How to Teach Your Mother to Swim

Begin in the shallow end.

This is not a metaphor yet.

The shallow end is where municipal pools keep their chipped blue ladders, floating Band-Aids, grandmothers with waterproof purses, and teenage lifeguards who regard human suffering as an interruption of tanning. It is also where your mother will insist on standing, arms crossed over her chest, still wearing the terrycloth cover-up she bought at Goodwill with the cruise-line logo stitched over the heart.

Do not say, “You should have learned this years ago.”

She knows.

She has known for sixty-eight years, beginning with the summer her own mother took her to Lake Erie and said, “Only rich people float,” then lit a cigarette and walked back to the towels. Since then your mother has lived a whole life on land. She has cooked on land, loved badly on land, given birth twice on land, buried one husband and nearly buried another on land. She has crossed bridges with her eyes shut. She has stood at the edge of baptisms and clapped for other people’s surrender.

Tell her to put one foot on the first step.

Say it gently.

She will say, “I am not afraid.”

Say, “I know.”

This is the first lie, but a useful one. There will be others.

 

 

Necessary Equipment

One municipal pool pass. One towel large enough to hide inside. One bottle of sunscreen smelling faintly of coconut and missed chances. One adult child willing to become, briefly and clumsily, the parent. One mother who has agreed to come but has not agreed to anything else. One body of water pretending to be harmless.

Do not bring forgiveness at first. It is heavy when wet.

 

 

Warnings Before Entering

Do not begin by mentioning your father.

Do not begin by mentioning the day he drove to Sandusky and came back with lake water in his shoes and another woman’s perfume folded into his shirt.

Do not begin by mentioning the hospital bill your mother hid inside the flour canister, or the time she slapped you in the produce aisle for asking why all the oranges had stickers but none had names.

Begin with the water.

Water is honest in the way a dog is honest: it has no opinion of your history. Water does not care that your mother made you call your stepfather “Mr. Ellis” for three years after the wedding, or that she ironed your jeans because people were watching, although no one was watching. Water does not care that you once found her kneeling in the pantry, praying into a bag of sugar.

Water receives whatever steps into it.

This is either mercy or indifference. You will not know which until later.

 

 

Step One: Establish Trust

Hold out your hand.

She will look at it as if you are offering her a small, suspicious animal.

Say, “I’ve got you.”

She will say, “I’m not a child.”

Say, “No.”

Do not say, “Neither was I.”

There are sentences that enter the room holding knives. Leave them in the car.

Offer your elbow instead. Mothers who refuse hands sometimes accept elbows. An elbow suggests partnership rather than rescue. It says, I am not carrying you. I am merely here beside you, foolishly hinged.

Her fingers will surprise you. You remember them as larger: tightening around your wrist in parking lots, pinching the soft underside of your arm at Mass, twisting washcloths, pressing aspirin against your tongue when you had fevers. Now they are narrow and cold, the knuckles risen like little white stones.

Do not cry.

Crying at this stage may be interpreted as condescension.

Also, you are not ready.

 

 

Note on Pool Acoustics

Every municipal pool is a cathedral of bad echoes.

Voices return altered. The shriek of one child becomes the shriek of all children. A whistle splits the air and becomes law. Someone laughs near the vending machines and suddenly everyone is laughing, including the dead.

Your mother will hear everything too loudly: bare feet, drains, the wet cough of a man in lane three, the low thunder of air-conditioning failing to cool July.

You will hear your mother breathing.

You will hear how she hides panic behind commentary.

“Look at that woman’s suit,” she will say.

“Which woman?”

“The one who thinks she’s twenty.”

“She looks fine.”

“She looks divorced.”

“She might be happy.”

“That’s what I said.”

Let her talk.

Speech is a flotation device.

 

 

Step Two: Enter the Water

The first foot will be dramatic.

Do not laugh.

She will touch the water with her toes and recoil as if the pool has insulted her. She will say, “It’s cold.”

