Nautical Nonsense

Our son, John, has always been a “fish” in the water. He was never afraid to just jump right in. That's a good thing because I've always been afraid of the water. My mother would never let me go past “ankle-deep” at the beach because she swore that I would drown.

How much fun is that when everyone else is splashing in the waves having a grand time and I'm stuck in the “shallows?” I was never allowed to go to the beach with other families either… only my mom. So, my trips to the beach were very limited.

After we married, my husband and son, John, would spend a lot of the time at the beach with me-- making up for lost time! I did not want to pass along my fear of the water to my children. We would spend the warm days at Folly Beach and go down to the Coast Guard station where there were lots of gullies. When the tide went out, these gullies were great places to relax and float. The sun would heat up the water so it would reach a glorious “spa-like” temperature.

We would spend hours in the gullies. My son has cerebral palsy and did not walk until he was three years old so to be in the water and be able to move about so freely was something he loved. On this particular day, my husband, myself and John were relaxing in the gully and all of a sudden, I could not see John. I jumped up, ran over to where I knew he had been and there beneath the water, eyes open, looking all around, he was crawling along the bottom of the gully…

Not in a hurry…

Not panicking…

Not swallowing water but holding his breath.

I reached down to grab him out of the water when my husband said, “don't touch him! Let's see what he's going to do!”

My heart was pounding in my chest. The both of us just stood there and watched… and watched! Every now and then (it seemed like an eternity to me) he would come up for air, and go right back down and continue crawling, eyes open, just looking around, as he traveled the length of the gully. That was the strangest thing we had ever seen.

But he was so happy.

We had a pool at the apartment where we lived. It had a very deep end and a shallow end of about three feet. Crawling in the gully was one thing but going into the deep end of the pool was another. At this point, John had not had any swim lessons at all. Remember I said he was a fish? Well, this particular day at the pool he decided he was going to jump right in and he did...

Into the deep end...

Couldn't touch bottom...

Grabbed a deep breath...

Slowly sank to the bottom (with eyes open) and with both feet pushed off the bottom, he came right back up to the surface. And did it all over again. So, he realized what he could do to “drown-proof” himself. It was amazing to watch.

Another time my mother was visiting us and I decided to take John over to the pool. Taking John to swim was a good idea. Taking my mother was another thing altogether. We got settled pool-side and John jumped right in and I thought my mother was gonna have a stroke. John went straight to the bottom and my mom started yelling. I tried to explain to her how John handled the deep end but without much success. She jumped up, grabbed her belongings and made a “beeline” to the apartment and said she couldn't watch that!

And she never did again.

Anytime we mentioned swimming and John in the same sentence she would make an excuse as to why she couldn't go!

We DID give our children swim lessons and we DID let them go on outings with other families but I can honestly say that every time they went without me, I could hear that little voice in the back of my head say, “Don't go past ankle-deep or you will drown!”

~ Jeannie Joyner