Back in the day, I was QUITE the swimmer. I know this because my mother told me so. "Amy, me girl," she would say (imagine a charming Irish accent...my mom is not Irish but it works really well here), "You swim like a dolphin, lass!" She would boast of my spectacular swimming skills to friends and family, striding around our cracked, plastic pool deck in her dainty high-heeled slippers, reflectively swirling chablis in her crystal chalice. According to her chlorine-clouded eyes, the Olympic Swimming team would soon be clamoring at our door. Yes, I really ruled the rectangular reservoir of my childhood backyard.
Apparently though, I had peaked at age twelve. Without ever fully understanding why, I made the painful decision to cloak my crawl, bury my backstroke, and fold my freestyle. Was it rebellion? Fear of failure? An attempt to deny the day when I would inevitably disappoint my disillusioned matriarch? That is a question that can only be answered by my swim therapist. I was as surprised as anyone when my break-through arrived, quite unexpectedly, at age 51.
"I didn't know you could ACTUALLY swim," my daughter Sydney said, mere days ago, shocked as I effortlessly slalomed across Savannah and Lisa's pool littered with floating chairs, pool toys, and an accordioned appendage attached to the automated pool cleaner, a third-cousin, once-removed to our dearly departed DJ Roomba. I blushed modestly before making a shy little somersault, surfacing to thunderous applause as my daughters, after having lived their entire lives thinking their mother just a humble little house frau, now saw me as a magical mermaid.
Like Clark Kent emerging from the telephone booth, I swam to Sydney as she levitated luxuriously in her floating chaise lounge and, clasping the inflated end of her floatie, engaged my core muscles to slowly spin her. My legs, twisting like a cork screw, sped her swivel until she was rotating like a helicopter propeller. "Wheeee..." she exclaimed before I contorted my body to suddenly cease her spinning. Then, like Superman reversing the gravitational axis of the earth to turn back time, thus saving the life of his lady love, I too, reversed the churning whirlpool that I had created, spinning Sydney, faster and faster before catapulting her across the pool as she shrieked with delight.
My daughters demanded a demonstration of my secret skills. I felt like a performer offering forth encore after encore. "Are there any more?" Savannah demanded, certain that I was holding back. "Well..." I said uncertainly before being flooded by the betrayed fury of my off-spring who had long been denied access to my surreptitious strokes. It was time to come clean. "I may have invented a swimming stroke," I admitted as they gasped with this newest revelation. "But I never had it copyrighted," I hastily disclosed. "Show us! Show us!" they begged.
Taking a deep breath, I dove in, explaining the technique. "It's called The Dolphin," I shared. "On your stomach, you extend your legs and engage just your ankles in an ambiguous little flutter kick." The girls took studious and frantic notes. "Then, chest thrust flirtatiously forward, you propel yourself laterally." Sydney quick-sketched the position."The key to this daring but controversial stroke is the pointless application of the signature move that I like to call Screwing in the Lightbulb." I demonstrated. "Arms parallel to the body. It's all in the wrists with your palms lightly cradling an imaginary 60 watt bulb," I advised, chanting, "Turn the lightbulb...turn the lightbulb...turn the lightbulb." My girls were, naturally, stunned and speechless. "Why haven't you shared this with the world?" Sydney wondered. "You have revolutionized swimming," Savannah marveled.
Ashamed to have hidden my talent for so many years, I pulled myself from the pool and headed into the house. "Where are you going?" my girls cried, disappointed that I had ceased my swimming. I paused, realizing that I had squandered my life on raising children and establishing a career in education. "I have to call me mum," I answered, my Irish brogue boomeranging back from my repressed childhood. Rolling my r's, I told them, "She needs to know she was right all along."
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