It is not cold. It is eighty-two degrees and smells of chlorine, pennies, and childhood rashes. But cold is not a temperature here. Cold is the body recognizing another kingdom.

Say, “Take your time.”

She will say, “I don’t need time.”

She will take nine minutes.

When the water reaches her knees, she will grip the rail. When it reaches her thighs, she will call upon Jesus. When it reaches her waist, she will say, “This is ridiculous.”

Say, “Yes.”

Because it is ridiculous. A grown woman learning to float, a grown child teaching her, both of you wearing bathing suits purchased under fluorescent lights from a store that also sells antifungal cream and sympathy cards. Ridiculous is not the opposite of sacred. Often it is the doorway.

 

 

A Brief History of Your Mother and Bodies of Water

Age six: Lake Erie. Her brothers tell her there are eels. Her mother says, “Don’t get your dress wet.”

Age nineteen: Niagara Falls. In the photograph, she smiles as if someone has just informed her that wives are a temporary condition.

Age sixty-eight: municipal pool, shallow end, Tuesday morning adult swim.

There are histories so small no one records them, yet the body keeps minutes.

 

 

Step Three: Teach Breathing

Say, “First we breathe.”

She will say, “I know how to breathe.”

You may be tempted to say, “Do you?”

Do not.

Demonstrate instead.

Inhale through the mouth. Exhale through the nose. Let the breath make bubbles. Show her how the face meets the water and returns.

She will say, “I’m not putting my face in there.”

Say, “Not yet.”

She will say, “I saw a child spit.”

Say, “Probably.”

She will say, “People pee in pools.”

Say, “People lie in kitchens.”

You will not mean to say it. It will simply arrive, dressed and ready.

The pool will continue being a pool. A boy named Mason will be warned not to run. The woman your mother has diagnosed as divorced will climb the ladder with magnificent unconcern.

Your mother will say, “What is that supposed to mean?”

Say, “Nothing.”

This is the second lie. Less useful.

She will release the rail for exactly three seconds, then seize it again.

“Fine,” she will say. “Show me the bubbles.”

 

 

On the Proper Use of Bubbles

Bubbles are the body’s first letter to water.

They say, I am here.

They say, I contain air.

They say, I am not yet drowned.

Your mother will purse her lips and blow on the surface, producing a few embarrassed ripples.

Say, “Good.”

She will say, “Don’t patronize me.”

Say, “That was genuinely good.”

She will try again. This time bubbles will appear, small and frantic, like a secret escaping.

For reasons you cannot explain, you will remember the night she came to your bedroom after your father left the first time. You were eleven. She sat on the edge of your bed and said, “You’re the man now.” You were not the man. You were a child with a model airplane hanging from the ceiling and a fear of earwigs. But she looked so pale in the hallway light that you nodded.

Your brother Paul, older by three years and already practicing disappearance, watched from the doorway.

“He’s not the man,” Paul said.

Your mother turned on him. “Then who is?”

No one answered.

That was the family’s genius: asking questions that could only injure the room.

In the pool, your mother blows bubbles.

“Again?” she asks.

“Again,” you say.

 

 

Step Four: Let the Body Learn What the Mind Refuses

Explain buoyancy if you must, but briefly.

Do not over-intellectualize. Water is older than your theories.

Say, “Your body wants to float.”

She will say, “My body wants to go home.”

Say, “Bodies can want more than one thing.”

She will snort. “Since when?”

This is the sort of question that separates generations. Your mother believes desire is a problem to be managed privately, like hemorrhoids or credit card debt. You believe desire is a weather system, reportable and possibly connected to climate change. Neither of you is completely wrong.

Place one hand beneath her upper back.

Ask permission first.

This matters. She has been touched without permission by doctors, husbands, children, priests giving ashes, relatives pulling her into photographs, neighbors kissing her cheek at funerals. The body keeps a guest list. Do not enter unannounced.

Say, “May I put my hand here?”

She will roll her eyes.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

“May I?”

“Yes.”

