MLK 2012

Today we celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martian Luther King Jr.  I write this post sitting in a café, surrounded by people.  Fifty years ago it still would have been possible for me, an African American, to sit and sip coffee with others who don’t look like me, in this restaurant chain in Boston, but it would have been noticed.  I would have stood out. I would have had to pick the café with care, as some neighborhoods felt the need to keep obvious outsiders from being comfortable in their tiny corner of the metropolis.  And while perhaps I could do this in Boston, south of the Mason-Dixon line, my choices of establishment would be very limited, even given the same restaurant chain.  Choosing carefully would have meant choosing life. But today I am surrounded by blondes, brunettes, dark skin, light skin, people whose parents came from other countries, and people who probably speak another language at home.  As I stood in line behind a police officer, a white man perhaps a decade younger and a number of inches shorter than I am, I was aware of just how much the world has changed and yet how subtle that change is.  The officer completely ignored me.  I posed no innate threat to him or this establishment.  I was just another citizen.  

Photo by John Chuckman - http://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wordpress.com

When Dr. King was alive, I did not have the privilege of just being another citizen, not even in the northern U.S. In a previous post I told the story of clearing the pool, when ignorant people made a choice in the 1960’s that was to my family’s benefit.  If any of you come from families that have made similar choices in the past, I say thank you on behalf of my family, though I hope you have gained some love and understanding over the years.  Because you are reading this blog, I’m guessing you have.

Last week my partner alerted me to a CNN article about a 31 year-old Ohio landlord who put a “Whites Only” sign on the fence surrounding her pool after seeing the biracial daughter of a white tenant swimming. This didn’t happen in 1961, but in 2011.  The landlord is not 81, but 31. And it didn’t happen below the Mason-Dixon line, it happened in Ohio, though in 2011 that should no longer be relevant.  Still, it happened.  It happened because the US is scarred by its racist past in ways that remain invisible until poked and exposed, hidden and yet too numerous to count.

Part of what my mother did as she taught swimming at the Center City Philadelphia YWCA in the 1960’s and 70’s was to help make Dr.’s King’s dream a reality.  When little black boys and black girls joined little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers in my mother’s pool, the dream was real.  Under her watchful eye she gave them the gift of life, a survival skill that they would never forget.  And this gift came from a black woman at a time when black women where all too often invisible or disempowered by white society.  Who knows what these children heard at home, but in her pool the dream was alive and it had a face.

  

We can not change everyone’s mind and we can not all be a Dr. King.  But in what we do everyday, in who we are everyday, we can stretch, we can reach, we can spread our arms wide and embrace a beautiful diverse world.  And in that embrace we can truly be free at last.

Tub View

I don’t own a home, but I’m a proud renter. The whole American Dream home ownership thing has never been a strong draw in my life.  Plus given the economy, I’m ok with not having scary mortgage issues.

But one of the down sides for not owning my own home is that I can’t own a hot tub.  I love hot tubs.  I fell in love with them almost 30 years ago when I moved to California and it’s been a torrid bubbly love affair ever since, no matter where I’ve lived or traveled.  If you are my friend and you own a hot tub, know that we are not friends just so I can crash your jacuzzi every once in a while, but it doesn’t hurt.

As a member of Bally’s Total Fitness,  I was greatly dismayed when they closed some clubs a year ago to help their bottom line.  They closed the one near where I work, which made dealing with daily traffic, cubicles and hours under florescent light far less appealing.  That club had a 25 yard pool (which unfortunately is rare) and a huge hot tub.  And the culture of that gym was geared more toward weight lifting, so there weren’t a lot of swimmers – score!  Now I’m down to just one club in my area with a full size pool for lap swimming… and hot tub.

Since I completed WSI last Christmas, hot tubs at Bally’s have not been the same.  Before, I sat in there to warm up before starting my laps.  This year due to either laziness or fatigue (or both), I’ve been soaking up those hot jets for longer and longer every time I get in.  Sometimes I won’t even do any laps, but just close my eyes and do the rotisserie thing – lie on my back for a while, then roll over to my front with my head in my folded arms, then repeat every few minutes.  Oh yeah.  This is water done right!

Once relaxed, I’ll poke my head up, feeling better, but not wanting to get out.  Instead I’ll just watch other people swim.  And here’s where my life has been changed forever.  It used to be that I didn’t care how other people swam.  I just cared that they got out of the pool so I could have the lane, thank you very much.  But now I watch and I analyze.  What are they doing?

