Dearest Readers,<\/p>\n
When I was a kid growing up in Toronto after we left the wilds of the\u00a0Yukon my sisters and I would spend a chunk of the summertime taking\u00a0swimming lessons at the local pool. My mother was pretty good at\u00a0keeping us active throughout the months of July and August and\u00a0swimming lessons were just one of the many activities we took part in\u00a0while on hiatus from school.<\/p>\n
We lived in Cabbagetown and the nearest lessons were offered at Jarvis\u00a0Collegiate Institute, which was about a fifteen-minute walk from our\u00a0house. My sisters and I later attended high school at Jarvis (though I\u00a0got kicked out for skipping too many classes –that’s another blog)\u00a0but as kids it was still just the nearest local pool.<\/p>\n
Every day for a portion of the summer we’d walk in the heat of the city to good ol’ JCI where we’d head inside to the\u00a0airless, windowless pool area. There, shut off from the summer sun, we would learn how\u00a0to perform and perfect all the strokes (front, back, breast and side), tread water and give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. We’d learn\u00a0the flutter kick, the scissor kick and the whip-kick, how to scull and bob and how to pull a body to shore.<\/p>\n
It was a heckuvalot of learning and I can\u2019t say it thrilled me to death. I used to dread swimming lessons most days. And yet there were things that I loved. I loved the rescue jump (still do), leaping fast into the water without\u00a0letting the head become submerged.\u00a0I liked head- and foot-first surface dives and the dead-man’s float. And I liked going to the corner store afterward and buying a popsicle for a dime.<\/p>\n
At the end of the summer, we’d get a badge and as the years went by we’d get higher and higher honours, moving from the colours (yellow was pretty beginner, white was getting up there) to the levels (I, II, III etc.) to the Bronze Medallion series. From there you could take more lessons and become a lifeguard. I never made it that far. At some point, I stopped being willing (probably around the same time I got kicked out of school).<\/p>\n
This morning I went for a swim in a friend\u2019s backyard pool in a West Island suburb of Montreal. I thought to myself, \u201cI\u2019ll do 100 laps!\u201d I ended up doing 50. I may be an overachiever but at least I\u2019ve learned when to quit.<\/p>\n
As I swam each lap I was brought back to the swimming lessons I\u2019d taken as a child. When I did the front-crawl I remembered to keep my elbows high. When I did the breast-stroke I remembered the scissor-kick is more economical than the frog kick. It was impossible to swim without these teachings working throughout my body.<\/p>\n
When I mentioned this experience to my eldest sister, with whom I walked those hot city blocks a hundred times and with whom I shared a gazillion lessons, she said, \u201cMe too!\u201d For her, swimming has a meditative quality now because she becomes totally focused on the form. \u201cI\u2019m constantly adjusting,\u201d she said, \u201cMaking the corrections, aligning my body, whatever it is. It takes me to another place.\u201d<\/p>\n
How interesting (but not that surprising) that she and I have the same experience. When we swim as adults we are brought back to the lessons of our childhood.<\/p>\n
I suppose that\u2019s what learning is all about!<\/p>\n
Inspiring Message of the Day:<\/strong><\/em> When I have to learn something new it may not be immediately clear to me how the lesson will inform my experience. The real learning may not happen for many years. I will embrace learning today knowing the pay-off may be a way off \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dearest Readers, When I was a kid growing up in Toronto after we left the wilds of the\u00a0Yukon my sisters and I would spend a chunk of the summertime taking\u00a0swimming lessons at the local pool. My mother was pretty good at\u00a0keeping us active throughout the months of July and August and\u00a0swimming lessons were just one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[452,816,325,451,817,450,449],"class_list":["post-663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cabbagetown","tag-inspiration","tag-inspiring-message-of-the-day","tag-jarvis-collegiate-institute","tag-motivation","tag-swimming-badges","tag-swimming-lessons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions\/665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celiamcbride.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}