The water will take some of her weight, but not all. This is how trust works too. Nothing takes everything.

Tell her to bend her knees.

Tell her to lean back.

She will fold forward at the waist, chin tucked, eyes wide, performing fear as though auditioning for it.

Say, “Look at the ceiling.”

She will say, “Why?”

“Because the ceiling is not trying to drown you.”

She will look up.

There are rust stains above lane two. A skylight clouded with dust. A single balloon trapped in a beam, silver and deflating, from someone’s birthday party long since eaten and forgotten.

“Who puts a balloon in a pool?” she says.

“Optimists.”

“Fools.”

“Same family.”

She laughs then, a small bark, and because she laughs, her shoulders loosen. Because her shoulders loosen, the water rises around her neck. Because the water rises, she panics and grabs your forearm.

Her nails hurt.

Do not pull away.

 

 

Step Five: Do Not Confuse Progress With Peace

After the first attempt, she will want to leave.

Say, “Let’s rest.”

Do not say, “You promised.” Promises are brittle in water.

Stand beside her near the wall. Let her cling to the gutter. Let her complain about the acoustics, the temperature, the lifeguard’s tattoos, the price of admission, the decline of Western civilization as evidenced by snack machines.

Then she will say, “You always were impatient.”

You will say, “I’m not being impatient.”

“You think I don’t know your face?”

“I’m standing here.”

“Standing there impatiently.”

“I took a day off work for this.”

“Oh, here we go.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means everything costs something with you.”

This is where the pool becomes dangerous.

Not because of depth. You are both standing in four feet of public water. The danger is that the past, which you thought was folded neatly in a locker with your shoes, has entered wearing a swim cap.

You will want to say: Everything did cost something. Lunch money. Silence. The scholarship you turned down because she had surgery. The apartment you did not rent because she said Paul was unreliable and somebody had to help. The years you called every night at seven because she once said widows die when no one checks.

Instead say, “Let’s try again.”

She will stare at you.

This is not avoidance. Or perhaps it is. Sometimes mercy and cowardice wear the same shirt.

 

 

Step Six: The Wall

The wall is important.

All beginners need a wall. Later, if they become advanced, they may pretend they never needed it. This is how civilizations begin and how memoirs lie.

Ask your mother to stand with her back to the wall, hands gripping the gutter behind her. Tell her to lift one foot, then the other, so the water can hold her legs.

She will say, “I’ll sink.”

Say, “Not while you’re holding the wall.”

She will lift one foot, then the other. For one second she will be suspended: hands gripping concrete, head back, belly up, toes breaking the surface. A woman trying to believe in physics.

Say, “That’s it.”

Do not overpraise. Overpraise makes the soul suspicious.

She will say, “This is not swimming.”

Say, “No. This is floating.”

She will say, “Floating is what dead people do.”

Say, “Also clouds.”

She will consider this.

“Clouds don’t know anything,” she says.

“Maybe that helps.”

 

 

Step Seven: Add Distance

Distance should be introduced modestly. In swimming, as in family, too much too soon is abandonment. Too little is suffocation.

Stand one arm’s length away.

Tell your mother to push gently from the wall and let you catch her.

She will say, “Absolutely not.”

Say, “Just six inches.”

She will say, “You always exaggerate.”

Say, “Then three inches.”

She will say, “Now you’re mocking me.”

Say, “I am negotiating.”

She will close her eyes.

This is how you know she is serious. Your mother does not close her eyes easily. She watched your father back out of driveways, watched Paul slip money from her purse, watched neighbors carry covered dishes toward calamity. She watched everything except herself.

“Ready?” you ask.

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t okay me. Count.”

“From three?”

“From ten.”

Count slowly. At seven, she will open one eye. At six, Mason will cannonball illegally into the deep end. At four, your mother will mutter, “Little delinquent.” At three, she will push off. At one, you will catch her under the shoulders. At zero, both of you will be astonished.

She will say, “I did it.”

Say, “You did.”