• She’s either afraid to put her face in the water or her hair in the water.  I wonder if anyone's ever worked with her on that?
• Oh I see his problem.  He doesn’t think the water can support him, so he’s thrashing his arms from one end of the pool to the other.  It's so exhausting that he has to rest for minutes at each end.  
• You know, her stroke would be so much better if she stretched her arms and glided like a swan. What’s the rush?  I could teach her how to do that. 
• Hey muscle man, stop boxing with the water!  This isn't Taekwondo.

Of course, I never say these things out loud, but I want to.  I want to walk over and say, “Dude, let me help.  I can help.”  But that’s hard.  Most men would tell me to butt out.  Plus the dumbest thing in the world to do is make a guy uncomfortable who works out regularly and with whom you share a locker room.  And with a woman, how do you not make it sound like a bad pickup line?  What they’d hear is, “Hey baby, let me show you how to stroke.”

So until I get a swimming instructor job, I’ll just keep my mouth shut, my body in hot water and my thoughts on swimming.  But hey, if you know of a part-time swim instructor job opening, I live in the Boston North Shore area.  And I won’t even insist that the pool have a hot tub.  But it wouldn’t hurt.

Our Pool

When I was young, my extended family and I spent one week a year at the Jersey Shore.  My aunt Jane and her family, my aunt Phyllis and her family, my mom, sister and I would all drive to Wildwood, a little south of the more famous Atlantic City.  While the adult males at that time would have strongly disagreed, I grew up in an extended matriarchy.  All the women worked, they saved their money all year, planned and led the vacations.  The dads could show up if they wanted, but the bus was leaving with or without them.  Actually it wasn’t a bus, but more like a caravan of mid 1960’s Chevy’s filled to the gills with luggage and more vacation crap than you could shake a stick at.

For me, Wildwood was about two things, beach and boardwalk. The beach held us in its arms during the day and the boardwalk at night.  The beach was sand, sea shells, sea gulls, ice cream vendors, the hot hot sun that baked us to cinders, and an ocean that didn’t know how to stop blessing me with salt water and waves.  I was there to body surf.  And for this skinny 10 year old kid who loved being in the water, the waves and I danced in and out all day.  It was great.  And every late afternoon when the family would drag itself back to where we were staying, it was shower time.  Because half of the seashore was stuck to our skin and swim suits.

There were a few different places we stayed during the Wildwood years, but mostly we stayed in the attached bungalow of Rose Marie Manor – a small motel owned by a friend of the family. I think the bungalow had 3 bedrooms, two upstairs and one down, plus lots of floor and couch space for various older teenagers. What I had forgotten was that the motel had a pool.  I don’t remember ever going in it.  Why would we?  The beach was just a 4 block walk away.  Of course we walked there loaded down like dessert camels with beach bags, chairs, umbrellas, and the kitchen sink.  We never drove to the beach.  The matriarchs saved all year for the lodging, not the parking.  Please!  “Oh, that’s highway robbery!” my mother would say.

This is a picture of Rose Marie Manor from a postcard I found when going through the old house in Philadelphia.  The bungalow is behind the motel to the right. Rose Marie Manor had a largely black clientele since it was black owned.  It was also probably the only pool in my life where everyone in it was black and not related to me.  That was because our family had a way with pools.  Let me explain.

My mother was a swimming instructor and life guard, my aunt Jane was a swimming instructor, and everyone else in my family swam.  It wasn’t coincidence, it was the law.  Whenever we took any family trip that involved an overnight stay, having a bathing suit was like carrying an ID – don’t leave home without it. Because whichever matriarch planned the trip made sure there was a pool.

My older sister was the first in our family to go to college and for the first three years she went to school in rural PA.  But she spent her senior year internship in Flushing, NY; to which the family response was, ROAD TRIP!  The Holiday Inn in Flushing had an outdoor pool, so when the weather was warm, we were off to visit Sharon.  I don’t remember how many of us were on this trip.  It was probably only 8 – it felt like 80.  I’m sure we had multiple rooms, but I can only remember us in one.  And because it was my family, I know there was a coupon or discount somewhere in the mix.  First day in the hotel, it was time to go in the pool.  We could see it from our hotel window.  There were people sitting around the edge in lounge chairs, a few people in the water splashing and diving.  That’s where we belonged.

