If I had thought that learning to
drive a car was a hopeless case of requiring an insane amount of coordination
of arms, legs, eyes and the brain, nothing prepared me for the crazy skill set
that swimming would require. At least, in a car, you are on solid ground and if
nothing, you can hope that the car stalls and you stop moving or worst case,
you jump out of a moving car. However, I can’t help but wonder why anyone would
create three pedals when humans are blessed with two legs. Anyway, that is a
discussion for another day.
By the time I finally made up my
mind to learn swimming, my daughter had already learnt all the strokes and was
swimming in the pool comfortably and my husband was well into his classes and I
had to hear him regale about how he could hold his breath underwater for nearly
a minute in a mushroom float.
Wanting to not feel terribly
behind, I insisted that I will join classes at another place closer home to
save on time and I was enamoured by their claim that one would learn swimming
in twenty classes. Well, I really did believe it.
The classes turned out to be more
challenging for my instructor. On the second day, he asked me if I had ever had
any traumatic incident in a water body, seeing how my body tensed when I had to
put my head underwater. I expressed shock at his question and reassured him
that there was no such thing. I did want to add that since I do not remember
things from my previous lives, my answer could be incorrect but I decided to not
traumatize him. I would put my head down and tell myself, ‘I’m a water baby, I
can do this!’, simply because I am a Water sign. I have never required so much
self-motivational talk for anything else in my life.
On the 4th or 5th
day, when he decided that I had to go to the deeper side of the pool, 5 feet
instead of 4 feet, I was terrified to let go of the bar. My mind then was a
pool of guilt with memories of how I had shouted at my daughter when she had
cried to go to the deep end. I told my instructor that I am going back home and
apologising to my daughter for what I put her through a year ago. And I did just
that. Multiple times, over 3 days. After 10 or 12 classes, while I was still
struggling to tread water while keeping my head above water, he said that he had
run out of ways to get me rid of my fear. Eventually, it was only in the 16th
class that I did it comfortably and he heaved a sigh of relief and I was so
delighted that I started laughing and almost went down.
After this, I enrolled for
classes at the other place as the ‘20-class swimming champion’ claim had not
worked for me. The first few classes were great but when it was time for me to start
learning the arm movements, I forgot to kick my legs and nearly rammed into an
unsuspecting classmate who was nowhere in the lane I was supposed to swim in.
When I finally got my arms moving
and remembered to kick my legs too, they asked me to now start breathing every
4 arm movements. I mean, it really was just too much. And even when I tried,
there were several problems; arms aren’t pulled back enough, elbow isn’t high
enough, palms are entering the water first instead of fingers, legs are going
down and shoulder isn’t stretched enough to allow for proper breathing. I mean,
this was worse than driving. There, at least the body could be tense and you
could hold the steering wheel tight and nobody would bother. Here, you have to
remember and do all these several things right and also keep the body relaxed
and light. Quite an oxymoron if you ask me.
On some days, when I felt that I
was making some progress, the instructor would throw a curveball saying that we
would learn backstroke now. Oh! The nightmare! I could float and glide in this
position but could never get back up. I would lean back instead of forward and
end up with water up my nose and guilt-tripping my instructor. I would protest
that I need to learn only freestyle swimming and even that needn’t be perfect,
just enough to get from one end of the pool to the other. I would tell them
that I didn’t need to become Micheal Phelps. Oh! The coaching centre is called
Michael Phelps Swimming and they have a huge poster of him swimming the
butterfly stroke.
The proof that I finally managed
it after several classes, was the fact that I was being introduced to the
supposedly easy looking breaststroke. This was probably the most humiliating of
all. I held the kickboard and kept kicking my legs and yet stayed in the same
spot while others were waiting in line for their turn. After a while, I gave up
and swam in freestyle to make way!
And then came the butterfly
stroke. The only way to get the rhythm was alternately telling myself, ‘I’m a
dolphin…, I’m a butterfly…’ and I worked hard at it. Worked hard but kept the
body relaxed!
And now, the times I do get it
right, I say, ‘Sir, I’m swimming like Michael Phelps today!’ much to their
shock and amusement.
During those first 20 classes,
there were many friends who heard my sob story and then one of them said,
‘Don’t fret, this will make for a good blog soon’. I cried some more and said
that that could only happen when I get to the other side of this.
It has taken 100 hours of tears,
protests and some swimming for this to write itself.
