Silent Pools and Yellow Swim Caps

The swimmers were brought in to the pool room, resting back like nobility on their specially wheeled shower chairs. Lowered gently with special equipment and loving hands, they relaxed into the calm water, into the arms that wrapped beneath their shoulders, and into the yellow floats that supported their heads and necks. But these waters apparently are not stirred by angels, for these same athletes were lifted back out in the same manner they went in: maimed, cognitively impaired, and silent. Only one crawled out mostly on his own and then lay helpless on the deck, smiling and patient as he waited for assistance into his chariot.

I am learning how to crawl too--my head capped with yellow, and my lungs often drowned with pool water. I feel weak as I have to cease my efforts after nearly every length to catch the breath that rotary breathing seems incapable of supplying. Unlike the invalid waters, mine are turbulent with stroke after stroke of activity, but these stirrings are cruel; they slap me in the mouth as I gulp at the air, they chisil their way up the nose I reluctantly place back in the water, and they reveal muscles that have long enjoyed concealment. I seem to have more trouble accepting help than the patient fellow on the deck. I strain on in inefficiency until I am plunged down to the humility of asking for the encouragement and technique that will make me a fluid swimmer, attempting not to grimace as I realize my deficiency.

Do not my waters need even more of an angelic touch?

This cripple must learn to relax into the arms of the Gentle Healer--and then she will be taught to swim, bursting out of her yellow cap of enthusiasm with a golden Buoyancy.