Swimming Lessons

My Dad's best poem

My Dad never learned how to swim. Looking back, it’s possible he subconsciously feared water after his mom drowned in the bath tub following an epileptic seizure. He was just two at the time.

This is my second Father’s Day without him. I woke up early to read from book two in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle series, which zeroes in on early fatherhood. It wasn’t until I was in the gym later this morning that I realized what today was.

“Swimming Lessons” is one of many poems my Dad emailed me and a coterie of others lucky enough to receive "Goodie Grams" as he called them. It is my favorite poem of his. I’m taken with its tenderness and its courage, and its lack of bitterness despite feeling hurt and lonely. I think it exhibits his boundless generosity and a degree of inner peace with his limitations, while acknowledging how he struggled to rebuild his life post-divorce.

I wish so badly I could join him on the beach even though sand ranks high on my list of enemies. Dad is on the other side now, in the land of milk and honey. I love you, I miss you, I’m sorry I wasn’t there more.

Swimming Lessons

After we got divorced

my wife and I both

were on the sidelines

for a while

She got back in the

water before I did.

She had some setbacks,

got some jellyfish bites.

But she kept going,

She always kept going.

It's one of her best qualities.

And now she's made it.

She's reached the other side.

I, on the other hand,

stayed on the beach.

I've never liked the water,

never felt really comfortable there.

So I stayed on the beach,

read books and made sandcastles.

Eventually, I got to be pretty good

at sandcastles.

But that's not a way

to live a life.

Friends were concerned.

They suggested swimming lessons.

Sometimes I would stand

on the beach.

The water would lap

at my ankles.

But I didn't go any further.

As the song says,

The river Jordan is chill and cold,

chills the body,

but not the soul.

Eventually things got better.

I left the beach,

got a job,

Started going to church.

It wasn't great,

but it was better.

So now I'm swimming.

It's not easy.

The tide is strong.

But, as the song says,

the river is wide

and the river is deep.

Milk and honey

on the other side.

Hallelujah.