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2002-06-03 || 9:44 p.m. || me and the water. a bit shaky on the subject. || there is a picture of me somewhere, age 2, before there was a kelly even (can't imagine.), of me and my dad in a pool. we are swimming. we are underwater. my mum does not swim. my mum was thrown into a pool in chicago back when her mum continually burned her hair with bad perms. she had to be pulled out, her hair wet and slick with no sign of her mother's merciless sense of hairstyle. since then she is convinced she doesn't float. in the same way color-blind people accept that they cannot see the color yellow and lactose-intolerant people can't eat large chocolate shakes from jack in the box. my dad is poseidon incarnate. my dad wields conch shells and spear guns, went to the pier in palos verdes every day of his life from age ten to thirty-three, has saltwater flowing through his body where blood should be. when we all die, all four of us, we will be cremated and scattered over the same patch of ocean. it has been whispered and agreed and we have all lain awake at one time or another to think about that, body as ash and seafoam, all joining up as singing particles of hydrogen and salt. kelly and i took lessons at ages 3 and 5 at the big pool at the community college. we played sharks and minnows. we chewed on the edges of foam kickboards. we climbed the cement steps of the high diving board and pinched our noses before hovering briefly above that rectangle of chlorine and urine. we spent every weekend at the beach or on the boat or at the pier with dad, so that our hair was white with salt and sunlight. we memorized the names of fish and licked the ocean off our fingertips. at home we had a jacuzzi in our backyard and later an above ground pool. there is videotape of the two of us, throwing haphazard somersaults, shrieking marco polo, drifting like mermaids singing siren songs when we thought no one was looking. our bathing suits never fit right. criss cross tan lines and nipples. the seat of the suits sheer and shiny. we had pool parties. the neighborhood kids poked their heads through the holes in the fence to ask if we were swimming that day. the cheap rubber of goggles and masks and snorkels cracked and disintegrated in sunlight and heat of the deck. after my twelfth birthday we moved. there was a community pool down the street surrounded by an iron gate that required a key. we took more lessons there from an awful lifeguard. dad took us sometimes when he got home from work. we practiced water ballet, the three of us, and dad launched us from his mighty knees and arms. that summer i decided i didn't like wearing bathing suits. that summer my body was suddenly different and i didn't like it and i didn't want anyone to look at it, all exposed like that under a thin gauze of lycra and spandex. i told my dad, eyes burning holes into wet cement, that i didn't much like swimming. the chlorine bothered my eyes. there were a few times after that. one summer i went to beach camp with my best friend and promptly got caught in a rip tide at huntington city beach. a priest pulled me out of the water and put his hand on my shoulder until i inhaled fully three times. i went surfing with my sister a few times but didn't like the sensation of not being able to see or feel the ground, being out of reach, not having big arms around to pull my out and set me up straight (and perling. and front teeth. oh.). kelly, dad and i went snorkeling in cabo san lucas but getting waist deep i could only see rocks and current and my dad drifting further and further, and i had an anxiety attack nicely compacted inside my snorkel. (when i think of this i think of my dad's hands. how big they are, how they have the power to hold me completely. even now. and it sounds vaguely creepy now. but i know my dad's hands better than my own. the liver spots and the perennial tan, the way the veins branch out all powerful and sinewy. and that is what scared me. wanting more than anything to hold his hand right then, underwater, and watching him swim deftly away. directly away.) in the past three years it's changed a bit. best summer moment ever was camping in lake sonoma a couple years ago and jumping off the back of the boat to float alongside michael and bryan in our old man cutoffs. skinnydipping in the lake with m. swimming in that pool in the parking lot of a trashy motel in ashland, oregon. i haven't been in the ocean though. i would like to go to catalina and try that out, with m my swimming companion i would think, or my dad. guestbook || notes || archives || profile || photos || d-land |