The Chronology of Water

by Lidia Yuknavitch

  I nearly wrecked the car twice, unable to see the road or anything else, my ears gone crazy, the deep baritone of his voice making my brain ache.

  How to Hold Your Breath

  KID STORIES.

  What sad little bobbers we all were.

  Here’s a pathetic little image: me at age two in a hooded baby blue parka and little red stretch pants jumping off a 25ʹ dock into Lake Washington, yelling “WIM.”

  They say, and keep in mind the story comes from my now dead crackpot parents, they say I’d jump in any water I saw. Pools. Rivers. Lakes. The Shojita’s carp-filled garden pond. That I was simply drawn to water, and I’d run and leap with one of those silly toddler glee smiles smeared across my face, and then I’d sink like a stone.

  Somebody, usually my eyerolling sister, would have to jump in after me every time, and pull me sputtering to safety.

  So when I was three my mother signed me up for swim lessons. But it was my father who put me in the car, drove me to Lake Washington, took off my little clothes and threw me in.

  In November.

  I was by far the youngest kid there.

  I can’t tell you I remember any of this, but I sure the hell can conjure up an image of my own skin bluing in the icy waters. And I feel pretty certain I have muscle memory in my mouth of my teeth nearly shattering from kid cold chatter. If I learned to swim that year I did it in a frozen zombie state, under the heavy weight of father, who, every time I came running out crying stuck his hand and arm out of the station wagon window like an angry god and pointed back to the water.

  If there is more to that story it drifts away when I go near it - it’s too far back, or too deep.

  When I first began writing this story my son Miles was seven. So that means I’m seven too sometimes. I mean my seven year old me swims back during the course of an ordinary day all the time, whether or not I’m ready. Miles absolutely loves swimming pools. The thing is, Miles can’t exactly … swim. When Miles gets in the pool, there is no other way to say this, he’s a spaz. And he’s wearing more weenie water gear than a special needs deep sea diver. Don your protective gear: goggles, life vest. Then he wades in and has the time of his life, prepared for any aqua danger, looking like a water nerd. When he’s in the water he laughs and laughs. He shows me all the things he can do in the water, things that amount to splashy little circles or pushing his way across the pool like a water bug, and says, “Lidia, look, I’m doing swimming.” He throws his little arms around and kicks his unsynchopated legs and holds his head in this sort of strange crane upwards, his mouth in a little smirk nowhere near the water, his goggle-bugged eyes looking my way. It drowns my heart.

  When I was seven I won 13 trophies with little faux gold girls leaning over for the dive on top. If my seven year old me saw his seven year old in the same pool? With all the gear? Well first of all my little posse of athletes wouldn’t have gone anywhere near him. Gyawd they would have gone. What’s wrong with that kid? Is he special ed? But the me inside the me would have adored him. I bet my current salary I would have been the one wishing I could swim over and try out his cool gear.

  When I’m with him now, if any of the kids playing around in the pool near us who look like they were born fucking seals even GLANCE at him I shoot them a death look so sharp it slicks their hair back, reddens their smug little faces and … well. Let’s just say something a lot worse than water going into your brain. They’re lucky to have brains at all after I shoot them the look. It’s a look from my father.

  Still, at my son’s age, I was a racer. You know those little plastic wind-up bathtub things - contraptions with small flippers or limbs attached to internal rubber bands which, when wound, rotate at alarming speeds? Sending a little dolphin or boat or shark shooting across the tub? That’s what seven year old girl racers look like. Heads down. Twenty-five meters. Maybe one breath. Maybe. Whoever we were on land, once freed in water, we grew dangerously alive.

  My son’s been in swimming lessons - level A - three times now. At the end of the lessons they always hand me the green card that says mamma of Miles, your son can barely float, he’ll only hold his breath above the water, if he’s in the water without supervision he’ll sink to the bottom like a tire, and they smile, and I smile, and Miles beams, and then we go home and eat OREOS and I give him another one of my trophies.

