 
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
Sunday, December 03, 2000
This is another version of that oft-quoted line tossed at Dan Quayle, "You, sir, are no Jack Kennedy. " "You, ma'm, are no Esther Williams."
I know that. And yet, she is my inspiration for what I am now doing, or trying to discipline myself to do, and that is to swim laps at least three times a week.
When I was first married, I went swimming with my husband's two oldest sons, then 11 and 12, whom I would learn to adore within weeks of joining their family.
I wanted to impress them and thought the swimming pool was a great place to start because it was the only physical activity I was fairly good at. I had been a waterfront counselor at Girl Scout camp, and I had earned my lifesaving badge. I could float like a feather. I was a less-than-adequate diver.
Due to practice and Esther Williams' influence, the backstroke was where I looked my best. I would always try to bring that shoulder out of the water as my arm went back over my head, twisting my body ever so slightly like a dance motion. Just like Esther.
Well, I gave it my best shot. I still had trouble smiling with water splashing in my face. It's not natural.
At any rate, I slid into the pool rather than risk a really lousy dive and proceeded to do the backstroke to the other end of the pool. The boys were watching. I wanted them to like me.
"Do I look like Esther Williams?" I called to them, trying to smile and not sputter but impress them with my grace, just like that of the swim champion-turned-movie star.
They looked at each other, then called back in unison: "Who's Esther Williams?"
Well, of course. They were too young to have known of Esther Williams and how she inspired young girls such as myself.
We, too, wanted to look glamorous when popping up, breathing in air after that almost impossible underwater ballet, with every hair in place.
If we didn't want to be Esther Williams, we wanted to be a skater like Sonja Henie. That was back when we were blossoming, moving from undershirt to first bra and applying Tangee no-color lipstick with as much precision as an artist, even though nobody could even tell we were wearing it at all.
During our summer days at the pool, my friends and I practiced being like Esther. I could never stay under water for more than a few seconds and always emerged spitting and squeezing my nostrils in a less-than-glamorous manner.
I huffed as if in a Lamaze class. Still do.
I was not to the manner of Esther's achievements born, but I did more or less have a similar figure, especially my mid-section. My diaphragm was muscular, like hers.
Maybe that was from climbing trees, which I liked to do, or bending over to shoot marbles, also a childhood joy. Whatever it was, it hadn't come from swimming. It was just me. Or my genes.
My bathing suit, always one-piece, were like hers. No high-cut legs back then, but she always posed to make her legs look longer than long, her toe pointed downward to the water at pool's edge.
I look through photo albums and invariably, that is my pose, whether at the pool, the beach or by the honeysuckle-laden arbor in our back yard.
I swam in college, too. I was a "mermaid."
That's what the extracurricular activity was called, and we put on a water show each year, swimming to music, creating flowers with our bodies, pitching ourselves backward as falling petals to submerge with as little splash as possible.
We were all Esthers, synchronized into one. We did, however, wear bathing caps, never attempting to style our hair to add allure and glamour. This was not the movies, but you couldn't tell me that.
We had to strain our ears under those caps in order to hear the music that guided our routines. No wonder she never wore a cap.
While I swam adequately enough to be a "mermaid," I never mastered not sputtering after a few seconds underwater, and I never learned to open my eyes under water. Glamour eluded me and still does.
But for a few hours each week, I am once again raising that shoulder above the water, trying to do it as effortlessly as the tall swimmer who captured my imagination and, I really believe, helped me see beyond awkward adolescence.
As I maneuver my mix of laps with side and breast strokes, kick board, flippers and no-flippers, I still sputter. I often get a mouthful of water. And I still prefer the backstroke.
That's when I am the Esther Williams wannabe.
I manage to smile, not for the camera, but for the memories evoked by my movements.