Open the eyes and shut the mouth.
For an introvert, the solitude imposed by a rural farm life did not lead to loneliness. Solitude became my opportunity to explore from a position of trepidation without the morbid fear of conformance. My antisocial behaviour was attributed by classmates and fellow commuters to intense shyness – and all was forgiven.
Whilst there were badass school children (usually boisterous) at the back of the school bus, I just blended into my usual seat halfway down the bus. And took in all the colourful yarns spun out to impress. I was easily impressed.
It was also the best opportunities to expose myself to childhood crushes and hero worship.
I also had stories. But these ‘Alice in wonderland’ creations stayed in my own little world. Emotional experiences are equally triggered by actual events or simply by imagined events. The imagined events that are self-authored had more scope. So, I was happy in my simulated world.
The natural embrace of solitude remains with me to this day. It has become a gift that much of the world is now searching for in the form of ‘mindfulness’.
Water is a strange medium to humans. We are not natural swimmers.
I have never seen Pa swim. And I know Ma feared any deep water because she openly admitted it. Pa never admitted anything to me – but he waded into water whenever he needed to.
With their discomfort with water, they did not seem to fear me spending lots of lonely time by myself exploring our little river. Perhaps they were just too busy keeping the farm afloat.
My first exposure to water deeper than my height ended up with a few gulps of chlorinated pool water and a mad scramble for the pool edge. It was a school outing and my primary school teacher had assumed that I could swim when she let me into the pool with the other adept swimming classmates. That was the only opportunity for a farm kid to get into a pool, and it was many years later that deep water became available again. This was in our little farm river.
Besides science, Geography and Biology, our set of encyclopedias had a section about swimming. I was particularly drawn to the ‘Australian crawl’. This was how I envisaged my swimming to be like.
Learning to swim using diagrams from an encyclopedia was my only hope of emulating the native Fijian ladies who waded and dived into our river to catch those juicy prawns. It took a while.
The turning point was those little black goggles that allowed me to put my head into the water and see the ‘underworld’. Full immersion of the face meant water travelling up the nostrils. This unnatural sensation took a while to overcome. With the resultant calmness of breath control together with full head immersion, I was able to float in the prone position.
The prelude to the ‘Australian crawl’!
These is no doubt that the ability to see under the water took a lot of fear away from full face and body immersion. Just like switching the light on in a dark room can totally remove the ghosts hiding in the darkness. The rest of learning to swim was simple. Just mouth shut and eyes wide open…
Many decades later, when I was poolside with Ken and Olie had jumped into the pool without her floaties, I was able to reassure him that it was OK. She had her favourite goggles on and was comfortable with total immersion. She could not swim. But she could pop her head out of the water when she needed to – and ‘dog paddle’. That was the sign of water confidence and the beginning of swimming. She knew when and how to keep her mouth shut.