The Beginning

I wrote this in the fall. It's a memory of how I found the sport that molded me for 13 years.

It’s hard to go back to the beginning, back to where it all started. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering how I got here, to this pool, to this sport, to this school, but I do know it was an innocent beginning and it will be a joyous end.

I was seven when I heard the plans for a pool just up the street from my family’s apartment in Princeton had been set in stone. My Dad had one more year of classes, and I thought great, the pool will be done in a week or so and it will be mine to enjoy for a whole year. The indoor pool didn’t spring up out of the ground like I magically expected it to, but it was finished in time to test the waters.

The pool was just a few minutes walk up Emmons Drive. My family lived in married-student housing apartment buildings. Our second story apartment faced another brick and cinderblock building. Between the two apartment buildings was an expanse of grass that proved to be great socializing grounds for all the families of Emmons Drive. Behind our building was a large parking lot and from there you could see the indoor pool silhouetted against the woods that, seemed to me, to surround the entire residential area, but they were actually only on one side.

My first trips to the pool were with my parents and my best friend, Ben. Ben and I loved the new thrill that the pool gave to the neighborhood. What did we do before it was here? It was a nice building with a thin metal roof and glass doors all the way around the pool that were constantly fogged up.

At first, Ben and I spent most of our time jumping off the ledge in the deep end. The concrete at the edge of the pool curved upward and it helped us get an extra couple of inches higher before we began our descent. When we got bored with jumping we tried flips and dives, and started bringing out a tube to land on. Even at that young age I loved challenging myself, so I started swimming the width of the pool, and then the length of the pool.

The lifeguards at the pool rarely spoke and were very talented in the art of annoyance. They were either irritated with the patrons of the pool or we were aggravated with them. One of them took notice of my swimming. I can’t remember her name, but I know I liked her and her encouragement made me believe I was good at swimming. One believer was all I needed.

“I bet’cha I can swim down and back twice,” I said.

“Oh really? Well let’s see.”

I pushed off the wall and circled my arms until I achieved some propulsion. This was easy. I didn’t think of a different method. I just knew that I was making progress because I was moving forward.

The lifeguard continued to challenge me over the weeks. Sometimes she would give me a bag of candy if I swam 6, 8, or 10 lengths of the pool.

I was going to swim for as long as I wanted to and didn’t have an inkling that those small beginnings, swimming for candy, would lead me to where I am now. Swimming has changed a lot in my life in the thirteen years since my humble beginning in Princeton and it will determine my life for one more season and then my time will be invested elsewhere. Who knows where it might take me?