Early Swim Lesson
It took some
piecing together to figure out how old I was then. I know it took place at the
Clearfield Swimming Pool, so that meant the Layton Swimming Pool had not yet
been built. A cursory Google search failed to reveal the date when the Layton
City Municipal pool was constructed, so I sat back and searched my memory
banks, reaching deep into silhouettes of long passed tree-lined sunsets at the
Layton Commons Park, chain link fences at the adjacent baseball diamonds, the
nearby pavilion beams all casting old shadows of history still in my brain
somewhere- how old was I when I used to peer through the fence at the rippling
water lapping at the square walls, waiting for the pool to open? At least six.
This was before then.
Clearfield
Swimming Pool was indoors, and obviously in Clearfield, a bit North of Layton,
where we lived. Clearfield was the seat of Hill Air Force Base, which meant a
completely different more busy, international type of culture than the sleepy
agricultural suburban Layton. Government housing lined perfectly paved
government streets like tiny little boxes. Many of the residents of Clearfield
were employed by Hill Air Force in some capacity. My mother had attended
Clearfield High School and was herself a child of the military but did not
marry into it as her mother had done twice.
It made sense to
have an indoor pool in Utah, as the winters are pretty brutal with snow
accumulations in the 4 foot range and temperatures that frequently drop below
freezing. Back then anyways. The
Clearfield Swimming Pool would have offered swimming classes year round so that
a person could do some laps on a dark winter afternoon when the cold bitter
snowy days are so long there was a warm wet escape at least. For many years
outside of the Base, the Clearfield Swimming Pool was the only public swimming pool
between Ogden and Salt Lake City.
On this one
particular day, there are many things that I clearly remember. There was the
front desk area where my mother was interacting with someone- she must have
been paying for swimming lessons for my older sisters. Which makes sense
because lessons start at age five, and if Mindy was five, then Abby was eight. So
then both would have been in school, leaving me alone full-time with mother, then
the math, therefore, makes me three years old.
I remember her back turned to me while she was talking at the counter.
There was a steamy double glass sliding door leading directly to the swimming
pool that was left ajar, and I remember my curiosity about the chlorine smells
and the sight of the water drawing me through the unsecured doorway and into
the pool area, slipping away quietly and unnoticed.
Regarding earlier
memories, it’s difficult to say if anything exists prior to this incident or if
they occurred right around that time, but certainly not before the age of
three. It’s as if age three was when my mind started storing memories with a
bit more permanence than age two. There are accounts of people with memories
that go back into infancy, but it doesn’t seem that I am able to go much
further back than three. This one incident seems to be the earliest memory
imprinted deeply into my brain as a new human learning how to navigate the
world. It did serve as instruction and I still think about it all the time.
The atmosphere of
the pool area was starkly different than the front desk area. Moist and
chemical smelling with a large ceiling so all the sounds bounced and echoed
around in the rafters and off the painted cinderblock walls. The large windows
lining the perimeter of the building were clouded with steam at their tops. The
entire air was so stiflingly warm compared to the cold front room from which
I’d slipped away it was like walking around in a fluffy blanket. I passed the
diving boards perched quietly overhead at the deep end of the pool and toddled
towards the sunnier side, the more populated end where the kids play. The water
was waving from edge to edge, always moving and so lovely and aquamarine in
color. I was transfixed by the movement and the beauty, not ever having seen so
much pretty blue water in one place before, and not understanding that the
depth of the water varied from one area to the next because it was all so level
at the surface. As I watched the people swimming, in my child’s mind, if their
heads were protruding from the water, I believed it meant that their feet were
touching at the bottom as well. The dimensionality of the swimming pool was
something I didn’t comprehend and I was more interested in the surface of the
water and how it moved and interacted with light.
There were a few
people in the pool, I remember. Enough people enjoying themselves in their own
worlds for a small child to be walking around the side of the pool unescorted
without attracting too much attention. I walked closer to the edge about
midway, looking closer at the tiles as they become distorted by the moving
water and bent light. I was too little to read the black numbering I saw on the
white tile that measured the water depth at 5’. I know that I entered
kindergarten at age four because I was born in October- my mother decided to
let me be the youngest kid in the class because I was an early reader. So if I
was unable to recognize the black number on that white tile on the side of the
swimming pool, I am sure I was likely only three years old.
