Water

A Dear Friend Since Birth

Since I was conceived, water has never left me. Like the rest of us, I was born in it. I came from it. It lives both inside and outside of my being. My first breath embraced the cool air that lingers along the Hudson River, a basin filled with brown and grey stone that lies alongside the roots beneath thousands of red oak trees. With an abundance of fresh oxygen available for new soft lungs, those early days saw long cosmic exhales of relief leave my body. I was elated to build a relationship with an element outside of liquid. It didn’t take long for me to acknowledge the inescapable symbiotic kinship between water and I, however.

Even when I’m not submerged, she fills my body.

My first swimming lesson came after one of my Puerto Rican uncles shoved me into the deep end of the public pool over on the New York end of route 9W, just above the Jersey border. In those days, any place outside of Hoboken seemed like a distant universe. My cousins and I were thrilled for any car ride that lasted longer than a few songs spun by FunkMaster Flex on Hot 97. I remember enjoying an M&M’s ice cream sandwich under the balmy July sun.

The turquoise sky was absent of any clouds, as if the two entities were playing hide and seek. My aunts, uncles and parents were enjoying adult beverages by the charcoal grill as bistec, pollo y hamburguesas con queso were being prepared, filling the air with smoky scents of summer.

Since I was the youngest of all my cousins, and for some reason everyone loved to pick apart my food without my consent, any opportunity that I had to enjoy a delicious treat in solitude, I took advantage of. Upon finishing my ice cream sandwich all crouched in the opposite corner of the pool from my family, a place that rapidly filled with dozens of other families from one minute to the next, I ignored all advice of waiting to jump back into the pool after eating. I threw my towel on a lawn chair next to my mother’s belongings, and ran toward the big pool where my older cousins were.

My normal routine was jumping in relatively close to the shallow end, but not too far out into the middle of the pool where I could still take a few doggy paddle swipes and cling back up onto the ledge of the pool. Aiming to keep practicing this routine, as I ran toward my intended spot, I felt two enormous bear hands pick me up by my bony rib cages and toss me directly into the center of the pool, in the deep end.

Even when I’m not submerged, she fills my body.

Fully immersed in the depths of the Olympic sized tub, absent any swimming experience that I was cognizant of, I found myself in a brief frantic state. Aside from the panic that overtook my emotions and the water that filled my nose due to my lack of knowing how to preserve my breath without forcing my nostrils to close with two fingers, the most important thing on my mind was breathing again. Logic would’ve had me rush as fast as physically possible back toward sunlight, where the air was sultry. Yet in that moment, at the bottom of that ten foot pool, surrounded by dozens of other bodies that were also submerged in water, a feeling of deja vu shook me internally. I’ve been here before. That notion was all too familiar. The environment that I reluctantly found myself in, was a friend of mine. In fact, it too resided in me. For that reason, at that moment, I had nothing to fear.

I didn’t know it at the time, and likely didn’t want to hear any encouragement due to my irrationality, but the feeling of familiarity in a sequence that generally causes shock or terror, is freeing. I’m not sure what my exact thoughts were at that moment, but I do remember somehow swimming back to the top for a panicked breath, then calming down and swimming back toward the ledge.

My older cousins laughed at me for a few minutes, likely viewing my fear as a form of drama since they clearly saw my ability to swim. After several leaps into the deep end, of my own valiant doing this time around, and some hard fought front strokes to and from the ledge, the laughter halted. Within half an hour, I was welcomed to play along with them. This time, in the deep end.

Even when I’m not submerged, she fills my body. Since I was conceived, water has never left me.