tuckova

There is a child who has been learning to swim and is actually getting pretty good at it. The water an unfamiliar thing for so long, and the child still doesn't much like getting her face wet. She swims chin up, eyes determinedly fixed ahead, legs pumping, arms swooping in mostly graceful arcs, in small and certain bursts. Every few minutes she drops a foot down to touch the bottom of the pool, just to touch it, not because she needs to stand but because she needs to know she could, at any moment. Swoosh, swoosh, foot tap. Swoosh swoosh, foot tap. You're in the ocean now, beside her, beyond the soft sandy beach that slopes gently down into waves. Just out past the waves, where the water is about waist high, you start swimming together, parallel to the shore. You're not, honestly, a much better swimmer, and you also hate getting your face wet, and you both sputter and laugh whenever a little wave splashes up your noses, but the salt water is so much nicer than the pool and the buoyancy is incredible and you feel, oddly, safer. Suddenly the child's head dips under the water, just for a second. You realize you've drifted a bit out, and the water is now over your heads. But it's so easy to move back, it's just a few feet, it's not like you're in a riptide, but oh, she's panicking. She's flailing and splashing, too afraid to cry out. It's hard to reach her and pull her back when she's striking out like this; her fear infects you, because on the one hand you want to smile and calm her but also she has to stop hitting you or you won't be able to pull her back to where she feels safe. It's not like you can sit down and rationally explain to her that she WAS swimming, that she CAN swim, that she hasn't needed to touch the bottom for a while; there's no time to explain anything. The water is frothing around her, you've finally caught hold of one hand and you're tugging her towards you but she treats you like a sea monster intent on her destruction. The blue, blue water. Her terror. Your knowledge that all that will save you both is staying calm, even while you feel your own feet checking, reflexively, to see if you're back to where she can feel safe. The small part of your brain that wants to think about that, how we're actually both always safe and never safe. The white sand of the shore only just out of reach. The sting of the salt in your eyes.