I can’t tell you why, but for as long as I can remember, I had always been afraid of water. My mother once sent me to swimming lessons at the local pool when I was six and I nearly had a heart attack from fright. I went to four lessons and never went back.

A few summers later, when I turned nine, my siblings and I visited our father who was then living in Minnesota. We had not seen him in several years. On one particular day there, my dad and I went to the pool at his apartment complex. He dove off the diving board and called for me to come join him. I timidly sat on the stairs leading into the water. When I told him I was scared, he let loose a string of insults and shaming remarks. He said all nine year old boys should be able to swim. But I didn’t go in and my father remained silent for the rest of the day.

The years went by and I grew up managing to evade all parties at pools and lakes. I learned to keep my reasons to myself. When I finished art school in Kansas City, I happened to move to a new apartment that had a swimming pool. The sight of the blue rippling patterns still made my heart quicken. But one day in my twenty-third summer, I looked out at that pool and felt something else: anger. I was very angry at myself for not knowing how to swim and for harboring this secret fear for so long. Still, I was too embarrassed to admit my fear and I knew I would not be able to ask for help. So I decided I would try to teach myself.

My program was very simple. Get in the water every day that summer. It didn’t matter how long I stayed there, as long as I stayed in a little longer than the previous day. That is it. A little more each day. On the first day, I sat on the first step going into the water. I counted to ten, and quickly got out as I felt myself start to hyperventilate. The next day I counted to twenty. The next day I sat on the second deepest step and counted to twenty. "A little more each day," I kept telling myself.

One week later it was a big day when I splashed my face in the surface and quickly pulled it out. One more week after that, I could hold my face in the water and count to fifteen. And I kept going back every day. Finally, after six weeks I had conquered it. The fear was broken. I could jump into the deepest part of the pool and sit on the bottom of the pool for a full minute. All with no sensation of panic at all. I did it.

Around that time, my mother called me saying that my father was in the hospital and was in bad shape. He had bad lungs from growing up on a farm (crazy chemicals used back then) and his lungs were failing him. She suggested that if I wanted to say anything to my father, I should call him. So I did. But now I had a question for myself. Should I tell my father of my recent success in the pool? Would I be able to get some sort of fatherly approval out of him for conquering my fear? Or would he lambast me again for the simple reason that it took me until becoming twenty-three before I did it? To tell or not to tell? Well, I didn't tell.

Weeks later I was tying my tie getting ready to go to my father's funeral. My mother stepped into the room and I told her the entire story. "Oh you should have told him," she insisted. "Why?" "Well, do you know how old your father was when he learned how to swim? He was twenty-three! We had just gotten married and we moved to a little trailer park that had a pool. Your father was so embarrassed at not knowing how to swim that he took himself out there every day until he knew how."

Needless to say, I was stunned into silence.

Now I can't explain how this happened. Was it something genetic or coincidence? I just don't know. Our lives tumble higgledy-piggledy through the years and we habitually create explanations for ourselves in an effort to put our experiences in order. And we don’t just obsess over causes, but consequences as well. In important situations, speculation of the consequences of our personal actions can drive a person to stop making decisions all together. But the truth is that we don't know all of the forces that shape who we are and we can never know the full consequences of our choices. We do our best. We go out there every day and we, well, we try to do a little bit better every day. You know, until we conquer the fear.

I'm happy to say that Oliver and Amélie are excellent swimmers. I went to the pool with them when they were younger and gave them loving support. They knew they could trust their papa, and I knew I could trust myself.

photo by KonArt