Learning to swim

Letting go of the past means reclaiming it. Or replacing it with something else.

January 28, 2026

I crouched over smooth concrete next to the swimming pool, the hot summer sun blazing down on my back. Maybe the others were cajoling me to join them in the water, maybe not. I don’t remember. What I remember is looking at the tiny, asymmetrical holes in the smooth concrete, and noticing how they turned a darker shade of gray as they sucked in water droplets that splashed over from the pool. I traced the holes and poked them with my small fingers, trying to see if my fingers would turn damp. They didn’t. I was absorbed, as usual, in whatever I was thinking or doing at the time, disengaged from the outside world.

I felt my mother’s hands on me, and then I was underwater. I roiled beneath the pool’s surface, arms and legs flailing, trying to find up, trying to find air. As I struggled, I saw my mother standing at the edge of the pool, watching me, a quizzical expression on her face. My older sister watched with an air of resignation from a poolside chair, then she looked away.

After what seemed like several minutes, a hand finally reached in and clutched me out of the water. My sister’s best friend pulled me out. She placed a towel across my back, warmed me with her hands. I hunched over the concrete, this time gasping and wet, shivering in the sun, trying to catch my breath.

I don’t remember much about that day, or what happened before or after I was in the water. I have a vague recollection of us all piling, silently, into my mother’s butter-colored Plymouth for the drive back home.

I was about four years old. To this day, it remains one of my strongest childhood memories. Ever since, I have had an immense fear of deep water. I panic when my feet don’t touch the bottom. I have never learned to swim or to float.

This week, I went to my first swimming class. I am 54 years old.

I lived in Utah as a child. Now I live in Finland, where we are deep into the coldest part of winter. To get to my swimming class, I ran through the snow, sliding around the path, running late as usual, so that I arrived sweaty and breathless at the swimming pool.

I immediately knew I was in the right place, with the right group. There were people of all shapes and sizes, all colors and ages. I am not even the oldest person in the class, as I was sure I would be. The majority of the people in the class are migrants to Finland, like me. They immediately started chattering away in their non-native Finnish or non-native English, or whatever language they share with other people in the class.

It is a month-long course, and we are meeting eight times in total.

Some of the people are quite serious, for example the instructors, and I suppose that’s good. There are about 20 of us, and we wear all sorts of swimming costumes and gear, depending on our cultural background. The mood among us students is light and jovial, and we head towards the kids’ pool like a group of unruly children, causing the actual children in the kids’ pool to look at us with confusion. They are not used to seeing adults behave in such a way. We collide with each other as we cling to our floating devices, flailing around the kiddie pool. One or two of the students are already clearly the swimming stars. After only two classes, one woman is able to swim 50-meter laps. I try to stay out of the way of the swimming stars, but it is difficult with so many people in the pool.

I thought I wouldn’t be able to swim at all, but I was wrong. Already on the first day, the instructor told me I was kicking well. I couldn’t believe it. Really, I can kick well? On the second day, the other instructor told me I am progressing well, but the technique will take some time. Today I managed to swim several meters without touching the bottom with my feet. I am already looking forward to the next swim.

I am still afraid of deep water, though, and I don’t know if I will manage in this class to face my fears.

I have always known I am not good at sports. It started during a physical exam when I was in pre-school. The details are fuzzy, but I remember that there was a series of activities we had to do to demonstrate that we were ready to go to kindergarten. The teacher checked the items off on a list attached to her clipboard. My mother was there. At some point, the teacher told my mother to throw a giant ball toward me, a soft rubber ball almost the same size as me. I could not catch the ball. Instead, I shied away from it. We tried several times. I was not able to catch the ball.

The teacher and my mother exchanged a look, and I felt a surge of shame run through me. How could I not manage to catch the giant ball? What was wrong with me?

I didn’t do any sports as a child. I was happiest when I was looking at bugs in the dirt, drawing pictures, playing with my toys, imagining things, making up stories. I liked being alone with my thoughts, because it was the safest space. When I was alone there were no older brothers around to tease, cajole, make fun of me for being clumsy, or tell me I was a baby because I liked to watch Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood on television.

I have always been tall, and when I was growing up people assumed I was good at sports because of my body type. At school, my teachers tried to get me to do track and basketball because my older brothers were talented athletes in high school. I wasn’t good, though. I didn’t even learn to ride a bike until I was 10, and that’s because I finally got frustrated enough to teach myself. I pedaled up and down our street until I was able to stay upright. By that time, it was evening, and my legs were full of scrapes and bruises from falling down.