  When I work with him alone in the pool, he clings to me like a little sea monkey until I let him put his full regalia back on.

  It’s his head.

  He doesn’t want to put his head in. When I ask him why, he answers incredulously, “Because the water will go in my nose and ears and go into my brain. Duh.”

  I look at him for a long minute. He doesn’t back down.

  “I see,” I said. “ Where’d you get that idea?”

  Quite convincingly, he responds. “Harry Potter.”

  Harry Potter.

  Goddamn that little bespectacled twit.

  I instantly know which Harry Potter scene he is talking about. It’s the one from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where the five students have to compete in the Tri-Wizard’s Cup. One of the trials is an ocean dive to save trapped friends and loved ones who have been suspended underwater by strange little sea witches with pitchforks. Each student must figure out a magical way to breathe underwater, or they’ll die, and all their loved ones trapped underwater will die, water will go up all the noses and flood all their ears and drown all their brains unless they have special underwater gear. Total kid death fest if they don’t find a way to breathe underwater. Neville Longbottom, the buck-toothed nerd kid interested in animals and botany and ichthyology, gives Harry Potter magic Gillyworms. Then he grows temporary gills and webbed hands and feet.

  Christ. Why does anyone become a mother?

  I look at Miles. I say, “Miles, you know when you see mamma swimming and swimming in the lap lanes?”

  “Yes,” he says, looking solemnly at the floor.

  “Well, water has never gone into my brain. Not once.”

  He looks at me quite seriously. I can see from his eyes he’s puzzling out an answer. He’s a thinker, that one, so I already know he’s coming up with a good one. He would have been all over Hogwarts. “Let’s hear it then,” I say.

  “Then you must have had a waterhorse. A waterhorse who put you on its back when you were little and afraid of the water and then the water horse dove down underwater and taught you how to swim because the waterhorse loved you and you loved the waterhorse and there was magic.” He rests his case, hands on hips.

  Of course there was magic. Like in “The Waterhorse.”

  Goddamn American kid films.

  The year I was seven the kid movies were The Aristocats, Pippi in the South Seas, and King of the Grizzlies. Nobody died from having water go into their brains. Wait. The Poseidon Adventure - 1972. That whole Shelley Winters thing. Man. That still gets me. That’s some sad shit. I think I bawled for an hour when they took me to see that. I think we had to leave the theater. And I think my father said “If you’re going to cry like a baby, you can’t go to the movies. Crybabies have to stay home. For christ’s sake.” Pounding the steering wheel. My mother looking out the window with her endless denial. My sister half feeling sorry for me and half glad for another target in the family.

  Now that I’m thinking about it, except for swimming, I was a big fat failure at many, many things. Being in public, for one, like at all, but other things too. For instance bike riding. Complete failure. I can still hear him. “Goddamn it! Every kid on this block can ride a bike but you. What are you, retarded or something?” Me pedaling, pedaling, weightless and mindless as air, nothing girl.

  Miles and I spend a lot of time at the pool.

  Him not putting his head under.

  Me swimming the laps of the racer I was.

  We’re making our first progress, though. As long as I’m the waterhorse, he puts his arms around my neck in a near choke hold and, gasping for air and speech, I
swim around and go, “OK, I’m diving down now,” and we go down into the dangers and depths of public pools. He holds his nose tight enough to pull it off.

  After we eat the multi-colored gummy worms, that is. You can’t even think about going underwater without eating gummy worms.

  My father never learned to swim.

  Water

  THERE IS A PLACE ON THE OREGON COAST CALLED Gleneden Beach. It’s between Lincoln City and Newport, both tourist towns. The main thing that is at Gleneden Beach is a mildly well known resort called Salishan.

  The resort is nestled up against a little saltwater bay and estuary. Beyond that, the ocean. It has a famous golf course, which I’ve actually played. When I was a kid. My father took us to this resort as a family. It is the only thing we did together as a family that worked.

  I don’t know exactly why it worked, but I’d watch my father sit out on the balcony of the luxury hotel room and look out at the ocean. At the windblown signature tree of the resort. At the birds and the way light changed over the water. He looked at peace.