I still remember
puzzling over the shape of the round belly of the 5, wondering what the black
symbol meant as I lost my balance and tipped over the edge of the pool and
slipped into the water, curiosity replaced by the instant thought, “the water
is much deeper than it looked.” Three years old and alone, I was rapidly headed
towards the bottom of the 5 foot at the Clearfield Swimming Pool, looking
upwards at the ripples and bubble trail I had left behind as I exhaled my way
down. I don’t recall feeling any fear or realization that I was in danger or
about to drown. I hadn’t ever had a swimming lesson, so there was no awareness
of the concept- I was not afraid as my rear end met the concrete of the pool
floor. I was still just surprised at how wrong I was about the depth. I thought
my head would stick out like the others if I went into the pool. The water from
that view was magical and held sunlight from the windows that sent rays all the
way to the bottom in little dancing squares. All the sounds from the people in
the pool were reduced to muffled echoes, and I saw the legs and arms of
strangers wiggling all around me and they were not touching the floor at all,
and they were also all oblivious to my strange adventure at the bottom of the
pool. I was invisible to everyone.
It was all in an
instant of surrender; my need to breathe- so opened my mouth and I pulled the
water into my lungs like a breath, but of course it wasn’t air- it was heavy
and unsatiating and it filled me with panic. I flailed my arms and looked up
towards the edge of the pool at the surface of the water helplessly from the
bottom of the pool, only now registering alarm as oxygen deprivation was now
becoming a problem in my awareness.
That was when I
saw my rescuer obscured by the wavy water, first appearing over the edge, gliding
fully clothed in brown corduroy bell-bottom pants and a striped cream and brown
hoodie like a large hawk flying in the air before she hit the water. Just in
time, she dived down and grabbed me like a slippery tuna, pulling me up from
the bottom of the pool. She didn’t wait for someone to come help. She didn’t go
looking for my mother. She didn’t call the lifeguard. She took things into her
own hands.
This was a total stranger who was just walking
past the pool and happened to see a small child sitting at the bottom of the
pool. While the woman who was legally tasked with protecting me was nowhere in
sight.
This unknown
random woman pulled me out of the water, climbed out of the pool herself, and
then proceeded to grasp me by my ankles and shake the water out of my lungs
while a crowd gathered. I remember that. I think she had glasses she had to put
back on. To my knowledge, I never saw her after that day. I don’t know where my
mother was or at what point she figured out I was missing and decided to look
for me. I could have been dead by then. Maybe she heard the commotion and
realized she was minus one toddler and was like “Yes, that’s my baby you just
pulled out of the pool….awkward!”
That’s
the extent of my memory of the rescue- I do remember my mother seating me in
the back of the car with a towel in her typical authoritarian Mary Poppins
manner like nothing happened. I can imagine embarrassment on her part- at least
I would hope she would be embarrassed that her child had wandered away and
almost drowned while she was small-talking at the front-desk.
It was a cold grey
February in Portland, and I was out on bail.
The conditions of
my release after a weekend in the clink were that I not return to my home, aka
the scene of the crime. But that’s where my things were, so I had to make a
quick stop just to gather a few things before finding some place to crash.
What was
infuriating was the entire reason I was in jail in the first place was because
he was refusing to leave the rental home he previously agreed to vacate in the
dissolution of our marriage and we argued over his reversal and it lead to a
physical altercation that he started by kicking doors in and yanking phones
away when I initially called for help. Now, he won the fight ultimately. As a
result of my being on the hook for the fight, he got to stay in the house, keep
the kid and claim to be the battered spouse- he got all the power and control
as the man in the relationship and he was going ride that pony for all that it
was worth- and he loved all the attention it was going to give him. Never mind
any of the choking, hair-pulling, suffocating, shoving, slamming or screaming
that he did before my fist grazed his smug cheekbone- now that the police were
involved he was glad to make sure that they were on his side in this story. And
they were.
So I was the one
with nerve damage in my right thumb from the handcuffs from my ride to the
Multnomah County Jail, even though my neck was so sore from him yanking my head
by my hair, but that leaves no marks, so the police don’t really take that as
seriously as a closed fist, by law.
