Swimming Lessons
Photo by Diane Stier
By Mae Stier
Sun contributor
Last month, I took swim lessons for the first time. Always a lover of the water and often the first person in Lake Michigan during a beach gathering with friends, this has been somewhat surprising information to share with people. Don’t I already know how to swim? But I want to do what I love better, perhaps with a bit more efficiency and definitely with better breathing techniques.
I grew up swimming in ponds and rivers, or the Great Lakes when we were lucky. It was a one-hour drive from our farm town to Caseville, where we would wade in Lake Huron’s shallow bay on the hottest summer days. Pools were a luxury that never factored into all our talk of swimming. Our school did not have a swim team; there was no community pool nearby. I am not even sure that I was aware that swimming was a competitive sport until I was in high school, and even then, I paid it no mind.
Swimming, for me, was a different kind of activity. It was treading water, floating on my back, splashing with my brothers. I first learned to swim in the pond behind Clyde and Marleah’s house, where I also learned to fish. We would sit on their porch in the late evening as the sun dipped over the pond. Clyde and Marleah were my grandparents’ friends, but growing up, I just knew them as a part of our family. My grandparents had divorced and moved out of town before I was born; Clyde and Marleah lived just a couple miles down the road, so my memories of them are as an extra set of grandparents. Marleah used to babysit us in their home, and Clyde taught us how to tend raspberry and rhubarb plants.
My mom told me once that she learned to love coffee at their house. There was always another pot put on, another cup served. An invitation to linger a little longer. Most of my memories of their home involve sitting on the porch, picking raspberries in the garden, or splashing in the pond. Never is there much movement, and I can’t really picture a meal eaten at their table. I do remember the part after where we would sit around and talk. Their door always open, coffee pot on in the kitchen.
Like every other languid moment on their property, swimming at Clyde and Marleah’s was not about efficiency. It was cooling down after a bike ride or a long day working in the yard. It was catching frogs and squealing when the fish nibbled our toes.
And this is how I learned to swim, what swimming has always been to me: refreshing and slow. Surrounded by others.
I am from Michigan, a water wonderland. Never more than a few miles from a body of water, swimming is a state of being. Swimming holes have a tendency to become gathering places. Most memories, even now, of swimming involve a sense of community.
This morning I went to the YMCA in Traverse City to practice lap swimming. I stood next to a man before we entered the pool and admitted that I was still familiarizing myself with the etiquette of the lanes, still urging myself to feel comfortable in this more formal swimming environment. He smiled at me and said, “Just have fun.” He then told me that he had just turned 75 and swims simply because he loves it. He encouraged me to keep swimming and said, “this will be a lifelong activity.” And I believe him because already, that is what it has been.
I think of where I started with this love of water. I think of the human-made pond behind Clyde and Marleah’s house, where I first learned that swimming is a form of community, where I first learned to love summer nights and sunsets. I think of the impromptu meet-ups I have enjoyed at the beach in Empire, the sunset dates turned into block parties when my husband and I show up and the whole village is there. The Sunday morning swims with friends that span across generations, all of us bonded over our love of moving in the water.
In many ways, the act of swimming—as a means of cooling down, exercising, resting, or socializing—feels like an extension of necessary movements. We breathe, we move, we swim. I dream about swimming in Lake Michigan all winter long and tip-toe my way into the lake in May, numb limbs and all, savoring the year’s first dip under above-freezing water. Part of my reason for taking swim lessons is to feel more confident hopping in the lap pool during the winter months, bridging the time when I cannot swim in the lakes.
Certainly, growing up in Michigan has heightened my love of water. Growing up by all these bodies of water, swimming has always been a part of my life. I gathered for celebrations at the shore, married my husband while overlooking Lake Michigan, and spent my childhood splashing in swimming holes surrounded by loved ones.
Before I even had the words for it, swimming tied me to the natural world, grew in me a reverence for the earth. I realize now that all this immersing, the going under in ponds and lakes, is a way of wrapping ourselves with the natural world. Maybe being underwater helps us to better understand how tied up we are to the fate of the world around us, that we are merely one part of nature. An important reminder. The act of communing with nature alongside other people is powerful. We wade into the lake, look to each other for support, and dive together under the cool water.
Swimming season is upon us now, the time for lingering at the lake, for taking sunset swims with friends and neighbors. I smile now to drink my coffee lakeside, remembering those nights in a pond in my hometown. The important lessons I learned while splashing in those muddy waters, sitting just a bit longer on the porch, watching Marleah bring out one more pot of coffee.
