I've worked all day hoeing potatoes with the promise of a trip to the hot springs when we (my siblings and I) are done.
A trip to the hot springs was just one of several incentives offered to us when we finished some major chore on the farm. After finishing the particular chore, we would schedule the day when would get in the car and travel an hour to the hot springs.
Nothing fancy at the hotsprings. An old building where the natural hot springs' water was mixed with cooler water so the pool would be comfortable for swimming. It was not until years later that I understood the stories my father told of how he had taken his father to the hot springs for 'medicinal' purposes. The hot springs had served as a treatment for some of my grandfather's old-age ailments. It had been a tradition in my family.
The odd thing, now that I reflect on those days so many years ago, was that I could not swim. I played in the water. I think a dry farmer should enjoy playing in the water...it would be an unnatural and foreign environment; mysterious and sensuous. While his crops waited for nature to provide them with water; he splashed and played. He did not achieve; he did not perform; he did not gracefully move through the water...he was just in it.
I took swimming lessons when I was about 14. The old municipal swimming pool was nothing like the hot springs. Cracked cement and strong chlorine was a contrast to the more ancient, weathered, and yet enduring hot springs. But the city offered swimming lessons. So my siblings and I were taken to swimming lessons. Maybe eight lessons, one each week, were the defined requirement; take those eight lessons and you would be able to swim the short-length of the pool. At 14 I was the oldest, tallest, and most awkward kid in the class.
And I flunked the class. The only child in the class that could not swim the short-length of the pool after eight weeks. The requirement was to get from one wall of the pool to the other. I put my head in the water and flailed my arms. My kicking was intense but ineffective. My breathing was chaotic; I panicked before reaching the far wall. I could not make it across the pool. I remember my only slightly older female instructor's amazement that I failed.
I was embarrassed.
I did not learn to swim until I was 19. I took a semester course at a university; determined to learn. I did not know that everyone else took 'beginning swimming' to get an easy credit. Everyone else in the class knew how to swim...they were just there for the recreation. But I was there to learn how to swim. And I did learn. Twice a week for 16 weeks; and many nights of real homework in the pool paid off. I had to swim the long-length of the university's pool FIVE times using three different swimming styles.
I can swim short distances now, when I have to.
But I would rather just play in the water.
I am still just a dry farmer.
