sink or swim

"you should really hold my hand first."
this is what i hear while i'm staring at the sucking whirlpool that is the ice run-off swirling in the punchbowl before me. i'm in my underwear, shivering in the hot summer sun, watching the water whorl about and hurtle from the little pool five feet below towards the forty foot drop into the rocks and tree branches at the other end of it. the boy who is holding out this hand, blond and grinning charmingly, seems to want to chuck me into the water as badly as i want to run away. he looks as if he'd have a good laugh as he watches me slowly sink into the icy run-off. i stare at his outstretched hand.
i know that hand. know it well enough to know that, in any other situation, i should be thrilled that he asked me to hold it. that the palms are calloused yet smooth, that they are warm and dry and absolutely medium-sized, with thick knuckles and wide fingertips, and more than all those details combined, that they are freakishly strong. those are the hands that wrestle their way up impossible granite boulders and haul landscaping equipment all day. they could grip next to nothing and still hang on, not as their owner's life depended on it, but casually. he does this for fun. in fact, we both do. but my hands are rough and tiny and clammy and not nearly as certain when i grab at granite chips.
i dream about those hands. on my face, on my hips, wrapped around me in a hug. but at this moment, they absolutely repulse me. they want to throw me in. and i swallow hard. this five foot jump seems impossible to me. impossible and deadly.

when i was just two years old, i realized i hated water. hated the feeling of being immersed in it, of the realization that it could steal my breath and suck my soul out from my lungs. i was wearing a little white dress and was cradled against my mother's chest. we were at the old mission, the day was one of those picturesque movie scenario types of sunny and the sky was as blue as a macintosh skype icon. that's mostly what i remember. the spotty walls of the mission and the blue, blue sky. they say that our brain associates memories with smells the best, and i say bullshit. the air that day could have smelled of zucchini bread, or eucalyptus, or skunk. i would have no idea. i just remember the blue. but as vivid as it was, it smelled of nothing.
the moment my mother handed me to a stranger, i was furious. taken away from her heartbeat, from the familiar satin smoothness of her dress and the muscles in her arms, i quailed. i cried and cried, and no amount of his smiles or reassurance could make me feel any better. all the adults were smiling, and i felt left out of some horribly cruel joke. how could they smile at a time like this? didn't they understand that i just wanted to be with my mother, and gone from this strange place? but no, the man tipped me back even further, and the blue fractals danced around the tears stuck to my lashes. and then my head was cold. cold, and wet, and miserable. and i hated him, hated them all, for letting it happen. for making it happen.

at five, i had had my first near-death experience by water. inching my way around the edge of the swimming pool, watching my sister and a friend of hers - nate? ben? one of those characters - receive swimming lessons, determined to keep my face and hair above the water. as all little kids believe, traversing the pool's edge was our way of feeling comfort in the deep zone, of knowing the water had no hold on us here. we could be where all the adults were, the ones with their powerfully kicking legs and bobbing heads, and still be safe. my tiny little fingers gripped the polished stone edge like a lifeline. and it was, albeit a slippery one.
a particularly shiny wet spot of cement greased my fingers off of the edge before i could even think to move over it. in immediate panic, i did the one thing that couldn't have helped me - i thrashed and kicked and had immediately pushed myself away from the edge of the pool, my one safety zone, the only way back to dry land. even at five, i could think of nothing except the poetic way in which the water made my body feel heavy and slow. i quit my thrashing and sucked water through clenched teeth, hoping that by some miracle, air was only inches away. like i could drink my way to the top. i choked, coughed, choked again, and watched everything slowly fade about the edges already made fuzzy by the water. i could barely make out the kicking feet that were above me when i closed my eyes.
how serendipitous that two teenagers were practicing their lifeguarding skills nearby. nate, or was it ben, had gripped me by my wrist and pulled me up and over the edge of the pool, where i sat and vomited for a stout amount of time before being able to breathe. i remember my parents' faces, sadness edged with guilt edged with relief, and a cookie being pressed into my hands. a chocolate chip cookie, in a little pre-packaged plastic wrapper with a green and blue sticker label on the front, from the hotel cafe.
it was the best cookie of my life.

