My heart skipped beats as I watched my three-year-old grandson climb to the top of a water slide. If he entered the dark tube and pushed off, he would end up plunging into the deep end of the pool. He hesitated when he reached the top, and I gave a sigh of relief.
I’m the grandma who has always been afraid of the water. At a young age, I was hanging onto a borrowed inner tube in clear and cold Telford Springs when the swift current swept me into the coffee-colored warm waters of the Suwannee River, where I was certain cold-blooded alligators lurked. Alligators with jaws that could chomp off an arm or leg. Suddenly I saw movement in the water near the bank. Alligator? Lucky for me, it was an alert cousin, who saved me.
At the age of seven or eight, I still couldn’t swim, but learned the day Mama said I could go with my older sisters and Uncle Mernest to Miami if I learned to swim. I swam that very day, if you’d call “dog paddling” swimming. I never mastered diving though. Each time I tried, my body straightened up like a board as I hit the water. My belly flop wasn’t pretty. To this day, I don’t like my head to dip below the water’s surface, be it the springs, pool, beach, or bathtub.
Apprehensive as I watched my grandson, standing at the top level in the slide cage, I held my breath. Was he going to enter that twisting monster where he would be in total darkness? I thought back to the dark waters of the Suwannee.
He stepped back. That’s right, Little Fellow, I wanted to say, come back down to Grandma. But my daughter’s voice drowned my thoughts.
“You can do it!” she yelled from the deep end of the pool, where she waited.
He entered the tunnel.
“Feet first,” she yelled. “FEET FIRST!”
Her loud instructions caught the attention of everyone in the surrounding cabanas and the pool—including the lifeguard who probably thought he’d have to dive in and rescue the tyke. I wanted to close my eyes, but I didn’t for I recognized that my grandson could swim. Through toddler swim classes, he’d learned to float and swim when he was just months old.
He was now inside the monster slide. Would he become disoriented in the darkness? He FLEW from the bottom of the slide. Head first! Arms out. Splat! Belly flop. Like his grandmother.
Unfazed by his ungraceful landing, he swam to the edge, climbed out, and was ready to do it all over again.
Susie,
I enjoyed your post. You have a wonderful, clear voice that echoes throughout your writing. Lots of fun. I look forward to reading your memoir when it is published.
Kaye Linden
http://www.kayelinden.com
Thanks, Kaye, for your vote of confidence that I will one day finish my memoir.
I so love your website, especially the “History” section! glad you took this step of creating the website, to further share your wonderful stories of your and our family! I’m proud to know you.
Peggie, thank you for following my website. I hope to post more history soon.
I live across the river from Telford Springs now and there is an alligator living down by the old bridge approach but he doesn’t scare me. It’s the black things with the long arms that live just under the black water that keep me out of the river. You know Mother would never have told me such a tale but I’m sure she warned me so many times about the river that I just assumed there was danger in the water and that was the form it took.
Mary,
Granddaddy Tip told me that Curl Springs — I’m sure you remember it as Curl, not Royal — had no bottom and that he once saw a monster in it. Family members thought he’d seen a manatee — or just a big catfish after he’d had too many sips of his home brew.
I can’t believe I didn’t comment on this when it was a new posting! So, better late than never, let me add how much I enjoyed it, too. I’d be the other grandma biting her nails and trying to will my grandson to come to his senses and play in the kiddie pool. Good story.
Thanks, Ann Marie. I have never been all that comfortable in the water.