Flying with my mother...

“That strong mother doesn't tell her cub, Son, stay weak

so the wolves can get you. She says, Toughen up,

this is reality we are living in.”

– Lauryn Hill

There is something about flying…I don’t mean sitting in an airplane, I mean, you know actually flying. 

For decades, off and on, I have flown in my dreams.  It would start with a little bit of a run and then up in the air I would go; maybe I might dive down a staircase in the house and drift out a window or the door.  For some reason the flights were never fast.  In fact, it mostly seemed in slow motion directed by thought…a sort of look and move dream technology.

Man, I loved those dreams.

Over the past year or so, I have come as close to flight as possible on the planet…I have been swimming. 

Backing up a step…

My mother was a camp counselor for many years before she met and married my father.  She spent summers in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec, teaching young girls to ride horses, paddle canoes, shoot bows and arrows AND swim.  When her own kids came along, we were the recipients of well-honed skills.  While our summers had no horses or bows and arrows, she took ‘hardening’ her children to water safety as a prime directive – once a camp counselor, always a camp counselor. 

There were rules.  No swimming for an hour after eating.  No riding in boats until we could swim 12 lengths of the family dock.  No riding in boats by ourselves until we could swim 18 lengths…no excuses – no shortcuts.  Once the minimums were in place, she opened up a whole world of summer wonder to us.

One year, my father surprised her with a 16 foot Peterborough cedar strip canoe.  I am uncertain how much of his soul he had to leverage to buy that thing (ministers seldom have discretionary income), but I cannot ever remember seeing her so thrilled.  After breaking it in, she went about the business of teaching her children how marvelous canoes were: dangerously unstable with hips above the gunnels (sitting or kneeling); wonderfully stable when hips were low.

She taught us to dump the canoe in deep water and climb safely back in…to fill it with water (they don’t sink); then empty enough to get back in and paddle to safety…never paddle from the back of the craft in head winds if we didn’t want to find ourselves going around in circles.  Yes indeed, my mother knew stuff about boating and water safety.

She was most careful, however, about the swimming.  Without teaching her children to be safe in the water, little else mattered.  With that task complete, her summers had much less supervisory stress.  After my late teens and the war, the cottage years drifted away and so did spending much time around water.

Then it happened!  I turned 65 and became a Silver Sneaker!! While I have been a solitary exerciser most of my adult years, qualifying for this program permitted me to join local health clubs. 

The club I joined that year had the one exercise item I cannot do on my bike, the streets (walking/jogging) or in my back yard (yoga) – a decent strength training area.  Exercise and diet are the two most important external things over which we have some control, investments in health really.

Among a number of other things the club has three pools.  A heated pool for old geezers…you know all those OTHER Sliver Sneakers and a shallow exercise pool for large aerobic exercise and youth swimming classes.

The third is a competitive lap pool with 11 lanes – 25 meters long.  I had been watching people swimming back and forth for a month or two.  I couldn’t figure out why one would get in the water to do anything other than play, but day in and day out, I saw people swimming lap after lap – really!! Who does that??

Sirens and my mother…

There was, however, something seductive about that pool.  I could hear my mother’s voice saying, “You should try it out.  After all, I taught you side, breast, back and crawl strokes.  Go ahead, you might like it.”  So with little more than my mother’s voice for inspiration, Molly’s support and the baggiest of swimsuits, I took the plunge – pun fully intended!  The first few weeks left me pretty tired after 15 minutes of wiggling everything that could move.  In addition I got a lot of chlorinated water up my nose and a fair amount down my throat. 

Eventually on the advice of some fellows in the locker room, I abandoned goggles for  a facemask and snorkel.  Back and sidestrokes were out, for obvious reasons, but for evident reasons they were a small price to pay.

Nearly a year later, head down and stroking away, I now swim for nearly an hour.  The curious thing is that moving in the water is very much like the feeling I have had in my flying dreams.  I still have those baggy swim trunks and a body that is well suited for them – not quite gotten the courage for the speedo trunks. 

Here’s the thing…

I am not certain how this happened…maybe it’s the quietness of my ears being underwater…the only sound, breath in – breath out…maybe it’s because my facemask eliminates peripheral vision and I can see only straight ahead…maybe it is the mesmerizing rhythm of watching my hands and arms emerge and disappear in the window pane through which I look – I really do not know, BUT in this surreal world of ‘flight’ many things seem to happen in my brain…one of which are visits from my mother.  I hear her voice, the texture of her gentle spirit, the encouragement that almost without fail came from her gentle heart to mine.  In this quiet space, I find these visits fulfilling, and in a way bringing closure.

My mother has been gone for many years, and for numerous prior to her death, she suffered, locked in a life-robbing struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.  We didn’t have much of a relationship the last few years of her life, and of course, none since…except in the solitude of the water as I find myself moving back and forth from end to end on a flight path I find transcendent.

The great thing about the human condition is that it truly only occurs in the reaches of our minds.  Everything we perceive, think, experience, or do…all of it is a function of the mind which finds itself housed in a piece of machinery designed to take it wherever it needs to go in order learn the purposes for which we find ourselves on this planet.  The even better news is that we can bring to remembrance any life experiences at any time.

In the end, my mother did not know who I was.  That was then.  Now?  When we visit, she is healthy and vibrant and loving and through the miracle of memory, spends time with me as I glide through the buoyant medium of water with her by my side…

Flying with my mother…I love it!

- ted