Even
two months of swimming experience coupled with the presence
of one very cute coach is not enough to untie the knots of
fear in my gut. I have accepted the pain of pushing myself
through the chlorinated water for an hour and a half and I
have learned enough freestyle skills to keep my brain
focused on better performance.
As I drive
South on the 110 freeway toward each practice my gut, vomit
prone, neglects what I have learned and continues to
struggle with my unreconciled past. The day I lost my spirit
for sport, the day this fear first gripped me; close in
memory would now collide with the present.
I have the
knowledge that I teeter between getting by and being yelled
at, critiqued, and individually identified for lack of
skill. It is not difficult to see that a novice athlete can
go only so far before a coach intervenes. When Coach Mike, a
tall unbecoming man, explained that this evening's practice
will focus on the backstroke, I froze. I do not know how to
do the backstroke, I thought, and this evening, I knew I
could not just get by.
I walked
over to the cocktail lane and noticed Coach Sean by Lane 1.
I watched him adjust his black goggles and then remove his
sweat pants. In two blinks he was in the water and already
20 meters into his warm-up. He is an absolute pleasure to
watch.
I will be
in Lane 1 at some point, I think. Like the other cocktailers,
I enter slowly and squint from the chill of the water and
wonder why the pool is not warmer.
“Nippy
water isn’t it?” I say to a tall Costa Rican with a falcon
tattoo on his left arm and an English woman in a red bathing
suit.
After three
or four moments of complaining, I pushed off the wall and
began my 400-meter warm-up. Two months into practice, I have
taken the lead in the lane’s freestyle drills and that
achievement warms my confidence, but I know, tonight, I will
be tested.
After
several announcements of which I pay zero attention to,
Coach Mike rounds up the swimmers in Lanes 7 and 8 to begin
backstroke drills. He asks all of us to spread out and to
begin to scull with just our hands and not our legs. I
learned how to scull when I learned rowing, which I quit
after being criticized and individually identified as
lacking the skill. This is the first time I have heard of
sculling in swimming. What do I do, I think?
Of course I
could ask, but do I? No.
I look to
my left. I look to my right. I see swimmers performing the
drill with ease. I see their hands swishing and swashing
across the top of the water. Coach Mike focuses on us with
determination, a concentration I am uncomfortable with and I
decide I do not like him. Like the other swimmers, I swash
and swish my hands across the top of the water.
Oh my word,
I think. I sink.
I’ll try
again, I think. Again, I sink.
Of course,
I could ask for help, but do I? No.
The other
swimmers breeze through this drill with banter of Will &
Grace and Dancing With The Stars, but again I
sink. My vomit-prone gut grows more and more tense and I
know what my comeuppance will be. My spirit evaporates. My
courage withdraws. My brain retreats to a familiar memory of
timidity and meekness; a time my gut will not disavow.
At 15 I
stood alone on the sideline of the lacrosse field. The late
February New Jersey breeze pierced through my green and gold
mesh shorts and my gray Hanes T-shirt. I stood alone on the
sideline with a pile of padding that I did not understand
how to put on. The other boys had long affixed their new
helmets and new shoulder pads.
Tick..tock..tick, time went by so slowly. I tried to
understand how to tie the knots, how to clasp the straps,
and how to tighten the strings. I looked to the field and
saw the other boys back at practice – the coach engaging
them. No one teaching me. I stood alone on the sideline. For
20 minutes. Perhaps the longest 20 minutes of my life. The
saddest too. Twenty minutes of configuring this padding, 20
minutes of doubting my athleticism, 20 minutes of
understanding that I am different, 20 minutes of concluding
that I am less than those boys on the field, 20 minutes of
being insignificant. I stood alone on that sideline and I
have never left.
“Keith.
You’re not getting it,” Coach Mike says.
Bitch, I
think. He doesn’t need to mention it aloud.
”You need
to have your elbows at a 90-degree angle. You will use the
push of your hands to push the water. That pressure will
keep you afloat,” he says.
I follow
his demonstration, but still, I sink.
In the
earshot of all the swimmers Coach Mike says, “No. You’re
still not getting it. Swimmers, I want you to scull down to
the 50-meter mark. Still no legs. Keith, lets work on
this.”
His
towering presence at the edge of the pool deck heightened my
awareness that indeed, I am now being individually
criticized and separated from the others. I feel 15 again,
sidelined, and unable to do something fairly simple.
“Here, try
it again,” Coach Mike says as he demonstrates again.
I mimic his
movements as my heart pounds with embarrassment.
“Ok.
Better. Keep doing that,” he says. “You’ll get it.”
Frustrated,
afraid to let go of the spirit I now have, the courage I now
possess, I ask, “Is this how you do it? Cause, obviously I
don’t know what I’m doing.”
The knots
in my gut loosened a bit.
“That’s OK.
That’s why you’re here. You’re getting it,” he responds.
Ten minutes
later, I really got it.
After a
grueling hour and a half of backstroke drills and after
asking Coach Mike a hundred questions on how to do the
stroke, I understood that I had made it through a practice
filled with criticism and I felt undeterred. My spirit
soaked in the knowledge that I lost no piece of my self to
any other swimmer’s or coach’s critical word. My courage to
swim more grew, and while my 15-year-old self swam by me
with every stroke I took through this practice, I am ready
to walk away from the sidelines. Step by step. But first, I
am ready to go home and rest.
Later, in
the changing area, Coach Sean and another swimmer approach
me.
“Are you
coming tomorrow night?” Coach Sean asks?
“Friday? I
wasn’t planning on it,” I respond.
“Oh, that’s
too bad. We would have liked to see you tomorrow,” he
responds with a giant smile as he and his friend begin to
leave. “Hope to see you.”
A
challenge, I thought. Now this is what I’m talking about!
Keith Davis lives
in Los Angeles.
Jan. 10,
2006
