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Swimming With Cripples |
I often seem to end up swimming with a group of disabled kids that a fellow named Scott something coaches. They're such a great group of kids, some are going to the para or special Olympics (I don't know the difference) and each and every one has so much heart, I always cry when I swim with them I'm just glad that in the water no one can tell I'm crying. I have so many emotions about it I'm trying to figure it all out. I just see these kids and some thrash so hard it looks for all the world like they're drowning but they are kind of drowning towards one end of the pool and when they make it they sort of drown/thrash toward the other end of the pool, that's a lap, and shit at the end of every lap they smile so fucking big it kills you and they don't care that they have a great big gob of snot hanging all the way down their face slapping their chin, because they just swam a lap goddammit, they've got bigger things to worry about, like the next lap, and the next set and getting through the whole workout Coach Scott made up for them. I see them come to the pool walking on two canes like awkward crippled birds with mothers making sure her swim cap is just so, and won't come off, and mom getting her or him to the side of the pool so they can jump in and splash all over and come up spitting and coughing and laughing and yes blowing snot. And I swim beside them so smooth and powerful and fast each and every motion a perfection of years of work and discipline and form and breath, synchronized and optimized and I feel so much less graceful than any of them, but I'm grateful and privileged to swim beside them and sometimes to race them, like Ryan who's going to the para Olympics next year and talks to me in the locker room of going to the Para Olympics next year.
copyright 2008
Daniel Suffian |
