Calypso

by Charlie Fabre

We thought it was about time our monthly prompt was on the theme of Swim, so your favourite Swim Press team is all pitching in to deliver their versions!

On Wednesday afternoons after school, Lauraine took her daughter Marie to the municipal swimming pool for her class. Class was an hour long, an ordeal of ten children aged between eleven and fifteen of varying talents. Marie was bang on average, she was thirteen, she had been swimming her whole life but she did it without practice, in a way that you would swim if you were thrown into the open ocean and needed to survive, not because you actually knew how. She had learned early to keep herself afloat, that air in your chest would guarantee survival, and that swinging her arms around in a front crawl might dislocate her shoulder.

The others in the group had poise and grace and Lauraine suspected they had been in classes since they were little. Nurtured by the warm pools and their mosaic tiles, guided by the hands of instructors and buoyant lane dividers. They had not grown up with ocean froth in their hair or seaweed wrapped around their legs. Lauraine stayed and watched Marie’s first few classes when she had just signed her up. Her stomach dropped and a beast of shame coiled in her chest: Marie splashed with pure chaos and there was no elegance there at all.

When she thought of swimming, Lauraine thought of athletes and their toned bodies, their goggles which flashed like stars as they came up for air and dashed back down again. Watching them cut through the water on their laps reminded her of blue whales, titans of the ocean. Swimming, she thought, was not meant for Marie who was small and meak, who weighed next to nothing still, who had nightmares and was scared of the dark still, who loved the world still.

The municipal pool was called Calypso, named after the nymph who kept Odysseus captive on her island. Many people don’t know that Odysseus was offered immortality in exchange for staying, but he preferred to be thrown to the sea and risk his survival just for a chance to return home and live.

When Marie swam she took deep gulping breaths like she was tasting air for the first and last time. She didn’t wear goggles or a cap, used to the sting in her eyes, used to the pull in her hair and the knots for later. What Lauraine and the other parents and the instructor all failed to realise, it seemed, was that it was hard to look beautiful and elegant when you were trying to survive. When it was all you knew how to do.