years of being tumbled by waves and towed out by riptides only solidified my distaste, and by fourteen i had finally decided to stay out of the ocean. the decision was made at the beach, feeling the grit of the sand in my sneakers, i was standing at a small impromptu gathering of the family and friends of a drowned boy, watching the spot on the surf where he had last been seen before he was pulled under. his parents, tall and stately in their grief, wore a similar expression on their freckled faces as my parents had by the pool. only there was no relief, only this endless sadness. it was immense, the amount of emotion that can be contained in someone's irises and pupils, and it threatened to challenge the ocean with its depth. i was terrified of that sadness, almost as much as i was terrified of the ocean. is that what my parents would've looked like if, like countless times before, i hadn't escaped the waves and the currents pulling me out and away? if so, i couldn't chance it again. i couldn't see them standing tall on the beach, since neither of them are very tall to begin with. and my father has no stately grace, he wouldn't be able to hide his brokenness behind silent crying and grateful thank-yous to the people who came to mourn with them. my mind made up, i hugged the boy's parents and started walking away.

there will always be the same reaction when i tell somebody i can't swim. first, there's astonished disbelief, surprise, and then a little suspicion that i might be exaggerating or lying. when i insist, no, really, i sink like a hammer when i'm thrown in the water, the person gets a smug or resolute look on their face. don't worry, they all say. i can teach you how to swim.
i'd love to see them try. moreso, i'd love to see them try as much as i have. having quit the bad and deadly habit of ocean swimming, i'll occasionally consent to a dip in a lake or pool, under the strict notion that there is a proficient swimmer nearby to rescue me in case i need it. and by half an hour in, i usually do. my chest puffs up and i convince myself, THIS time! this time i can do it! and i start trekking out into deeper water until, sooner or later, i'm gasping and thrashing and begging for Proficient Swimmer to come out and tow me back to shallow water. which they do, but not without laughing at the absurdity of my flailing limbs first. it helps if Proficient Swimmer is tall. then i don't even have to be towed - i simply latch onto their neck like a sodden koala, and have them carry me back.
treading water has never worked for me. bicycle, eggbeaters, the up-down motions that everybody swears by simply wears out my limbs. soon, the water is being swirled about with my stumpy lead limbs, and i can feel my nose slowly sinking below the surface. i'm winded, tired, and frustrated. and more than anything, disillusioned.
swimming just isn't my thing.

so how can i honestly take this boy's hand?
not several hours earlier, i watched him leap from a large granite slab into the slot canyon pool of rushing water fifty feet below him. the rock pool was littered with large boulders. if he had missed his jumping point...i hated to think of him dropping sixty feet onto a barely submerged rock, the churning water shifting colors from bluish black to a bright and grisly red, while nearby children screamed.
but he hit the water like a jackknife, surfaced in seconds. i watched his long limbs stretch out across the pool in solid, sure strokes. in that moment, michael phelps couldn't have held a candle to this boy. reaching the end of the pool, he used those hands, those freaking strong hands, gripped at nothing and pulled himself up and onto the granite. that huge grin was back. i had just let go of the breath i had been holding up until then, when he turned and smiled. and it caught again. i must've looked purple.
and now, the five foot jump in front of me looks more impossible than the fifty foot leap he had so gracefully executed earlier.
"seriously, i think you should take my hand." he's shy. he doesn't tell people to hold his hand. what's he getting at? "really. c'mere. take my hand, we'll jump in together."
"can't you just go in first?" i know i sound shrill, maybe a bit panicked. i want him to be standing on the bottom, head poking out the top, to be the Proficient Swimmer that my little koala paws can grab for in the inevitable event of my flailing.
"naw, trust me, it's better this way."
my little clammy fingers slip into his warm dry ones, and slowly my grip tightens until i feel like his knuckles should be crushed to dust. if he's making me hold his hand, so help me god, i'm not allowing him to let go. my feet are shifting on the smooth granite slabs, trying to find something to feel solid on. all the immovable rock in the world below my feet is not dispelling the dizziness i feel right now.
"on three."
"on three?"
"on three. you ready?"
i do a silly in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-mouth gasp that i hope will steady my nerves. instead, it just punctuates the situation. my resolve deflates like a popped balloon. but it's too late, he's already counting.
"one...two-"
on two, i feel the tug of that hand, too strong for me to let go, too encouraging for me to dissuade, and i'm flying into a shock of cold water. my underwear practically slips down to my knees, my bra tries to escape up to my chin. my chest feels like a cold compress that's been squeezed, it's bursting from the cold. with one hand desperately pulling my clothes back on, the other shoves his hand away and i kick for dear life.
when my head pops up above the water, i hear him laughing. at then it hits me. i'm doggy-paddling like a madwoman for the shallow bank across the way. and i'm moving. against the current, i'm swimming. away from him, away from the rush of the moving ice and the gurgle of angry water. i sit shivering in the shallows, my lower lip set to pout.
"that wasn't three!" i cry, but he's laughing again. and watching the water, clinging to my underwear, i realize i'm laughing with him.