Of course, Salishan is not just a resort. The Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. They are characterized by fusional and inflected language and astonishing consonant clusters. And all Salish languages are either extinct or endangered. That’s not something I knew as a kid. But the word embedded itself in my head and heart differently than other words anyhow, and so it had a meaning secret from regular talking. Sometimes when I was hurt or angry or scared as I kid, I’d close my eyes and whisper, “Salishan. Salishan.” Hoping it could work some kind of magic on the terror of family.
After we moved back to Oregon, when my son was about five, I took him and Andy back to Salishan. I did not know what would happen. Perhaps that kind of return would bring me nothing but sadness, and we were driving to the ocean of my childhood. But I trusted the ocean’s pull. When we got to within a mile of the resort — when we drove past the estuary and around the corner where the Douglas Firs make a mound of forest in the heart of which is Salishan, my heart let loose. It wasn’t the resort. It was the word. It was a space of ocean or peace that offered hope differently for a child. I rolled the window down and the salt air bathed my face. My son seemed excited but didn’t know why.
My husband Andy said, “Is this it?”
“Yes,” I said, this is the place.
My son had never been to a fancy place like that, so he spent the first 10 minutes running around the room in a little kid glee dance. Then he found the white terrycloth robes in the closet, stripped naked, put one on, went out on to the balcony, and said, “This is the life.”
Then we all went down to the pool. The pool of my childhood hope. Miles kept saying the word Salishan. Words carry oceans on their small backs.
Joy.
A word. An act of imagination. Me, Andy, Miles. In the pool we work on Miles’ water skills. My husband swims and floats and laughs, dives down like a kid, making his nose run from the chlorine. Not caring. He can swim the deep end.
When I am in the Salishan pool with Miles, I play. Usually we play water games Miles has invented, all of which involve him getting to keep his head above the water. This time he tells me he has a very important game. I say, “OK. What is it?”
“I’m going to put my whole head underwater,” he says.
!
I nod and stay quiet, trying not to blow it. I move toward him to hold him so we can dunk down together quickly. Painlessly.
“No,” he says, “you stay over there and do it and I’ll do it over here and we’ll look at each other and try to hold our breath as long as we can.”
!
“OK.” I say.
My heart.
He’s got his goggles on. He’s got a hold of his nose with one hand, and with the other, he’s going to count off.
One.
Two.
Three.
And then he takes the hugest breath in like ever. And puts his head under. All the way. I do too. I can see him through the blue. His beautiful underwater head. For the first time. Holding his own breath. A magic.
When we rush up for air we are both laughing and I’m telling him how proud I am of him and he’s splashing around and Andy comes over and we do a group hug. You know, like people goofing off on vacation.
“Again!” he says.
We do. We do and we do.
In this water with the two of them — the boy, the man. I almost can’t breathe. I didn’t know. It is a family. It is mine.
It’s a small tender thing, the simplicity of loving.
I am learning to live on land.
The Other Side of Drowning
I WONDER. WHO WAS ROOTING FOR ME?
For the first time since I was maybe 14, I’m watching Super-8 films of myself swimming. Racing. My father took them. Many, many of them. They’ve been sitting silent and immobile in a cardboard box since 2003 when my father died — two years after my mother went. I knew about them. They’ve been down in the garage. I just never … drug them up from the depths until now.
I don’t quite know how to explain to you what it is like watching the little woman swim for her life. I mean from where I am now. Look at her go. Is she swimming away from something? Or to something?
On film I watch myself swim, and even though on the surface the plot is about winning races, or losing, there is something you will never see.
What you will not see is how far. How many miles I had to swim to come back to a simple chlorinated pool where I might… just be.
I swim laps three, sometimes four times a week now. At the Clackamas Aquatic Center near my home. It feels… it feels like the closest thing to home I have ever had.
At the pool, the people who swim in the lap lanes next to me are not athletes. Though occasionally one will show up and my game will come alive in my body — I can’t help it. I’ll race them until they leave. We usually don’t speak — just nod at each other when it’s over, as if we’ve shared something intimate.
But more often there are regular people in the pool. Beautiful women seniors doing water aerobics — mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers — their massive breasts and guts reminding you how it is that women carry worlds. When I swim by them I watch their legs and bodies underwater, and feel a strange kinship with a maternal lineage. You know you can smile underwater. You can laugh.
Twice in my life I have found myself swimming next to an albino. I felt lucky somehow. Like I’d found the right water.
At the pool near my home there is a woman who is missing a leg. She swims her laps with a prosthetic that has a flipper at the end. Very high-tech. Her workouts, I’ve noticed, are formidable. I love her made-up leg. I like to swim near her.
Sometimes kids and teens take up a lane — no doubt they are on swim teams — I can tell by their spectacular strokes and the kinds of swimsuits and caps and goggles they wear. They are in the sweet. Effortlessly.
Old men people the lap lanes too, most always extra friendly to me. Their skin hangs off of their backs in pale speckled folds. Their legs seem too thin to carry them — and they nearly all wear some form of white or beige boxer trunks. Sometimes with very thin fabric. But they wrestle the water anyhow, in all shapes and sizes, all forms of swimming. Once I stopped my laps to rest and two of them were staring at me. One said to the other, “Ain’t she something?” The other one said, “And how.” Then they clapped. It cracked me up. I still see them sometimes. We say hello, or goodbye, or keep up the good work.
Middle-aged women like me show up too — most of them do not have the stroke quality of someone who has competed — but I am filled with wonder at them anyway. They put their bodies in the water to swim the same way that I do. Maybe they are trying to shed pounds. Or maybe stress. Or lives. Or maybe it just feels good — being alone in water — no kids hanging on you, no husband to tend to, no one and nothing to answer to. When the pool is full I’ve noticed I’m among the first they will ask if they can share a lane. They must be able to tell I’m going to lap them and lap them. But there must be something more important that draws them to my lane. I think — I hope it is that the water is safe.
Gay men are there too, I can tell. Their legs will be hairless or they’ll be wearing earrings and, well, the only other men besides athletes who wear Speedos are gay. I sometimes have to fight off strange impulses to crawl over the lane line into their lanes and hug them — to thank them for being the men they are — men who showed me love and compassion at every important moment of my life — even though we are strangers.