doing it pretty well and I wasn't winded or frustrated. My stroke was efficient and I was moving quickly.
At that moment, something melted away. I saw things that I hadn't seen before, "Oh my God." A switch had been flipped. Something broke inside me only to let something else free. "That was amazing." I told Jess. I wasn't even breathing hard. It was an easy work. I could go three loops around that lake. I could go ten loops around the lake. I was amazed.
I didn't have any sense of expectation. There wasn't something like, "Well, finally." It was like seeing all your presents two days before Christmas. I saw it all. My technique. My gliding. My finish line to Ironman. It was something in reach. And I knew it.
I don’t think there was any way for me to tell Jess what an amazing feeling it was, though I tried. "That was simply amazing. Oh my God."
"You're doin' it!" Jess smiles at me, glowing.
I could have thanked Jessica a thousand times. Someone who opens this kind of door has a special gift. She tells me, "You did great. Your feet are like this," she motions to me how far apart they are, "You want your feet like this." Her hands are flat, touching each other. "Keeping your feet together will help you glide."
"Let's try it again." I jump in the water and I'm reminded how I can glide.
Coincidentally, I had an appointment set up with the psychologist immediately following our swim appointment. I explain to her the significant progress I made during that hour in the water. She actually gave me a high five. I believe that if there is a time and place for such a cliché expression of victory like the high five, this is the time.
I told her about some of the things that Jessica encouraged with me. How she would talk to me during panic attacks with encouraging words. She would try to finish the time in the water by jumping off this dive, "By the end of the summer, you'll be doing a cannonball off this." My eyes would leer at her, trying to help her understand that I wanted no part of that damn diving board. She did get me to jump off it today.
"I'm not sure if I told you this, but I did take a couple swimming lessons," I explained to the psychologist.
"You never told me this." She looks curious.
"I had to jump off the high dive and I remember they had a treasure chest painted on the bottom of the pool, I never told you this? I keep thinking about it," I thought for sure I told her this story, "The swim teacher waved her hands for me to jump and I couldn't. I saw someone from that high dive that I knew. He yelled, 'Go Donovan!' then I looked around and saw about a dozen other people watching me while I had a line of swim students standing in line behind me," I could feel my eyes well up, "someone behind me pushed me off the high dive.
"It's not something that I blame for my poor swimming or fear of deep water," I explained, "It's something that I think about sometimes."
The psychologist isn't too impressed by the story. Honestly, I was never one to look at that incident as a contributing factor to my problems. She did offer up, "Maybe by jumping off the board, you now own the decision. You don't think it's a stumbling block, but by deciding to jump off it, you're sort of resetting your brain from that incident."
I'm going to Montana Lake Monona
-Steve Donovan
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