I remember learning how to swim for the first time. Putting
all the moves together. Age somewhere between four and six years old. I did it
myself.
Our family, plus the high school kids in my dad’s choirs,
had traveled by bus to a place in central Florida called Lake Ellen. Try as I
might, I’ve never been able to locate a Lake Ellen in Florida again. It was
beautiful and the lake was huge and fresh and clear. There was a sandy beach
that sloped very gently into deeper water. A diving platform out in the deep
water was popular with the teenagers. My brother and sister, David and Diane,
were along on the trip, of course.
I was in love with that water. I wanted to get in it and
just stay there – it was fresh (not salty like the Gulf) and really clear so
you could see things. If I’d been allowed, I would have eaten my peanut butter
and banana sandwich while sitting waist-deep in the lake.
I was experimenting with swimming a lot that day. I could
already dog-paddle around and I’d watch big people to see how they swam. My
mother had a very distinctive version of the crawl, the main purpose of it to
never get her hair wet. She would pull each arm out of the water crisply with
her elbows high and then kick vigorously so she could keep herself as high in
the water as possible. I would occasionally try to copy her, but I couldn’t
pull it off. Besides, I wanted to get my hair wet.
Most of my swimming was done underwater, and no
dog-paddling. I was definitely doing the breaststroke with my arms. And trying
hard to coordinate my leg movements with what I was doing with my arms. At one
point, I brought both legs up toward my chest with knees bent and then pushed
them out and back so they met and were straight again. At the same time, I was
pulling back my arms in my well-practiced breaststroke. I realized I was really
swimming and moving forward with what I learned much later was a frog-kick. The
Whole Breaststroke. I knew I had mastered swimming.
I kept it up for a couple more coordinated strokes, ran out
of air, then leaped up and shouted, “I can swim! I can swim!” I had to find my
brother and show him.
Learning takes place like that for me. If I want to learn
something – to do it, to just know it – I dive in and mess around with it
myself until I do make some sense of it. Oh, I took swimming lessons later on.
And I took piano lessons for years. I have taken a lot of writing classes and
written together in groups. But it really depends on my heart, my passion, my
curiosity, my energy to learn something new. I loved the water, I adored the
piano and music, I crave writing and telling stories. And so that is what I
have done.
What is your heart telling you? Where does your passion lie?
What are you truly curious about? What energizes you endlessly? I’d love to
hear from you.