She will say, “I barely moved.”

Say, “Movement counts.”

She will say, “Again.”

 

 

Step Eight: Repetition

Again is the holiest word in learning. It says the first miracle was not enough. It says: perhaps I did not die.

So again.

She pushes. You catch.

Again.

She pushes too hard and bumps your chest, both of you laughing, the water rising between you like applause.

Again.

She forgets to close her mouth and swallows pool water.

“Poison,” she says, coughing.

“Chlorine.”

“Same thing.”

Again.

Her body lengthens. Her grip loosens. Her hair, dyed the color of a polite chestnut, fans slightly around her ears. Her face, usually arranged for disappointing news, becomes almost blank.

This frightens you more than panic.

You have never seen your mother unbraced.

 

 

A Word About the Brother Who Is Not Here

Paul should be here, but Paul is in Arizona, or Oregon, or a program, or a relationship with a woman named Star who makes jewelry from spoons. He calls on Christmas Eve from numbers you do not recognize and says, “How’s Ma?” as though she belongs mostly to you, a property transferred by absence.

When you told him you were teaching her to swim, he laughed.

“She’ll drown you first,” he said.

“She wants to learn.”

“She wants attention.”

“People can want more than one thing.”

“You sound like your therapist.”

“You sound like a man in Arizona.”

“I’m in New Mexico.”

“Same hat.”

He laughed again, then grew quiet. Paul’s silences are furnished apartments he refuses to invite you into. Finally he said, “Tell her I said good luck.”

In the pool, your mother says, “Did you tell Paul?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said good luck.”

She looks pleased in spite of herself.

Then, because she is your mother, she says, “He always had a good heart.”

You say, “He stole your Buick.”

“He brought it back.”

“Without doors.”

“He was going through something.”

“We were all going through something.”

She looks at you, water trembling at her shoulders.

“Yes,” she says. “We were.”

 

 

Step Nine: Introduce the Back Float

The back float is an act of theological recklessness. It asks the human body to imitate surrender without dying.

Do not call it surrender when explaining it to your mother.

Say, “We’ll try the back float.”

She will say, “No.”

Say, “Supported.”

She will say, “Still no.”

Say, “Ten seconds.”

She will say, “Four, and don’t breathe on me.”

Agree.

Place one hand between her shoulder blades and one beneath the base of her skull. The neck is where fear keeps its office.

Ask her to bend her knees. Ask her to lean back. She will curse softly, and the word will rise to the rafters, cleansed by chlorine.

“Good,” you say.

“Don’t good me.”

“Keep leaning.”

“I am leaning.”

“You are bowing.”

She laughs, then hates that she laughed, then leans.

For one second, all her ancestral women gather at the edge of the pool in housedresses and sensible shoes, shaking their heads at rest, pleasure, and foolishness.

For one second, they all say, Don’t be foolish.

Then the water lifts her.

Do not move. This is harder than it sounds. Your instinct will be to adjust, correct, encourage, instruct, narrate, fix. Resist.

Support her head. Support her back. Let the rest of her find the surface.

Her toes rise. Her belly rises. Her face opens toward the ceiling with its rust stains and captive balloon. Her ears sink below the surface, where she cannot hear you even if you speak.

This is a gift.

For four seconds, your mother cannot hear your opinion, and you cannot hear hers. For four seconds, she is held by something that does not remember what she did wrong.

Then she thrashes upright, sputtering.

“Enough!”

“You floated.”

“I was dying.”

“You were floating.”

“I know the difference.”

“I’m not sure you do.”

She wipes water from her face. Her mascara, which she insisted was waterproof, has made two small shadows beneath her eyes.

“Don’t look at me,” she says.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m looking near you.”

This time she laughs so hard she has to hold the wall.

 

 

Step Ten: The Lesson Within the Lesson

By now, forty-five minutes will have passed. Your mother’s lips will be slightly blue, though she denies being cold. Mason will be eating chips from a vending machine bag, temporarily contained by salt.