That weekend I
lost legal access to my four year old child, obviously, and my home too. I also
failed to report to work because I was in jail so I was terminated from my job
as a baggage handler at the Portland International Airport. That was a hard
pill to swallow- I really loved working at the airport. I had just enrolled in
classes at Portland Community College and I was probably not going to be able
to concentrate on that now either- this was not the first time my husband had
undermined an attempt at college. It seemed that my entire life plan had been
flushed in less than 72 hours and one swing of the fist.
All I had at the
point of my release was The Cosmos, which was a 1974 VW Super beetle that I had
painted and glued to look like an interstellar satellite. I had purchased a
1974 VW Camper Bus for my husband so it was technically his, and when I was
bailed out and had nowhere to sleep, he forbade me to sleep in it. But I still
did because I still had an extra key and didn’t know where else to go. I slept
in it for the first 2 nights in the driveway where I was forbidden to enter,
where my 4 year old was living with the most irresponsible lazy parent I could
have ever chosen as a partner, secretly in the bus I bought him. If he knew I
was there, I could go back to jail. I kept the Cosmos parked several blocks
away at night so he wouldn’t know. I only slept there for 4 or 5 hours after I
knew he was already in for the night.
He had already
started the campaign among friends and had started talking to my parents about
me in hyperbolic terms. One friend had played a voicemail of him claiming I was
violent and unstable and dangerous and that they should be on the lookout for
me, like I’m some sort of menace. Another friend forwarded and email he had
written her- a lengthy 3 or 4 page sob story about how he was an abused spouse
who had been secretly beaten and terrorized by me for years and now that I was
finally arrested he can come out and tell everyone his truth about me and that
I might kidnap my own child. This was all something I knew would be the cost of
my leaving him. Believe me, if just walking away from him had been possible, I
would have been divorced 6 months into the marriage- this was a person who was
unwilling to allow me to leave him without a good old fashioned Jehovah’s
Witness showdown in which a divorces are granted only if there's abuse or infidelity. My husband was a patriarchal man, which meant that all
divorces were failures and rooted in shame, and I tried no less than a dozen
times to extricate myself from this person in several ways, any way that would
result in my freedom, but they all failed. Increasingly, it became true that the only language
he respected was violence, and he was larger than me so I knew who ultimately was going to win any battle we had, either physically or emotionally. This divorce was going to be a battle of wills the entire way.
His ”good graces”
ended abruptly during a brief parlay during which time I was allowed into the residence to get
some basic items for survival. Even though the law saw him as the victim in this circumstance, he became even more entitled to physically shoving me out of the back
door, and has no reluctance in barraging me with a sledgehammer of verbal assaults. A typical verbal onslaught went something like that
I chose to give up the family and my son, I chose to become homeless, that my actions were what has caused me to destroy
my own life, get fired and traumatize his child. His child. And his artillery sounded like , "Here you are now, out on your ass, out on the street, alone, with
no one, all of your friends know that you are crazy, toxic, and destructive and sick
and dangerous and they are all afraid of you. You family all know what you have done and they are afraid of you too, and no one is going to help you because you deserve this. You threw your whole life away."
He shuts the door on me but I know he’s actually quite pleased with himself for having such a flex over me. He was always complaining about being nagged to get a job and had been told repeatedly to please, please please find a place to live. Because on no uncertain terms I am divorcing. Now that I have been legally banned from the house, he doesn’t have to do any of those things- he can remain on unemployment, hang out in the house twiddling his hair to his Grateful Dead Albums with the our child sitting in the background all day and keep slinging dope out the back door. He won the divorce.
So I have a bag of
clothes under my arm and I get into The Cosmos, I turn the key and it doesn’t
start. I knew the solenoid was going bad- sometimes when it goes, it just goes-
and it decided to just go at that exact moment in the driveway where I am no
longer allowed to live. With my husband glaring at me out the kitchen window. I
had to abandon the car for now- and quickly before he calls the police.
