Learning to Swim

The swim school is located in a questionable neighborhood of Burbank where safety notices are left on our car by the Burbank police department, and the neighborhood is populated with apartment buildings noted for their dilapidated tan stucco and names such as “The Sea Breeze” or the “Paradise Palms,” but the only part of the names that are accurate are the palms rising up from the parking medians, which serve to remind us that this is, after all, southern California. Yet you’ll find no sign of sea, breeze, or paradise here as summer tries to suffocate Burbank in its smoldering grip.

But once you walk in through the gate of the Lucile Cowle Swim School, all the oppression melts away. Fountains burble, and Canna Lilies bloom from planters. The smell of sun screen permeates the air. Phil Collins drifts out from speakers dotting the stone walls, and parents with cameras sit under large canvas umbrellas as instructors coax children of all ages to become just a little bit less human and a little bit more aquatic. We come every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the aquariums— a small pool for the babies and a larger pool for the big kids— are teeming with everything from the tiniest minnows to nearly full-grown fish. Some instructors have four-year-olds floating on their backs like otters. Other instructors are cheering on five-year-olds learning to tuck into a dive like penguins in goggles. I watch my son, just four-years-old, leap unafraid off the white diving board into the eight-foot deep water. It is a great and terrifying moment.

According to an article on Slate, Drowning is the number two cause of death in children under the age of fifteen, and the Instinctive Drowning Response doesn't look like drowning. It looks like a person pushing down against the surface of the water, unable to speak, and struggling to breathe. I have a close friend who knows a woman who lost a child to drowning. My brother was on a field trip in high school, and one of his classmates drowned in a pool they were all swimming in when it happened. I read a poem once about drowned twins: five-year-olds clasping hands at the bottom of a neighbor's pool. It's no wonder that some of us parents coach from the sides of the pool. 

My memories of swimming begin in my grandparent’s pool on Fremont Street, when all the neighborhood kids would come over on the hot days to play. I floated around in the kind of orange life-vest you wear on boats, but floating around wasn’t enough for my mother. My swimming lessons were held in the mornings, before summer camp, when the air was still cold. The pools were never heated, and my strongest memories of learning to swim are visceral: gripping a kick board, legs churning, teeth chattering. When the lessons were done, and I was dressed for the day and finally warmed up, I felt a little wrung out and rubbed down by the cold water.

Now I watch my son as he tries to learn how to push off the wall of the pool and glide to his instructor, who offers him the appropriate high-fives when he follows instructions. I watch him kick his legs wildly as his arms flail at the water when he forgets about “big arms and scooping hands.” Every time we visit the pools, he does a little bit better. But sometimes he pushes off the wall, and instead of gliding to his instructor, he goes under. His head is gone, just like that. But then he sputters, laughs, and once again tries to execute the glide, scoop, and kick that constitutes swimming. 

In the rippling oasis of Lucile Cowle’s swim school, I watch some kids sink as their instructors lift them back up to the surface. I watch tiny, blond girls in frilly swimsuits whose spastic movements look like ecstatic drowning, but really it's swimming without coordination, and it's a delightful thing to see. When my son is done with his lesson, I change him into dry clothes and he picks out a red lollipop, which glows in the sun on the way back to our car where a notice about carjacking is pinned under the wiper.