The woman your mother called divorced swims laps with such clean, indifferent grace that you begin to suspect she is neither divorced nor married but aquatic.

Your mother watches her.

“I was pretty once,” she says.

Do not rush to reassure. She is not asking for a compliment. She is filing a report.

Say, “I know.”

“Pictures lie,” she says.

“Not about everything.”

She looks back at the swimmer.

“I wanted to see Greece,” she says.

This is new information.

“Greece?”

“White buildings. Blue water. Women in black dresses who looked like they knew what men were and had survived it.”

You imagine her among whitewashed walls and impossible light, complaining about tourists, standing before the Aegean, not swimming.

“You could still go,” you say.

She gives you the look she reserves for expired coupons and public optimism.

“I could help.”

“There it is again. Cost.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know how you meant it.”

“No, you don’t.”

She turns from the swimmer.

Then, quietly: “I don’t want you paying for the life I didn’t have.”

There are sentences that rearrange the furniture inside you. This is one.

 

 

Step Eleven: The Small Independent Float

Do not announce this as a milestone.

Milestones frighten people who have survived by mistrusting roads.

Simply say, “Let’s try without my hand under your back for one second.”

She will say, “Absolutely not.”

Say, “Half a second.”

She will say, “You can’t measure half a second.”

Say, “Watch me.”

She will smile.

Support her head.

Support her back.

Let her lean.

Let her rise.

Say nothing.

When she is floating, remove the hand from beneath her back.

Not far.

An inch below.

Ready.

For half a second, she floats without you.

Then for another.

Then another.

You keep your hand beneath the water, close enough to help, far enough to count.

Her face does not change. It becomes less defended. The face beneath the face appears, not younger exactly, but prior. Before husband, before mortgage, before the first child made her afraid of every passing car, before Paul, before you, before all the little economies of disappointment. A face without weather.

You think: This is my mother.

You think: I have never met her.

Then her eyes open.

She sees the ceiling.

She sees the balloon.

She sees, perhaps, Greece.

She says, “Am I doing it?”

Because her ears are underwater, the words come out strange, softened, almost sung.

“Yes,” you say, though she cannot hear you.

“Yes,” you say again.

She floats.

 

 

Closing Procedure

When the lesson ends, do not make a ceremony of it. Ceremony will come later, disguised as soreness.

Help her to the steps. She will pretend she does not need help. Allow this fiction. Some fictions are load-bearing.

At the front desk, the teenager will ask if you want to renew for next week.

Your mother will say, “We’ll see.”

This means yes.

In the parking lot, heat will rise from the asphalt. Do not ask whether she enjoyed it. Enjoyment is not the measure.

She will pause before getting in.

“I suppose,” she says, “if a person were going to Greece, she should know how to swim.”

Do not smile too quickly.

Say, “Probably useful.”

“I said if.”

“I heard if.”

At home, over tomato sandwiches and iced tea cloudy with too much lemon, she will say, “You remember things wrong.”

You will stiffen.

“Which things?”

“A lot of things.”

“Probably.”

“I do too,” she says.

The kitchen smells of tomatoes, chlorine, and sunscreen. Your mother looks at the cutting board.

“I shouldn’t have told you that you were the man,” she says.

There it is.

Not the apology you rehearsed in anger. No kneeling. No catalogue. Just one sentence, plain as a towel.

You could say many true things. Truth has never been scarce in your family. Only timing.

Instead, because the day has already held one miracle and should not be asked to hold two, you say, “I know.”

She nods and resumes slicing tomatoes.

 

 

Final Examination, Unscheduled

It will happen on a Thursday, not a Tuesday. Rain will beat against the high windows. Thunder will sound distant enough to ignore until it is not. Only five people will be swimming: Lenore, the snorkel pilgrim, a woman with foam dumbbells, your mother, and you.

Your mother will be irritable. This is often how courage announces itself. She will criticize your parking, your damp hair, and the postcard Paul has sent from Santa Fe showing a saint with arrows in him.

