Swimming Pool

It was summer holidays, and I had a break from boarding school. I was staying at my cousin’s place for a month or so. My mother and sister were visiting too, and the plan was for all of us to head back together.

The house had two bedrooms and somehow fit five adults and seven kids. At night every room turned into a sea of cotton mattresses on the floor, and everyone just found a spot and made it work. Mornings started late, usually with cold coffee or rose milk. I loved both, so I just alternated between the two.

I’d recently learned to drive and jumped at any excuse to practice. My cousin and I had also signed up for swimming club membership about eight kilometers away, and we had permission to wake up at 6 am and head there on our own. The permission to drive ourselves to the pool was the cherry on top. Neither of us could swim a stroke. I still can’t wrap my head around how our parents trusted two teenagers who couldn’t swim to cross the city alone and figure it out in a pool with nobody watching.

The pool itself was huge, six feet deep at the shallow end and fifteen at the deep end. Before getting in, we had to dip our feet in a tub of potassium permanganate to disinfect them, a liquid so deep red it looked like we were about to walk into a crime scene.

I was terrified to get in at first. I spent almost a week just going down the steps at the shallow end and blowing bubbles into the water. Eventually I worked up the nerve to swim across the width of the shallow end, and a month in, I was swimming along the edge all the way to the deep end. Slow progress, but I taught myself to swim, and I was proud of every clumsy stroke. Driving went the same way. I got two lessons from an instructor and then just started practicing on my own, scratching the car more times than I’d like to admit before it finally clicked.

Looking back, I think moments like these planted something in me: a confidence in figuring things out alone, one that still helps me find my way today. I somehow hope to pass this to my kids.