published in The Boardman Review June 2022
A few years ago, a friend of mine read my fortune with a deck of tarot cards. He kept pulling and pulling, and with every card the picture became clearer. He said: one day you will move to the water, and all of your dreams will come true. He said a lot of other things, too, and he was right about all of it. The more I think about water, the more I realize that it’s the substance that defines me. My relationship to water has made me face myself in a way that nothing else has. Every part of me, every past version of myself, is somehow tied to it. I can’t escape it, and I wouldn’t if I could—not anymore.
I was a city kid, raised downstate, in a grid of a neighborhood where you could reach out the window and touch the side of the house next door. I grew up riding my bike to the public pool on hot days. We took an annual family trip to a cottage up north that was throwing distance from an inland lake and only a short walk to the Big one. The idea of living near the water permanently was only ever a dream to me—it existed as my reality for one short week out of the year. I never imagined a life in which anything more could be possible. And yet, years later, I fell in love with someone who grew up one mile from that very lake.
We moved to the water, him and I, eventually. We escaped from Los Angeles, choosing Michigan instead, where the air was clear, and the pace was slow. It was the end of July when we arrived, and our home felt like a boat, almost hovering over the shore, just a couple of steps from the edge of the bay, built years before there were codes that kept houses away from the shoreline. That first night, we fell asleep to the sound of the waves, relentless in their rhythm, grounding us to the push and pull of Lake Michigan, to the world we chose to make our own.
The day I learned to swim I came close to drowning. I had passed my lessons with confident strokes and a vigorous tread. I was relieved to be rid of my water-wings; my bare, unprotected arms were a badge of honor as I took to the shallow end while my mother watched me from a plastic lounger. I clung to her blue kickboard and tried to imitate the way she swam her laps, fluttering my way back and forth down the narrow end, avoiding the splashes of the other children, glancing back at her again and again, proud of myself. At some point, I had drifted past where I could touch the grainy bottom, past where I could see her, and it was then that the kickboard slipped. I gasped in shock, inhaling a mouthful of turquoise pool water. My body lurched with a terrible understanding. Everything I learned that morning went out of my head as I thrashed around, mere inches below the surface, sobbing, choking, until I was dragged out and into my mother’s arms. As I clung to her, staining the orange spandex of her swimsuit with salty tears, I came to know what betrayal felt like.
Water is many things. A place of refuge, a source of life. It is pleasure and leisure, but also pain and danger. What is it about water that makes us feel new again? We enter into a pact with water when we wade out. We tell ourselves we are not afraid to die. We tell ourselves we are missing something, something only water can fix. Water flows to the lowest point, through the cracks— the weakest points.
In my teenage years I swam competitively, as a synchronized swimmer. Every day after school I would take the bus to practice, where we would swim laps for hours, building endurance, gaining strength. Then, we’d pull out the lane dividers one by one, watching them snake through the tepid water, making space to learn our routines. It was a world of artificiality and aquatic grace. The pool was heated to eighty-two degrees. I ripped the skin off the top of my foot in the middle of our routine once, scraped by the white and blue tiles in the shallow end. We had to cancel the rest of the practice—my blood became a hazard, trailing in wisps through the chlorinated water. Synchronized swimming showed me how to manipulate the water around me. I learned that I could control the speed and the direction of my body, even defy gravity, with only a subtle shifting of my wrist. I thought I had mastered how to exist in the water. I thought I would never again feel helpless.
Water is supportive, it is lifegiving. We turn to water for energy, to quench our bodies and our souls. Water is simple, it is basic. Water is essential. We are guided by the water in our own bodies, connected to the tides and to the phases of the moon. Could we live without water? Absolutely not. Could we live without swimming? That’s debatable. We enter this world swimming, straight from our mothers’ wombs.
I wouldn’t swim again for years. I was on the cusp of adulthood, a time when my own definition of myself was in flux. I shrugged off any association with water as I entered college. That identity fell from my shoulders as if it were the liquid itself. I gave up swimming for writing, for art, for another world entirely. A month after I graduated from college, I began to feel a new kind of pain in my hands and wrists. It ended up having a name, a diagnosis: rheumatoid arthritis. Out of nowhere, the ease with which I could physically move through my life was gone. Never again could I take movement for granted, could move purely out of desire or destination. Every action in my body became a question. Will I cause myself pain? Do I have the strength? The next time I would find myself in front of a body of water, it was the Mediterranean Sea. I was on a trip with friends to the Balearic Islands. We hiked to the rocky beach, grateful for the promise of cold relief from the hot Spanish sun: a dip in the sea. One after another, they all jumped in. I eyed the shore, the massive waves smacking the other beachgoers as they crawled on their hands and knees back to their towels. I didn’t swim, because I couldn’t tell for sure if I would be able to make my way back out.
Water is unfeeling, water is inconvenient. Water does not care about you; it does not look out for your wellbeing. Water will not save you, and yet, it feels like it does. Water is transformative in a way that nothing else really can be. Water is enveloping, all-encompassing. It finds every last part of you, even—especially—the parts you try to hide.
I woke up after that first night in our house on the water to a pair of swans floating by, in conversation with one another, chirping in hushed, reedy tones. It was then that I knew I was home. In another life I’m sure I was a swan. There are signs of them in me now—a long neck, a sharp memory, a penchant for moving slower than most. I found a rhythm that summer with those swans. I learned to look out for them, and soon I could predict the days they would come and when they would not. I began to read the swans as a kind of language, as if they were words on a page made of water. A slow, idle float near the shore would tell me that the water was as calm as it seemed, ideal for swimming. If the pair was further out, bright white specks in opaque, cobalt waters, the message was that of warning: the bay is cold and harsh today, expect the waves to punish your shivering body. With the help of the swans, I’ve found my way back to a swimming life.
Water is my reminder. When I swim these days, it is a constant remembering of self, of the dual nature of what it means to be alive, like how a swan glides with ease above the surface, all the while paddling with effort below. I see someone who is afraid and someone who is grateful. I recognize the little girl who was close to drowning. I accept the woman I am now, with the restrictions of my condition. I hold on to the swan inside me. I hold the schoolgirl who joined the synchronized swimming team close. I remember that water is my native language, that when I swim, I am able to seamlessly express all of myself without the need for translation. It shows me who I am, past and present and future. I grieve for past versions of myself and celebrate how far I have come. In the water, I feel at home with myself, and I know my dreams have come true.
Click through to view examples of my creative writing:
© ALYSSA NATOCI