When my sister told me she had never learned to swim because she was traumatized by the teaching methods that our old high school used, I was shocked, then realized that I had been lucky. I gleefully looked forward to swimming sessions in physical education, but I made little progress. I would dog-paddle intently from the middle of the shallow end to the side of the pool and back, but I was still afraid of water and didn’t trust myself to handle it without an expert lifeguard within yards. Near the end of freshman year, my teacher sized up my skill and assigned Margo A____ the task of coaching me until I could attain the status of Advanced Beginner.

Margo was a member of one of the “Glendale families.” Those of us who didn’t live there assumed--probably erroniously--that everyone who lived in that picturesque village was well-to-do. If they didn’t also own a farm populated with horses, they could have, and all the children of those families went to cotillions to learn the social graces expected of their class and were shipped off to camp every summer. I think the latter was true of Margo and her sisters, for they were known for their competence in the water, and one or two of them were on the girls’ swim team.

Margo was a good, methodical teacher. She made one statement that was a revelation to me, that I’ve never forgotten: “Contrary to popular belief, a swimmer’s kick doesn’t supply much propulsion. That has to come from your arms.” She spent hours showing me the finer points of the freestyle and backstroke, and during the final phys. ed. class of that quarter, she asked me to demonstrate what I had learned under her direction. When we finished, she pronounced me an Advanced Beginner.

It was probably the summer after that when I had the experience that turned me into a swimmer. My friend Jan P____ had an in-ground pool and she lived a mere half-block away. All summer I would long for her phone calls, inviting me down for a few lazy hours of sun and floating in water reeking of chlorine. One day, I responded to an invitation and found her mother there, relaxing on the patio with a glass of lemonade. Estelle P____ worked in cosmetics in a large department store at the nearest mall. She had a stocky body and a gravelly voice. She was kind and extremely perceptive.

After watching me dogpaddle stiffly back and forth across the pool a few times, she asked me to climb out and join her on the pool’s curb at the deep end. (Eight feet deep! Eek! Eek!) I was an obedient child and a tractible teenager, so I did as she asked. She instructed me to bend at the waist, aim toward the water with my arms, and push off from the side. I did as she directed, made a smooth arc across the bottom, the water pressing against my eardrums, then the air in my lungs and my momentum carried me up the opposite wall of the pool. She made me do it again. Then again. I don’t know how many times I did it before I decided to open my eyes while I was underwater, and that was the moment that changed everything. I watched the surface from underneath as I approached it, saw the limpid interface it made with the air, and the artist in me fell in love. I have not feared the water since that moment. I’ve never had much chance to practice swimming and I’m not good at it, but I love playing and paddling about and diving and I always will. That afternoon, I learned the simple physics of swimming: if there is even a little air in your lungs, the water will lift you. If you let it, it will hold you up. Once I saw how lovely the underwater world is--even within a modest ten- by twenty-four-foot pool--I was willing to do whatever it took to return to that world every chance I got.