Water and my Thoughts-

By Brenda Bowen Wright

Anyone who knows me knows I do not like water. I prefer showers to a bathtub. I don't appreciate swimming pools. I will happily go to the beach and occasionally even don a swimsuit, but rarely will you see me in the water. My dislike or distrust of water comes from three incidents at various times in my life.

In Kearns, the first city I remember living in, I was the water sprinkler and cheap-round-plastic swimming pool queen. I loved to sprint through the sprinkler water, then lay out on the hot cement of our driveway or sidewalk to warm up and dry off. The whole routine would then be repeated over and over all afternoon. Like many children of the 1950s in Salt Lake, we couldn't play outside in the water until the snow was off the mountains. My older brother and I would beg Mom to please let us run through the hose. She would say nothing as she walked outside to look at the mountains. Yes, she'd look at the tallest peak, even though we tried to convince her that wasn't fair. My brother and I were expert snow-on-the-mountain watchers. I have often wondered if the height of our local mountains affected the start of water play day? Do kids in Nebraska get to start earlier in the summer? Or maybe they never get to play in the water because there are no mountains. 

One of the very first swimming pools I swam in was with my mother's sister, Aunt Lois and her family. I do believe it was the Crystal Hot Springs Swimming pool in Honeyville, Utah. This pool was very near my grandmother's home in the nearby northern Utah metropolis of Deweyville.
I was always and still am the shortest cousin, but I felt the need to try the deep end where my mother and Aunt Lois were hanging out. Thing is, I never learned how to swim until I was much, much older. My mother was a member of a synchronized swim team so you would think she would have taken the time to teach me to swim or at least to float or something. 

I remember venturing out to the deep end of this pool and I, of course, could not touch the bottom. I strained my toes trying to bounce off the concrete floor, back up to the surface and survival. Eventually, I was overtaken with water and sucked some into my lungs. I struggled so hard to breathe, struggled to see someone who would notice me and would help me. No one noticed. Everyone was busy talking and playing, but I was choking and bouncing as hard as I could off the pool bottom to reach some air and then back down I would sink. My head was just barely under the water before I reached the bottom, but definitely over my nose. Each trip to the cement I would slowly try to toe-walk back towards the shallows again. 

I finally made it back to where I could touch bottom with my toes and reach my nose into the air. I was choking and coughing almost to the throw-up stage. I was scared absolutely to death. The worst part was no one noticed, no one. The pool was busy, and I must have just looked like I was having fun bouncing. I was so humiliated at not being able to swim like everyone else. I crept to the shallow end and stayed there all by myself. That feeling of not getting any air, with water being sucked in with each breath, never left me. I distrusted swimming pools from that day forward.

I hung to the sides of any swimming pool I dipped into after that. I did teach myself to doggy-paddle but that was born of pure desperation, and it became embarrassing to perform when all I saw was the beautiful swim strokes of my friends. 

In high school, I would go swimming with girlfriends, and it was at that period in my life I encountered the first abuse concerning my body. My mother would make constant comments about me being over-weight, and I began to be extremely self-conscious. I purchased a swimsuit that I thought covered my large body as best as I could and it became a complete joke. It was thick cotton and looked like a sun suit with a waist and shorts for the bottoms. It even had a zipper up the back. No stomach showed on me during this era of the daring bikinis. I didn't have a decent one-piece swimsuit let alone a trendy two-piece let alone the anti-establishment string bikini that all the popular girls wore so beautifully. I saw people staring at me, and felt people pointing. I was humiliated. I never really swam again, mostly because we moved to central Utah after my junior year in high school and I had no friends. Besides, there was only a cold outdoor swimming pool in Richfield. Swimming is just too cold for me. I dislike being cold and don't get me started with the hair problem. I have a lot of hair, everywhere, and that is reason enough to hate water. 

Finally good news for a little break here. When I attended Utah State University, in my senior year, I needed one more physical education credit, so I signed up for swimming lessons. I learned to swim, barely. I learned enough to not be likely to drown, but I'm a terrible swimmer. Swimming just does not come naturally to me.

Lucky me, I married a former lifeguard who is an excellent swimmer, and he loves the water. We had a period of boat ownership, and I hated it. I hated being out on the water and not knowing what was under me. I have paddled in all the bigger lakes of Utah and did not particularly enjoy a single swim in any of them. I always want to get out of the water and back to the heat of the sun. 

So number one tragedy was nearly drowning at Crystal Hot Springs as a young girl. Second tragedy was being embarrassed in a swimsuit in high school. Now, the third event.

I am a very level-headed person, I don't get upset, actually staying pretty darn calm in stressful situations.  I had one and only one panic attack, and yes, it occurred in water.

While working for Eastern Airlines, my husband, step-son and I traveled to Saint Thomas in the Caribbean. Of course, my step-son is half fish like his father, and they both wanted to snorkel. I went out to the bay with them. My first attempt at snorkeling was while I was treading in the deep water of that bay. I put my head down into the water and saw everything down there. It must have been absolutely gorgeous with all the huge fish and all the sea plants reaching out trying to grab my legs, but I did not see the beauty. All I saw was that one colossal fish looking straight at me with its enormous mouth chomping open and closed. The giant sea plants were undulating close to my legs. I knew I would be tangled in the stinging, poisonous plants and pulled under and drown. I could not see the bottom where my dead body would be left to rot.

I came unglued. I  screamed and thrashed and lost all reason and all sense of decorum. I was drowning and being eaten all at once. This was a full-blown panic attack. Remember, my husband had been a lifeguard, thank goodness. He tried to calm me, but there was no calming me. I was grabbing on to him for dear life and could have drowned us both. His quick reflexes took over, and he flipped me on my back, put his arm around my neck and paddled me back to shore like a true Bay Watch hunk. Since that day, my hubby has never questioned my extreme reluctance to get into the water. I don't swim at all, at any time. Period. Hubby doesn’t push me to do it either, in fact he never even suggests I try to get in the water.

But, I am happy to report that I got over the swimsuit phobia. In my early marriage years, I did look fantastic, I am told, in my black string bikini, but it never got wet. I stay on the deck of all boats and all swimming pools, dry and warm to this very day. And there I shall stay.