I have always felt ashamed that I am not good at sports and that I don’t know how to swim.

Being bad at sports feels like a confession that I was alone as a child. There was a veil of shame about always being the worst in the Physical Education class at school, the last person selected for a team, not knowing how to float in water, not knowing how to swing a tennis racket or aim a basketball. It felt like releasing a dirty secret, that no one adult had spent time with me, that there was no one who loved me enough or was patient enough to teach me and practice with me.

It was also an admission that we were poor. Like other families in my hometown who had many children, a stay-at-home mom and a dad who farmed, there was simply no money for expensive pastimes like sports. My older brothers were good athletes, but it was probably different for them. Everything was different for them: they were boys. Some of them later admitted that they joined sports teams so that they could take a shower before going to school in the morning. We didn’t get a shower in our childhood home until 1980. Until then, it was only one bathroom, with one bathtub. Trying to get a turn in the bathroom in the morning was like a competitive sport of its own.

I thought it would feel heavy and oppressive to be in swimming class. I was not prepared for the joy and lightness it brings. I chat away with the other women in the class in bad Finnish. There is a woman from Colombia who is short and friendly and asked me where I am from. Today I laughed and talked with a daycare worker from Turkey. They are there for the same reasons as me: they have lived in Finland for so long now, and part of Finnish life is being comfortable in the water. So there we are, conversing in Finnish, aiming to master a most critical facet of Finnish life: learning to swim. We are learning to swim, but at the same time we are demonstrating our commitment to living and belonging in this country.

When I was six years old and started elementary school, I was desperately eager to learn to read. I yearned for the universe that reading and writing would open up. For years already in my short life, I had been creating books on extra scraps of paper, illustrating them with my elaborate drawings. I even tried to puzzle my way through how writing must be, using my own name – the only thing I knew how to cipher – as a basis for the sound and letter relationship.

During the first week of first grade, we sat around little tables on tiny chairs and learned how to read about Patricia and Bill and their cat. I had thought it would be somehow mystical and elusive, that there would be some secret function to unlock. When I found out how easy it was to sound out the letters, I was shocked, and then I was angry. I was furious at my mother and my older siblings who could have taught me, long ago. I felt cheated out of all those books I had never read, and all those stories I had never written. It was wasted time that I would never get back. From the first grade onward, I vowed to read everything I could lay my eyes on. I ordered books from the Weekly Reader. I won the reading contest in our grade many times over. By the time I was ready to leave Middle School behind, the kind librarian was ordering in new books for me, as I had exhausted the entire previous collection.

I wonder if that is how I will feel about swimming. Will I find out that there is no magical secret, that it’s just a matter of piecing the right parts together, like learning to read? Or learning to ride a bicycle? After 50 years of waiting, trying to find my courage, will I spend the rest of my life spending every possible moment in the water, just like I read every book in sight, once I realized that I could? I hope so.

February 9

Last week I was so excited and amped up about swimming, and today I feel deflated and sore. Last week I caught on quickly when the substitute teacher showed us the arm movements and how to breathe. Now, today, it felt like everything was backwards. I can take three strokes, then I run out of breath.

Last week, the friendly Turkish ladies were laughing and splashing around. One of them started shrieking and laughing with joy because she learned how to float on her stomach. Everyone at the pool area turned to look at her. She didn’t care, she kept laughing.

Today the Turkish ladies were not there. The atmosphere was quieter and more serious. Our normal instructor, Jani, was there, but there is something wrong with his toe, and he can’t get in the water. His friend was there in the water to help us, but he seemed to spend most of his time with the people who already more or less have picked up how to swim. The stars.

I went back and forth, back and forth across the pool. I simply can’t seem to get the rhythm of breathing while kicking and trying to move my arms. Somehow it just doesn’t all come together. We are supposed to learn the arm movements by holding onto a kickboard with one hand, but when I try to hold onto that thing and do the arm strokes, I am all over the place, going in circles. “Just try breathing in and out,” the guest instructor told me at some point. “When you breathe in and breathe out, you somehow move forward without really noticing.” Right.

Meanwhile, this lovely woman who does everything the right way has moved onto an effortless backstroke. I don’t want to move on until I can master the front crawl.

I had somehow envisioned that we would move on to deep water and learn to float like a cork. That is my ultimate dream. I don’t think that will happen, though, at least not in this course. We only have three more classes, and some people are still learning to kick and hold their face underwater. Maybe the aim was simply to get us used to the water. Maybe some people never really learn to swim.