  At the resort there is a fine swimming pool and hot tub. As a family my mother, father, sister and I spent hours in the waters. My mother would side stroke her suddenly weightless swan body up and down the pool, smiling like a girl. My sister and I would swim the goof off way kids do - going under and up and splashing and racing and treading water and diving for coins. Despite our age difference. My father would wade in up to his hips, his chest, sometimes up to his chin. Since his feet were still touching the bottom, he felt safe. And though he’d only venture halfway down the pool to avoid the depths of the far end, he looked happy. Five years we went back to Salishan - until my sister left.

  Of course, Salishan is not just a resort. The Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. They are characterized by fusional and inflected language and astonishing consonant clusters. And all Salish languages are either extinct or endangered. That’s not something I knew as a kid. But the word embedded itself in my head and heart differently than other words anyhow, and so it had a meaning secret from regular talking. Sometimes when I was hurt or angry or scared as I kid, I’d close my eyes and whisper, “Salishan. Salishan.” Hoping it could work some kind of magic on the terror of family.

  After we moved back to Oregon, when my son was about five, I took him and Andy back to Salishan. I did not know what would happen. Perhaps that kind of return would bring me nothing but sadness, and we were driving to the ocean of my childhood. But I trusted the ocean’s pull. When we got to within a mile of the resort - when we drove past the estuary and around the corner where the Douglas Firs make a mound of forest in the heart of which is Salishan, my heart let loose. It wasn’t the resort. It was the word. It was a space of ocean or peace that offered hope differently for a child. I rolled the window down and the salt air bathed my face. My son seemed excited but didn’t know why.

  My husband Andy said, “Is this it?”

  “Yes,” I said, this is the place.

  My son had never been to a fancy place like that, so he spent the first 10 minutes running around the room in a little kid glee dance. Then he found the white terrycloth robes in the closet, stripped naked, put one on, went out on to the balcony, and said, “This is the life.”

  Then we all went down to the pool. The pool of my childhood hope. Miles kept saying the word Salishan. Words carry oceans on their small backs.

  Joy.

  A word. An act of imagination. Me, Andy, Miles. In the pool we work on Miles’ water skills. My husband swims and floats and laughs, dives down like a kid, making his nose run from the chlorine. Not caring. He can swim the deep end.

  When I am in the Salishan pool with Miles, I play. Usually we play water games Miles has invented, all of which involve him getting to keep his head above the water. This time he tells me he has a very important game. I say, “OK. What is it?”

  “I’m going to put my whole head underwater,” he says.

  !

  I nod and stay quiet, trying not to blow it. I move toward him to hold him so we can dunk down together quickly. Painlessly.

  “No,” he says, “you stay over there and do it and I’ll do it over here and we’ll look at each other and try to hold our breath as long as we can.”

  !

  “OK.” I say.

  My heart.

  He’s got his goggles on. He’s got a hold of his nose with one hand, and with the other, he’s going to count off.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  And then he takes the hugest breath in like ever. And puts his head under. All the way. I do too. I can see him through the blue. His beautiful underwater head. For the first time. Holding his own breath. A magic.

  When we rush up for air we are both laughing and I’m telling him how proud I am of him and he’s splashing around and Andy comes over and we do a group hug. You know, like people goofing off on vacation.

  “Again!” he says.

  We do. We do and we do.

  In this water with the two of them - the boy, the man. I almost can’t breathe. I didn’t know. It is a family. It is mine.

  It’s a small tender thing, the simplicity of loving.

  I am learning to live on land.

  The Other Side of Drowning

  I WONDER. WHO WAS ROOTING FOR ME?

  For the first time since I was maybe 14, I’m watching Super-8 films of myself swimming. Racing. My father took them. Many, many of them. They’ve been sitting silent and immobile in a cardboard box since 2003 when my father died - two years after my mother went. I knew about them. They’ve been down in the garage. I just never … drug them up from the depths until now.

