Saturday, June 28, 2008
In the Beginning.
I remember my grandmother tossing me into the shallow pools formed at low tide in Hermosa Beach, California. In these sandy troughs I learned to float...... and dream......At school, I was always looking out the window. The teachers told my parents I was a day dreamer. At that time, a large aquarium sat next to the Hermosa Beach Pier. Water was pumped into the aquarium that splilled back out into the sea. I remember the smell of fish..... These are my early memories in the water. What are your first in water experiences?
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Some people have flying dreams. As a child, I had underwater dreams. I would undulate through the water, feeling very free, and I could breathe underwater.
I remember my SCUBA checkout dive at Catalina Island. As I relaxed on the sandy bottom, breathing through my regulator, my first inclination was to remove the regulator from my mouth, so I could swim away as in my early dreams.
My earliest swimming memories are of being at Jones Beach on Long Island in the late 70's when my dad was a lifeguard. From the time I was an infant until I was about 4 years old my mom and I would spend practically every day of summer hanging out at field 6 while my dad was on the lifeguard stand. I remember climbing up onto the lifeguard stand and how enormous it seemed at the time. At the end of the day when the beach closed my little friends and I would climb up onto the stand and jump down what seemed like a herculean leap down onto the sand pile below repeatedly and tirelessly. I remember running down to the water and jumping over the shorebreaks creating some sort of game of not letting the wavelet break over my feet. I also have a distinct memory of eating Rice Krispies Cereal with blueberries which my mom must have brought with us to the beach every day....as well as those classic Long Island made bagels that our friends the Turbeks would always bring with them. I remember that outside of the lifeguard house there was a plastic Pluto (Mickey Mouse's dog) which served as the field six mascot and as my best friend. I would sit on him and pour sand in his ears and sit with my arm around him as the very tall men in their Jones Beach lifeguards suits wandered in and out of the guard shack. And of course their was the smell of fried fod coming from the snack bar and the musty salty public bathrooms that were always a dubious adventure to enter in your bare feet.
- Fiona Laughlin, Total Immersion Swimming. Daughter of Total Immersion founder Terry Laughlin.
When my Parents divorced we left Metro Detroit and moved to Northern Michigan. We went to Elk Rapids and I can remember seeing Lake Michigan for the first time. I was 6 years old and I remember vividly how amazing it was and being drawn to the water. Fast forward to last month and I was in a wedding back in Michigan and went back to the beach we went to and kids were still having fun and I looked across the water and thought how lucky I was to grow up there. Now I live about ten feet from the Pacific and think I am again lucky.
My first memorable water experience in my life was in the surf zone at Redondo Beach. I loved playing at the beach and was always told never to swim into the surf. I would spend endless hours at the water’s edge playing in the sand and tide pools, but never got to swim out into the surf because I was to young.
One day my Mom picked me up and carried my into the surf. Waves were crashing with pounding thunder and to me they seemed like buildings falling into the sand with the noise of bombs exploding. This was as close as I had ever been to the surf. All of my senses were telling me the power of the ocean was far greater than the mere human strength we had inside ourselves and this was far more dangerous than anyone told me. Before I could comprehend what was about to happen and cry for help my Mom yanked me off the off the white wash we were walking in and held me like a football in her arms.
Then came a huge skyscraper of a wave. I could feel my Mom’s arms tighten and at that point I simply relaxed. I remember thinking there is no safer place on earth than in my Mom’s arms. All went white I had my eyes wide open. It went from white to green and then I felt myself summersault. With my eyes still open I remember seeing a flash of silver pass by and thinking to myself that has to be a fish.
Being wrapped in my mother’s arms made this experience into the surf zone the most comfortable and enjoyable first ocean experience of my life. You can imagine how astonished and then ecstatic I was when I first heard people say Mother Ocean, Mother Earth!
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