Walk the plank

Feel the fear, and do it anyway. –Susan Jeffers

The water in the pool at my YWCA is a balmy 86 degrees Fahrenheit. I imagine it is kept at that temperature for all the AARP members, like me, who have aches and pains brought on by strenuous activity like breathing.

So as not to distract their little tadpoles, parents watch the swim classes from an enclosed room with bleacher seating, a room so badly designed that there are approximately two places to sit that aren’t obstructed by large expanses of concrete wall, the diving board, or pillars. We sit in anxious silence, craning our necks to see our little peanuts bobbing up and down in the water. Does Miss Kate realize that Tess is still under water—for a very long time? Is Tess going to slide down the sliding board into the pool or pitch a fit at the top of the slide? Does she know not to pee in the pool? These are just a few of the questions I amuse myself with in that claustrophobic room.

On Tuesday, for the very first time, Miss Kate marched Tess and her two tiny compatriots to the diving board AT THE DEEP END OF THE POOL. They had jumped from the side of the pool INTO THE DEEP END for several lessons, but here was the BIG DAY. THE BOARD ITSELF.

I immediately stood up, as if standing would save her.

Tess looked excited in that “I’m going to throw up” kind of way we feel when we meet Johnny Depp or talk to Billy Collins on the phone. She pressed her little face against the glass of the Observation Chamber to see if I was watching. I pressed my face back against hers. She stood back, amidst two classes vying for the board.

I watched as Miss Kate slid into the pool beneath the board and the first tiny child strode to the end and jumped off. Miss Kate swam with him to the edge, then back to the middle to catch the second child. As she got to the edge with that miniature human clinging to her, I watched from my soundproof booth. She climbed from the pool, took those two children to the lifeguard stand at the middle of the pool, and gave them their stickers for being in the class.

Tess stood very still, squished up against the glass. An older boy pointed to her and motioned for her to go. I stood frozen in fear that she actually would go, with no one to catch her. She stood still. I stood still, thinking Miss Kate would return. But she had forgotten Tess was standing there. Slowly, Tess turned to see if I was there, her bottom lip pulled down, a single tear falling from a big huge eyeball. I put my fingers together in a heart and mimed for her to stay.right.there.

I ran from the booth through the hall, across the lobby, into the  dressing room, and out into the Tropic of Pool, my glasses immediately steaming up completely. I walked over to Tess, who was in tears by this time. “We’ll ask Miss Kate,” I said, taking her tiny hand in mine. 

Miss Kate was mortified that she had forgotten Tess, and asked if she wanted to go. A single, sad nod.

She walked with Tess to the board. As Tess climbed the final stair to the plank, she froze. Miss Kate walked up on the board with her, gingerly pacing to the end with Tess. By this time, Tess was a stiff board herself, unable to think or move or blink or even see. She was shaking visibly, the board bouncing up and down with her fear. I, of course, was videotaping it on my little camera.

I realized suddenly that Miss Kate was looking my way and saying, “Mom!” “Mom?” I kept videotaping, separated from what was unrolling before me, too anxious to capture the moment on film to be fully present. “Mom?” Miss Kate said louder, “You’re going to have to help us!” Then, "Mom, can you come here?"

Help you? I thought to myself. I’m fully dressed. I don’t really swim. Well, I can do what some might call swimming if keeping alive counts, but without the breathing part. I wear glasses that I can’t see without. I’m deathly afraid of heights. Diving boards scare the hell out of me. Diving boards are thin and high and slippery. And bouncy. Unpredictably and thoroughly bouncy and very thin. And slippery. And high. And thin.  Over a bottomless PIT of water. And all these PEOPLE are WATCHING.

Because new classes were about to begin, the pool area – and the observation chamber – was full of adults, all watching this unfold. One man was smiling. I wanted to smack him or pitch him into the pool with his precious Blackberry in his pocket. “What do you need me to do?” I asked, quietly yelling across the VAST expanse of DEEP BOTTOMLESS SHARK INFESTED WATER.

“You’ll have to come out on the diving board with her, and I’ll go below and catch her.”

OH. MY. GOD.

Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink.

Let’s take a journey back to the Morganton Recreation Center pool. It’s 1969 and I’m standing on the diving board on my stick legs, appendages the color of cotton balls sprinkled with freckles, spots that were—at the time—the bane of my young existence. I’ve put my thick granny framed bifocals (yes, bifocals at a young age—imagine for yourself the cuteness factor) on my Pippi Longstocking towel and have maneuvered my way onto the board, blind as a bat, bright white zinc oxide covering my nose. I hear my name called, but as I spin around, I can’t see well enough to tell who is calling my name, lose my balance, and fall off the diving board on top of another kid who has the bad luck to be swimming below me.

That’s all to say that swimming has never really been my thing. With a particular emphasis on never.

Add a gigantic fear of heights (oooh, nooo, I might fling myself off the tiny walkway going around the four-mile high lighthouse), and you can approximate the quaking legs that took me over to the diving board on Tuesday.

Miss Kate walked back to the end of the diving board as I went up, squeezing past me and slipping into the pool below. Tess stood motionless, frozen, three-quarters of the way down the diving board. She looked so tiny, her little stick legs shaking, and the top half of her body completely still. She couldn’t turn around, couldn’t move forward, couldn’t breathe.

I stepped onto the slick, tiny, high diving board, knowing that I had no choice. There was nothing I could do but go forward to her, realizing in a flash that the chances were higher than 50% that I would end up in the pool with her. In blue jeans. With a phone in one pocket and my precious camera in the other.

In case you don’t know, there is a part of the diving board that is bordered by nice high strong metal bars. It’s that part of the board that is also stable, not flexible. It’s after you have to let go of those bars very early on in walking the plank that things GET REALLY SCARY. Not only are you left to your own devices vis a vis balance (HELLO. I HAVE NO PROPRIOCEPTION IN MY RIGHT ANKLE BECAUSE OF NINE MONTHS IN A FRACTURE BOOT AFTER “COMPLETE DISRUPTION” OF ALL MY TENDONS AND LIGAMENTS IN THAT ANKLE AND A FRACTURE IN MY TALAR JOINT. BEFORE THAT, I SPENT A WHOLE YEAR NOT DRIVING BECAUSE OF DIZZY SPELLS. HELLLOOO? BALANCE? DIVING BOARD?)

I might as well have been walking over a fire pit on a bosu ball, I was shaking so much. But there was Tess, shaking ever more, and so very small. And so I went to her.

When she felt me near her, she panicked, reaching behind with flailing arms, nearly pushing me off the board. Oblivious to all this board drama, Miss Kate shouted up to me. “Okay, now walk her to the very end of the board.”

Um.

The very end of a diving board is very bouncy. It’s the most bouncy part of the whole board. It’s the most bouncy thing in the world.

I walked forward, holding Tess’ shoulders and trying to comfort her. The board shook harder and harder as she protested. I told her she didn’t have to jump in—that we could just walk back and try it another day. She turned slightly and grabbed my legs, then suddenly turned back around and jumped into the water, shocking me and leaving me on the now-deeply-bouncing board, moving from the force of her flinging herself into the universe, as children are wont to do.

Miss Kate was busy with Tess, helping her swim to the edge, as the horrible truth revealed itself to me: I had to turn around and walk back to the other end of the diving board.

Okay. I know it doesn’t sound like much. For Dara Torres and her insufferable abs, it would be nothing. For me, it was akin to sleeping in a nest of snakes. Or wearing heels.

In an instant, I hesitated, and then realized that doing it quickly would far surpass going slowly, in terms of strategy. I turned slowly because of the whole balance thing, and then tried to seem nonchalant as I lurched desperately forward for the metal rails.

37days Do it Now Challenge

Sometimes, you have to walk the plank for someone else, it seems. Especially when they are scared and tiny in the distance. Sometimes you can’t afford to hesitate or worry about people watching or take the time to change into the right clothes or train for it. No, sometimes you just have to do it. Now.

And sometimes, perhaps, you’re not saving someone else, you’re saving yourself. Sometimes you have to walk that plank for yourself. Go.