I feel a bit let down at the moment. I thought it would come together more easily. I thought the aims would be higher and that the instructors would offer more personalized instruction. They seem quite content with letting us move around the pool, any way we can. Maybe that is the point.

Tonight I walked away with an ear plugged with water that I can’t get rid of, and a sinking feeling that I won’t get much better than this, at least not yet. After so much buildup in my own mind, this is very disappointing.

February 12

My ear is still clogged, but it’s not as bad as it was. Late on Tuesday afternoon, I went to see a doctor. She was a short, spry little woman who looked like she had just arrived at the health clinic from a camping trip. She set herself up next to me on the bench, with a whole line-up of tools that she inserted, one by one, in my ear. She reminded me of a sculptor with all of her tools, and I was her hunk of marble. Or, more accurately, my left ear was her hunk of marble. Whatever is in my ear is so far lodged in, so that she could not get it out. She sent me to the pharmacy to buy some Remo-Wax, and she told me to come back in two days.

It has been a rough couple of days at home, too. There are problems with my daughter’s health, and we can’t seem to resolve the issues. Just as I was entering swimming hall, I got into a huge shouting match on the phone with my husband. He told me I upset our daughter. I told him to stop blaming me for everything that goes wrong in our family.

I was in a very bad mood when I came to the pool.

When I started gliding through the water, everything disappeared. I focused on the arms, on the breathing. I can now swim nearly the entire way across a 50 meter pool, most of it with one huge, satisfying breath.

The swimming instructor was in the water with us this time; his toe is better. He stopped me to say that my technique is looking good. I told him to stop joking around with me, and he laughed and said, “No, really, it is.” Then he showed me how to twist my body to the right and to the left as I do my arm strokes. He called this advice a “pro tip.”

I practiced for the rest of the lesson. I noticed that the reason I didn’t reach the end of the pool each time, by the end of class, was not because I was doing something wrong, but because my knees knocked the bottom of the pool, or because I ran out of air simply from being exhausted. In short, I can more or less swim. I can do it. I swam 40 to 50 meters at a time, over and over and over again.

When I got out of the pool, I came back to my hotel and called my daughter. We talked on the phone for an hour. It was a good conversation. I think we have reached a breakthrough.

February 18

Tonight was our last week of swimming classes. Even though it was our last night, I could not quite find my mojo. I am tired. I tried to swim the length of the pool, but I could not do it. My breath did not hold.

The swimming instructor watched me, then observed, “Are you breathing all the way out under water? You can’t take in more breath if you haven’t breathed all the way out.”

He was right. I was not breathing out. I am not breathing out.

I learned many things in swimming class. Most important, I learned to swim. It will require much more practice and getting used to water, but I am ready to keep going.

I am a person who carries a fair amount of stress, self doubt, and a sense of responsibility for other people’s well-being. My swimming lessons have taught me how to swim, but there have been other lessons, too. These are the things I want to remember, and not just about swimming.

1. You have to breathe all the way out before you can breathe in.

2. The breath takes you forward. Focus on breathing in and breathing out. Everything else happens because of the breath.

3. Use your strength to move forward, but when your strength gives out, pause to breathe.

4. Stay in your own lane, especially when the people around you don’t know what they are doing.

5. There is no need to hurry if you are making progress. There is no rush to finish.

   
   

February 26

I finish writing this essay on a snowy, icy day, gazing out the window toward the small frozen bay next to our little red cottage. The impetus to swim, what started all of this, is that bay. Next summer, when the days are warm and long, I will swim there in long, leisurely strokes, looking up at the sky.

I won’t notice at the time, but when I think back, I will realize that the memories of not being able to swim will be replaced by other memories and other sensations. These new sensations will include, for example, the contentment and freedom of gliding through the water, recognizing my own strength. They will include sounds of joy from the people around me, as they, too, realize they are able to float. I will feel the water against my face, and I will recognize that I know how to breathe.

The recollection of my childhood failure to swim, the story that began this essay, has already dimmed. In one short month, it has been replaced with other stories and memories. I am happy I wrote about that childhood experience before I started attending the swimming class, because now there is a record. Just a few weeks ago, the experience was emblazoned, front and center, as part of who I am. It was an explanation for my shortcomings. And now I don’t need it. Already during my swimming class, I noticed that with each stroke, each success, each lap in the pool, the feelings of shame and fear associated with my childhood experience had begun to diminish. This will only continue, until the memory is a distant part of my past.

I remain cautious, but I am no longer afraid. I am free.