My father taught me to swim when I was eight years old, which was old by Florida standards. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to learn, it was just one of those things that got pushed off, delayed by other weekend plans or strange and unexpected home repairs. When we finally started practicing, we started small. He taught me to float first and then how to kick, while lying on my stomach and holding onto the pool’s edge. After I mastered those techniques, we moved onto swimming, which I practiced by lying across his overstretched arms. I would alternate the strokes — left, right, left — while kicking wildly in place. I don’t remember how many lessons we had, but one day it clicked. I was swimming, and I was elated. After that, I wanted to be in the pool every minute of everyday, and thankfully my dad was almost always willing to oblige. I would swim and retrieve weighted diving rings and do front-flips, backflips, and headstands, all while making sure he was watching. When we played together we would splash my mother, who was sitting in a lawn chair nearby, or he would hoist me on his shoulders and trudge through the pool. I would giggle and laugh because I knew what was coming, and he never disappointed me, always throwing me up in the air or dunking me beneath the water’s surface.
We were always laughing. We were always together.
But by the summer of 96’, things had changed. We were no longer living in Florida. In fact, we had moved twice (and to two different states) thanks to a series of unfortunate events. We were forced to trade our two-story home for a two-bedroom apartment above a flower shop in America’s armpit, i.e. New Jersey. Our yard and aboveground pool were gone, and while we could splash in puddles in the small parking lot in front of our building, it wasn’t the same. Endless summers were lost to something called seasons, and I hated it. I hated the state and the snow and my new school, but at 12 I hated almost everything. I was angsty, friendless, and on the cusp of my teenage years. Yet if there was one thing that could still excite me it was the water. So when it was proposed that we have a poolside birthday party for my father and great-grandmother I was thrilled.
It was one of the first days of July. We were celebrating my father’s 39th birthday and my great-grandmother’s 80th. It was hot, not oppressively so but warm enough that we needed to open the garage for some shade, and I remember there was an assortment of picnic-type foods inside: from mayonnaise-based salads to fruit bowls, veggie trays, and fried chicken “fresh” from the grocery store. I remember eating, swimming, singing “Happy Birthday,” eating again and then playing with bang snaps and sparklers for the rest of the evening.
What I don’t remember is why my Dad picked this moment to teach me to dive. Things had been distant between us lately, our strong daddy-daughter bond was breaking beneath the weight of my impending womanhood and our family’s financial struggles, but as we stood there at the water’s edge, staring into the deep end, I felt that familiar excitement I had the day I shed my swimmies. He positioned my arms above my head, advised me to hold my breath and told me to jump forward: to just jump, the rest would come naturally. It all seemed so simple, but as I leaned forward fear took hold. I froze. My dad kept coaxing me. He told me he would be right there, nothing would happen, but my anxiety grew as I envisioned myself slipping and cracking my head on the concrete or sinking deep enough to slam my skull into the pool’s colorless bottom.
I wish I could say I rose to the challenge, with my father by my side, and gracefully slipped beneath the water’s surface, but I didn’t. When I finally jumped, only at my father’s insistence and urging, I landed on my stomach, arms outstretched, legs flailing and mouth open — like a dog trying to catch a Frisbee. My father told me to keep trying, and I did for awhile, but before long we were both frustrated. He returned to his seat beside my mother, and I returned to the shallow end with my cousins and other family friends.
This is the last clear memory I have of my father, sitting poolside chain-smoking with my mother, clearly aggravated and agitated. While his eyes were hidden behind dark prescription shades and my own were filled with chlorine and sunscreen, I could see the something was bothering him. I assumed it was me. I assumed I had disappointed him with my irrational fears and half-hearted attempts. I assumed I had failed him. He apologized later for seeming short, he said I did a “great job, Cupcake” but he had a headache and the heat and sun weren’t helping.
His head hurt more and more these days. Migraines, they said. (They being the doctor’s who made a diagnosis without ordering any tests.) Looking back, I can see what was on his face that day was pain, and while I’m sure he was stressed and maybe a bit perturbed, what I didn’t know was how much pain he was truly in.
My father died four months later of a ruptured brain aneurysm. If I knew he was dying I would have savored that diving lesson. I would have held onto every word he said, written down his instructions, treasured the tone in which he called me Cupcake. I would have hugged him harder, and more often. And I would have stayed at the water’s edge until I got it just right. I would have kept trying. I would have learned to dive.
It has been 19 years since he passed. Everyday his voice becomes harder to hear and his face harder to see. It’s like he’s sinking beneath the water’s surface, floating from the crystal clear waters and into the darker ones. But every time I find myself at a pool, I find his memory comes rushing back — this memory comes rushing back — and I find myself closing my eyes, holding my breath and jumping, just jumping, into the deep end.
***
About the Author
