Breathe Deeply

Today, for the first time ever in my life, I went snorkeling.

What? I hear you cry. But you have been all over the world! You have been to there and back again, on holiday, even!

I know, Gentle Reader. I know. I am a bit surprised myself, but there it is. Not even on that fabled honeymoon so many years ago did I go snorkeling. Maybe it's that we had already spent above our means, but I think it had more to do with the nasty lump on my foot from where I got pushed into the pool. What, I haven't told you this story? I got pushed in jest, but I'm about as fond of falling into water as I am of steep cliff sides and bridges while in a car. So, irrational fear might be a good word to describe it. (Just last year, I willingly jumped off a boat into the water while in Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. It took me a good 10 minutes to screw up my courage, and even then I was told the look on my face while I fell was one of abject terror. I believe it.) Well, I freaked and tried desperately to not go under and swallow a lungful of water, and in the process I landed sideways on my foot and got a nasty lump. Of course, it turns out the pool was only 4 feet deep, and even I'm not that short.

All of which means no snorkeling trip.

And really, I haven't been on that many trips where snorkeling was the thing. Diving, maybe, but not snorkeling. And here's the thing with diving: I'm also mildly claustrophobic. So while I might allow myself to be pulled along by a significant other, it's not something I'm particularly keen to do myself. I'll always find something else I want to do more.

Fast forward to last year: a friend at work was seriously getting into diving and she found a place to dive with sharks in Beijing. I promised to go along. It turned into a major production, and she ended up getting reservations on a weekend when I was unavoidably elsewhere (camping or Harbin or something). Still, we joked that she would become my heterosexual life partner and be the one to take me diving.

This year at Burns' Night (for she is, indeed, the brave soul who acted as my interpreter for the evening of poetry and whiskey), we discussed our Spring Festival plans. We realized, belatedly, that we totally could have gone on holiday together. But, she was already booked for Fiji and I was already booked for Indonesia. The talk, though, is the Philippines next year, and I'll let her take me diving. I promised this year to go snorkeling, to prepare.

Well, it's taken me two weeks to screw up my courage. I don't really know what I'm doing and the Book keeps on warning of strong currents here and there.

But this morning, when the Bar Back/General Factotum asked if I had anything planned and maybe snorkeling... Well, I knew I had to. (Both Books concur that my current location is good for snorkeling.)

So, I applied a extra layer of 50 sunblock to my back (after my early morning application and my mid-morning layer of spray-on sunblock) and picked up a mask. He made sure the fins fit, washed out the mask, and told me to head south along the coast to find a turtle.

I headed into the water. I put on the fins. I put on the mask. I bit the mouth piece. I put my face in the water. I took maybe two breaths and I could hear the water gurgling in the tube and... up I burst from the water, spluttering.

This went on and on.

Add to that, I couldn't see a thing. I took off the mask. I spit in it. I put it back on. I kept a keen eye on the shore every time I came up, to make sure the evil currents hadn't suddenly carried me off to Gili Trawangan. And, well, I was coming up for a look every two breaths. This was not going as planned (and confirming my worst fears that I am hopeless at all things water).

And then, at one point in my two-breath/sputter pattern, I looked. There, underneath me, close enough I could reach out to them, were fish! Whoa. I was suddenly brought back to Herodotus and Mercator, the first of many tropical fish my sister had. (I helped out with them when she went to college, and was probably responsible for more than one death — especially the time I didn't realize the heat was plugged into the outlet that was controlled by the light switch and I turned off the light before we visited my grandparents for Thanksgiving for four days. Leaving them without heat. Yeah. Not my most shining moment.) I saw the myriad of angel fish we had, just bigger. I saw electric blue fishes. And I swam through a school of minnows — which was freaky enough to send me to the surface if my inability to take more than two breaths in a row hadn't. I had a "fish pedicure" in Thailand, and I was not prepared for little fishies taking bites of my roughened skin in the open water. (Not that they did, but see above for my various slightly panicked reactions to not-dangerous circumstances.)

Still, with my two-breath maximum, I tried to get smart. I started looking for bits of rock or coral that might attract my scaly friends. I noticed where some boats were anchored — maybe these guides knew something I didn't.

Then a man swam up. I'd heard him a few minutes earlier, but hadn't really paid attention. "I came from Gili Trawangan," he said in a Germanic accent. He was clearly not "from" Gili Trawangan, just like I'm not "from" China, but clearly he'd swum from there which is no mean feat. I mean, it's not quite the English Channel, but it's more than nothing. He wanted to know where I was from. We exchanged details: I am from America but live in Beijing, he is from Hungary but lives in Shanghai. Small world, and he sort of invited me inland to talk further. Maybe I should have. I have my own Hungarian friend I could use as currency to get to know him better, but... I still haven't mastered this breathing thing. To go in now would be to admit defeat, so I let him swim away. (Just think of all the stories I could tell from that one line alone.)

And I guess I decided it was now or never. I was either going to get this breathing through a tube thing down or return to my hotel in shame, tail between my legs, so to speak. And that would be it for my underwater career.

So, I cleaned my goggles. I bit down firmly on the mouthpiece. I put my face the water. I focused on biting, really biting, fuck the 11 years with the orthodontist that tweaked my jaw (but made it so I can eat — I'm not complaining!). And I looked. And I kept breathing.

And when I finally did come up sputtering, I knew something had changed. I don't know what. I don't know if it was the time getting used to the set-up, my focus on clamping my jaws, or sheer determination, but it changed.

Suddenly, I was swimming with the fishes (but without the inconvenience of cement shoes). I'd hesitate to say it was magical, it wasn't that really. It was cool, though. I could chase down the electric blue fish. I could look for a school of minnows to swim with. But mostly, I floated with the current.

And the I went even further back than my sister's fish, I went all the way back to when I used to taking swimming lessons when I was 6 or 7. Sorry Ma and Pa, but when it comes to me and swimming, you really dropped the ball. The rest of my siblings learned how to swim for real (or at least in my mind they did), I learned just enough to save my life. So the last thing I remember mastering at swimming lessons at Rotary Park was the dead man's float.

And this trip has been nothing if not a lesson that all my various skills might come in handy one day, and today's was floating prone. I kicked a foot. I waved an arm. I felt my fingers get pruny. I enjoyed watching the fishies gnawing at the coral or flitting under a rock. But unlike the dead Man's float, this time I could take deep breaths and keep my face in the water.

And then, when I started to get tired, I started paddling against the current to my hotel. It took some time, but I looked at the fish as I went.

I got back and told the General Factotum I saw no turtles. He seemed surprised. He encouraged me to go on a boat trip. Maybe tomorrow, I could sense the need to get out of the sun.

Oh yes. There it is. A familiar sting along the back of my legs. My calves, where I neglected to apply extra sunblock, are in slightly worse shape than my thighs, maybe. Generally, the entire back of my body is radiating heat like you wouldn't expect from someone who doused herself in super sunblock all day long.

What to do? Take a deep breath, there's nothing to do but wait it out.




- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?

Location:Gili Meno, Indonesia