I started walking
down the sidewalk. I was feeling so hollowed out at that moment. I didn't even
have a destination or a plan or know who to call. I feel too proud to go to a
shelter- would they even take me know that I have an assault charge? Everyone I knew had been contaminated by his stories, I didn’t know if my friends were even my
friends or just people who ate snacks with me at parties. Everyone I know had been told I am the bad person in the breakup so I don’t know who I can
trust- who is reporting back to my husband? How many of our friends believe
him? Am I crazy and unstable for simply wanting to leave him? Is that so awful that I just wanted to start over at age 25? Such an agonizing way to extricate oneself from a marriage.
Other horrible thoughts on this walk included the realization that I didn’t have any form of income anymore and will now have all these legal expenses, and repair costs for my only form of transportation. I continued walking rather aimlessly at this point because my mind kept cycling back to my sweet little boy and what will come of this perfect child who was the best thing I ever did? Have I lost him forever? Did he brush his teeth today? My god, what has his father been telling him? I have not been able to see him for days- for the first time in our lives, we are not together, my boy and me. Where will I get the money to fight for the right to see him? How will I do all this? Who will hire me after this? I don’t even know where I will sleep tonight!
It’s raining, and I realize I didn’t even eat anything today.
The list of impossible obstacles is like waves of water washing over me as I
tumble hopelessly into them, silently slipping under, right in front of so many people, yet no one can
sees the gigantic cataclysm literally ending my life.
I reached into my pocket and realize that at some point my wallet somehow in the scuffle got left at the house.
I’m absolutely crushed- I can almost hear myself snap.
I can’t go back there today.
I just can’t go back there. He’ll have me arrested and feel even happier to do
so. I just stand there on the sidewalk like I’m stunned by how fucked I am. A
rational woman would just step in front of a bus right then. Just end the
misery.
I was sobbing
openly at that point, I mean, besides stepping in front of a bus, what else
could a person do? There wasn’t any shame in wailing in public anymore. I was
just cracked. It must have been quite a scene. I wasn’t standing there sobbing
like a toddler for too long before an elderly gentleman pulled over in his
chocolate Bronco. Both my arms were at their sides and my head was tipped back
and I was just letting the rain fall on my face and mix in with the most
hopeless tears I swear anyone has ever cried. I didn’t even see the gentleman
as he approached me.
“Hey young lady,
you look like you’re in some distress, are you OK?” he asked tentatively.
I pulled myself
back into reality and looked at him. He had bright white hair underneath a
Vietnam Veteran’s Baseball Cap and piercing blue eyes. I had no idea what to
even tell this total stranger. I felt like just laying down and asking to be
carried away someplace, but I had no idea where someone would take me. I had
saliva in the corner of my mouth to wipe away before I could respond.
“I am going
through a real bad breakup and my ex kicked me out of the house but my wallet
is still there...” …crying resumes….”…so I’m trying to figure out what to do
next and I-I just miss my boy.” I am pretty much wailing with overwhelm over how much I miss my boy. My entire soul was hemorrhaging on the sidewalk. It's what giving up feels like.
“Oh, I see, you
poor gal.” he smiled with a certain calm knowingness that comes with age. His grampa
manner was on point. He put out his arm and gently patted my shoulder while he
fiddled with his back pocket.
“Now, I can’t fix
all your problems, young lady, but one thing I do know is that you can
make a good start on tackling some of them if you can get to a dry place put a good meal in your belly. You’re strong enough.” He pulled a $20.00 from his wallet and
assertively palmed it into my hand like it was a handshake, not
allowing me to demure. His eyes twinkled as he grinned at me with kindness and
no hint of judgment as to how I ended up so desperate at that moment. He got back into his rig, disappearing forever down Westbound Woodstock.
I was so thankful for him. There was no point in having too much pride to accept cash from a stranger; I was so hungry. I went into the closest pizza place and got a full meal and I warmed up and was able to dry off. With the blood sugar stabilized, the ability to figure out where I would sleep that night became possible. I was able to get a neutral friend to let me crash in his spare room for a week or two.
Just as the stranger has assured me, I was strong enough.
Maybe the strangers had been there at some point and knew what it was like. Maybe they were especially tuned in people. They were there at the right place and the right time swooping in for the catch, releasing on the shore, then vanishing forever, and never to be thanked quite enough.
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