“At least he wrote,” you say.

“He wrote, ‘Weather dry. Thinking of you.’ That’s not writing. That’s a ransom note.”

“He’s trying.”

“He is always trying from very far away.”

“So are you.”

She stops.

The rain speaks against the windows.

You expect anger. Instead she says, “Maybe.”

In the water, she begins with bubbles, then wall push-offs, then a back float: twenty seconds, face calm, ears submerged, hands open at her sides. Lenore gives a thumbs-up. Your mother pretends not to see, then glows visibly.

After resting, she says, “Let’s look at the deep end.”

“Look?”

“Don’t parse me.”

You walk with her until the floor begins to slope. She feels it and grips your arm.

“That’s enough.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t okay me yet.”

You wait.

She takes another step. The water reaches her chest. Another. Her shoulders. Another. Her chin lifts.

“I don’t like this,” she says.

“I know.”

“I’m not doing this for you.”

“I know.”

“I’m not doing it for Greece either.”

“Okay.”

“I’m doing it because I am tired of being bossed around by things that don’t know me.”

This sentence deserves a brass plaque.

Instead, you say, “That seems fair.”

The floor drops more sharply. She grips the gutter where the shallow slope gives way to the deep. Her toes barely touch.

“Still not today,” she says.

“Still not today.”

Then thunder cracks directly overhead. The lifeguard blows the whistle and everyone must leave the pool. This is either comic timing or divine intervention, depending on one’s theology.

Your mother startles, loses her footing, and for one clean second, she is not touching bottom.

You reach for her.

She reaches for the wall.

Neither of you gets there first.

The water does.

It lifts her.

She kicks once, then sculls with both hands as you taught her, badly but sufficiently. Her head stays above water. Her eyes are wide. Her mouth opens.

You expect her to call your name.

Instead she laughs.

The lifeguard says, “Ma’am, please exit the pool.”

Your mother, floating in twelve feet of municipal thunderstorm water, says, “I am exiting.”

She paddles two feet to the wall.

You do not help.

This is the hardest thing you have done all summer.

At the ladder, she grabs the rail, turns to you, and says, “Did you see?”

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Then she climbs out, triumphant and furious, as if she has personally defeated drowning, weather, marriage, childhood, and the city parks department.

 

 

Afterward

Paul calls that night.

Not you. Her.

She tells you three days later, pretending it slipped her mind.

“He called,” she says while folding towels warm from the dryer.

“Who?”

“Your brother. How many hes are there?”

“What did he say?”

“He asked if I was Esther Williams now.”

You smile.

“What did you say?”

“I said Esther Williams had better legs.”

“Then what?”

She folds a washcloth into thirds.

“He said he was proud of me.”

She does not look up.

“That’s good,” you say.

“He cried.”

“Paul?”

“Unless there was someone else on the line with his exact problems.”

You picture your brother in New Mexico, holding a phone in a rented room, crying because his mother floated. The human heart is absurdly specific.

“What did you do?”

“What do you think I did? I told him not to be dramatic.”

“Ma.”

“Then I cried too.”

She places the folded towel on the stack.

“Don’t make a face,” she says.

“I’m not making a face.”

“You’re making an inside face.”

You laugh. She laughs.

There is no reconciliation scene. Your mother remains your mother. She still weaponizes leftovers and says, “I’m not mad,” in tones that make furniture reconsider its loyalties.

You remain yourself. You still keep score when frightened. You still confuse usefulness with love. Paul still calls from distances both geographic and moral. Greece remains a brochure on the table, then three tentative dates circled on a calendar, then uncircled, then circled again.

Nothing is solved. But on Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays, your mother enters the water.

She complains. She blows bubbles. She floats.

And each time she floats, the world performs its small correction: not forgiveness, not yet, but something older and less obedient.

The body, briefly held. The ceiling, briefly harmless. The child, briefly not responsible. The mother, briefly without weight.

Begin there.

Begin again.