  I don’t quite know how to explain to you what it is like watching the little woman swim for her life. I mean from where I am now. Look at her go. Is she swimming away from something? Or to something?

  On film I watch myself swim, and even though on the surface the plot is about winning races, or losing, there is something you will never see.

  What you will not see is how far. How many miles I had to swim to come back to a simple chlorinated pool where I might… just be.

  I swim laps three, sometimes four times a week now. At the Clackamas Aquatic Center near my home. It feels… it feels like the closest thing to home I have ever had.

  At the pool, the people who swim in the lap lanes next to me are not athletes. Though occasionally one will show up and my game will come alive in my body - I can’t help it. I’ll race them until they leave. We usually don’t speak - just nod at each other when it’s over, as if we’ve shared something intimate.

  But more often there are regular people in the pool. Beautiful women seniors doing water aerobics - mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers - their massive breasts and guts reminding you how it is that women carry worlds. When I swim by them I watch their legs and bodies underwater, and feel a strange kinship with a maternal lineage. You know you can smile underwater. You can laugh.

  Twice in my life I have found myself swimming next to an albino. I felt lucky somehow. Like I’d found the right water.

  At the pool near my home there is a woman who is missing a leg. She swims her laps with a prosthetic that has a flipper at the end. Very high-tech. Her workouts, I’ve noticed, are formidable. I love her made-up leg. I like to swim near her.

  Sometimes kids and teens take up a lane -no doubt they are on swim teams - I can tell by their spectacular strokes and the kinds of swimsuits and caps and goggles they wear. They are in the sweet. Effortlessly.

  Old men people the lap lanes too, most always extra friendly to me. Their skin hangs off of their backs in pale speckled folds. Their legs seem too thin to carry them - and they nearly all wear some form of white or beige boxer trunks. Sometimes with very thin fabric. But they wrestle the water anyhow, in all shapes and sizes, all forms of swimming. Once I stopped my laps to rest and two of them were staring at me. One said t
o the other, “Ain’t she something?” The other one said, “And how.” Then they clapped. It cracked me up. I still see them sometimes. We say hello, or goodbye, or keep up the good work.

  Middle-aged women like me show up too - most of them do not have the stroke quality of someone who has competed - but I am filled with wonder at them anyway. They put their bodies in the water to swim the same way that I do. Maybe they are trying to shed pounds. Or maybe stress. Or lives. Or maybe it just feels good - being alone in water - no kids hanging on you, no husband to tend to, no one and nothing to answer to. When the pool is full I’ve noticed I’m among the first they will ask if they can share a lane. They must be able to tell I’m going to lap them and lap them. But there must be something more important that draws them to my lane. I think - I hope it is that the water is safe.

  Gay men are there too, I can tell. Their legs will be hairless or they’ll be wearing earrings and, well, the only other men besides athletes who wear Speedos are gay. I sometimes have to fight off strange impulses to crawl over the lane line into their lanes and hug them - to thank them for being the men they are - men who showed me love and compassion at every important moment of my life - even though we are strangers.

  Occasionally a swim coach will show up. I always get the same question. “Did you compete?” I nod and dip back under quickly. It’s not a conversation I want to have any longer, and they often ask me about joining Masters Swimming. I don’t want to join Masters Swimming. I want just to be in water.

  In the voiceless blue. In the weightless wet.

  À La Recherché du Temps Perdu

  SOMETIMES I THINK THINGS OUT IN THE TIME IT TOOK me to win a race. 200-meter butterfly: 2:18.04. How long it takes to walk from my car to my office. 100-meter breastroke: 1:11.2. How long it takes to brush my teeth. It’s what swimmers do. It’s muscle memory.

  I remember things badly. When I look back, things are underwater, and when I pick them out and bring them to the surface they float around my idiotic attempts to drag them to land. I wonder what memory is, anyway. What writers are doing when they scratch at it. Usually I think of Proust, who tried to write a sentence about memory and ended up with seven volumes about nostalgia.