Friday's child
July 9, 1999
Course I can swim," says Leah, aged nine. But the water
looks somehow deeper, and the pool somehow larger, and the
others somehow more skilful at the swimming she thinks she
can do. That swimming is the swimming where she goes along
under water for a few strokes and comes up spluttering a
bit and her mum says: "Well done." And then there is
jumping up and down in the waves on holiday, though not if
they are too big, and she definitely does not need water
wings, no way. Rubber rings, they're for baby brothers.
But here are Jo and Terri and Louise, all her very best
friends who've all had swimming lessons before, jumping in
and swimming in a recognisable stroke to the other side,
while the instructor yells out: "Come on now, in two three,
breathe two three, that's right girls, hurry up and get in
now the rest of you". Oh well, thinks Leah, everyone's
looking, I'm sure I can swim really - and in she jumps just
like the rest.
Some time later, when she has been fished out from the deep
end by the instructor's swallow dive, faultlessly executed,
her face wiped and her mother called, the teacher suggests
that perhaps she ought to go in the non-swimming group,
just for now. Soon, of course, she will be able to swim.
"But all my friends can swim," wails Leah, far more upset
by demotion than by almost drowning. The teacher applies
reason. Yes, all her friends can swim.
This is because they have had lessons. Leah has not had
lessons and can't swim. In fact, she nearly drowned just
now. Soon Leah too will have had lessons and then she will
be able, with confidence, to join her friends in the deep
end.
No, it's no good. Reason sinks like a stone. Swimming for
Leah, it becomes clear, is not a learnt set of physical
skills but a wish-fulfilment: something all the girls must
do. If all the girls must do it, then she can do it. So, at
first, she is resistant to instruction. Swimming does not
seem to her a matter of alignment, bouyancy, the shape of
strokes and how to breathe when in the water; it is all
about fun and laughter. Of course, in time it will come to
be about all those things. But first there is going up and
down holding this board. Leah could weep - she does weep -
with the lowly struggle.
Next week it's all better. The non-swimmers get in first,
and they set off with their boards. Actually, it's not bad.
Avoiding glances down at the deep end (where diving is
being splashily attempted by Jo and Terri and Louise), Leah
concentrates. Towards the end, she starts to shoot ahead.
"Well done,"
the instructor calls out. "Next week we'll try unassisted
swimming."
By the end of term, Leah has moved up a group, got her blue
and green ribbons and is pestering her family to let her go
swimming with her friends. "Well," says her dad doubtfully,
"as long as you are sensible and don't go out of your
depth. I don't want to get a phone call, mind!" "Dad," Leah
groans, "only dorks do things like that. And non-swimmers."
Dad nods. Swimming begins with not swimming.
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