Our motley crew arrived down at the pool – bathing suits, towels, two certified instructors and all deep water swimmers.  Everyone turned and looked.  And as we got in the water, everyone else got out.  At first we thought, that was odd.  Where’s everyone going?  It eventually hit us, Oh right, they don’t want to swim with black people.  Oh well… more pool for us!  And then we proceeded to have a good time in “our pool.”  But that wasn’t just a Flushing, NY thing. It happened in pool, after pool, after pool down through the years.  All hotel pools became our pools.  Sometimes we’d just clear the pool, other times we’d take out the entire pool deck.  It was a running joke in our family; “Time for us to go clear the pool.”  And we would, without ever saying a word to anyone.

We got so used to having every hotel pool to ourselves that the first time it didn’t happen, when the white people didn’t get out of the pool when we got in, we thought there was something wrong.  Wait… Hello!… Aren’t you supposed to get out now?  Damn racial progress.

My family is scattered now, so it’s unlikely to see us together at a pool anymore.  But whenever we talk and the topic of swimming comes up, invariably someone says, “Remember clearing the pool?”  Yep, in every place but Rose Marie Manor, just 4 blocks from the beach.

Breath

Have you ever looked at swimmers or any athlete for that matter, and said, “I wish I could do that.”  They don’t need to be a top athlete, but just a average Joe on a team, or not on a team, doing what they do, working their way through their sport, not at the bottom, but also not at the top.  You might see some small technical thing they do that you recognize only because you’ve tried to do that very same thing unsuccessfully – a particular arm swing during a high jump, the angle of a wrist during a pitch, a catch on the run, or a flip turn.  That happens to me a lot – Man, I wish I could do that!  And often it comes down to breath. 

Last year I was at the gym sitting in the hot tub – I LOVE hot tubs – and I was watching an older gentleman also in the hot tub as he watched a young man swimming laps in the pool just a few feet away.  The older gentleman was probably in his late 60’s, was rather thin and wearing a Speedo.  I’ve noticed that older guys don’t wear Speedos unless they wore them for a legit reason when they were young.  And they wear them now whether they’re in the same shape they were in 30 years before or not.  Gut – what gut?  Sometimes that Speedo of today has an awning it didn’t have during their younger athletic days. 

The younger man doing laps was in his 20’s and was chugging along freestyling at pretty good clip, doing fast open turns at the walls and an occasional flip turn – lap, after lap, after lap.  The older man stared at him with a fascinated look and I wanted to know why. 

When the younger man stopped, the older man said, “Hey, so are you a triathlete?”  “Yeah, how’d you know?” the younger guy asked.  “You’re breathing.”  “Oh yeah, on both sides?  It really helps,” said the younger guy.

The older I get, the more I see how much of life comes down to breath. I knew of that thing the younger guy was doing – bilateral breathing.  I read about it.  But man I wish I could do that.  My regular right hand breathing seemed so comfortable.  Why should I learn another way to breath?

When I first learned to use a mask and snorkel, I found the whole practice was mostly about breath.  If you’re in the ocean, you can distract yourself with cool things to see, but when I’m in the ocean or pool, my mind is focused on my breath.  What it sounds like while I’m forcing air in and out of a plastic tube, how I continue breathing even with the occasional intake of salt or chlorinated water, what it feels like to hold my breath when I dive below the surface, how much force I need to blow water out of the snorkel when I resurface.  Snorkeling is not about swimming, it’s about breath.

When I learned SCUBA, I had to relearn to breath and control my breathing no matter what.  “Never hold your breath – always breath,” my instructors would say.  Completely surrounded by water, exploring a strange new world that you are just visiting at best, SCUBA claims to be about fun and safety.  But when you’re down there with your life strapped to your back, everything you see is silent and the only thing you hear is the rhythm of your own breathing.  Be calm – in and out.  SCUBA offers a level of inward focus that would be helpful on dry land.  Because down there, when you get excited, you hear your life rhythm change and it engulfs you.  Be calm – breath.

During WSI training the instructor said, “OK, now I’d like to see you breath every third arm stroke.  Bilateral breathing.  It makes you swim balanced.”  He said it as if to say, of course you know how to do this and have been doing it for years.  So go do it.  With the image of the young man at the pool in my head, I just did it.  I did it!  Another hurdle of WSI overtaken.  I can breath balanced!

One might say, So what? Everybody does it. What’s the big deal about breath?  The most common thing is also the most precious.  Perhaps it’s for more than the obvious reason that if we don’t breath we die.  We are made of breath.  When we don’t breath, we reject who we really are. There is that bible verse in Genesis that says, “…the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

We are more than flesh, we are made of sacred breath.  Being in water helps remind us how important that is.

copyright 2010 Kevin Brooks