Page 56 of The Love Haters

Now we were in diagnostic mode. I gave him all the information I could think of, like I was visiting the doctor. “My mom used to take me to the pool all the time when I was a kid—but there was no real swimming involved. Just splashing and getting wet and cooling off. I mostly stayed on the steps in the shallow end. We went to the beach, too—but again, it was mostly splashing and making dribble castles. Iwas supposed to take proper lessons the summer after fifth grade, but my parents got divorced and that whole plan fell apart.”

Hutch nodded, like he was adding all that up. “Do you have any happy memories of being in the water?”

What a funny question. I thought back. “I remember my mom carrying me on her hip in the water. She liked getting in to cool off, and she’d chat with the other moms, and I’d ride along. I remember cuddling against her like a baby koala bear.”

Hutch held back his reaction a second, like that was not the answer he’d expected.

“So,” he asked next, “no formal instruction at all?”

I shook my head. “But I’m sure I’d have forgotten it all, anyway.”

Now Hutch shook his head. “We don’t forget muscle memory. It’s implicit. Anything you could do back then, you can still do. We just need to jog your body’s memory.”

“Not sure how much there is to remember.”

Hutch nodded, like,Noted. “Don’t worry. Even if it’s for the first time, everything we’re about to do, you already know how to do. It’s just that now, you’ll be doing it in the water.”

First, he just wanted me to walk around in the pool. To just get used to the feeling of being submerged, of the resistance and drag, of how the water swirled and eddied.

All easy.

Then he walked us both to the edge of the pool where the ladies were watching. They lifted their coffee cups and croissants in a toast, calling out things like, “You got this!”

He held on to the edge of the pool with both hands and squatted down to submerge his head, blowing bubbles as he went.

When he came up and waited for me to copy him, I said, “I’m so sorry.”

Hutch frowned. “What for?”

“This is utterly beneath you.”

But Hutch shook his head like I was nuts. “Everybody has to start somewhere.”

“Youjump out of helicoptersfor a living,” I countered. “And now here we are, blowing bubbles.”

“I love blowing bubbles,” Hutch said, and there was that frowny smile again.

By the end of the lesson, I’d mastered the arts of bobbing, relaxing, and floating. All of which are harder than they sound. We’d also spent a shocking amount of time doing exercises that forced Hutch to put his hands all over my body.

Floating, in particular, required him to give graduate-level lessons on buoyancy, hydraulics, water temperature, and muscle mass—all while propping up the stiff frame of a student who he just could not convince to relax.

“Relaxing ishard,” I kept saying. “I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s the point,” Hutch kept explaining. “Relaxing meansnot doing anything.”

“Not doing anything isn’t my style.”

“Be a jellyfish,” Hutch suggested.

“That’s easier said than done.”

Hutch’s point was that once I could float—and once Iknewthat I could float—it would change everything. “The lungs are basically air balloons,” he said. “And what do air balloons do in water?”

“Float?” I ventured, wondering if it was a trick question.

“Exactly. Your body isn’t going to sink like a stone because it’s not a stone. It’s a living, porous, air-filled thing. Itwantsto float.” Then he told me to take a deep breath, hold it, and lean back to rest on the water. Which I did. And it worked: my head and shoulders stayed up at the surface. “Now gently kick your feet,” he said, and, as I did, my legs rose toward the surface, too.

And then there I was, floating.

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