How swimming transformed my childhood and got me through many hardships

All I remember is the crunching under my boots as I unexpectedly slipped on a patch of ice during the first winter storm in Washington, D.C., in years. Next, I was face down on the ground, gingerly moving different parts of my 51-year-old body to make sure nothing was broken. I was sore and shaken up, but seemingly uninjured.

And yet in the weeks and months that followed, my neck, shoulder and upper arms would not stop hurting — vacillating between uncomfortable and outright painful. I went to an orthopedic doctor who said there was “nothing that surgery could fix,” and offhandedly recommended physical therapy.

I felt worn out and mortal. When recovery aided by PT, home exercises and hot compresses proved to be slow and inconsistent, I returned to the one activity that has always provided a refuge and consolation: Swimming.

My swimming started as a prescribed therapy for the severe scoliosis diagnosed when I was 7, in 1979. By then, the curvature was so bad that my skeleton partly rotated, creating a noticeable hunchback on my right side. My doctor — ahead of his time and unorthodox for Yugoslavia, where I grew up — believed that staving off the scoliosis could be better accomplished by strengthening the musculature rather than putting me into the customary steel corset.

At first, I wasn’t sure that escaping the fate of monstrous corset was very lucky. I hated braving the harsh Sarajevo winter to get to the only 25-meter pool in town, which was never warm enough (“Gas shortages,” they would say). My swimming instructor was a hardened Balkan man who believed that shriveled blue lips were an opportunity to learn that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” He was fond of scolding and yelling whenever my style or speed began to falter.

Improbably, with time, I started to enjoy the feeling of weightlessness in the pool, where I felt unburdened by life’s stressors. Although swimming failed to remedy my back curvature — I eventually had corrective surgery — the water became my refuge from a world that was not hospitable to shy, introverted, awkward girls. My physical and psychological oddities seemed to disappear in the water, where I could be safe with my pinballing thoughts.

I joined a swimming club and began winning some races during my tween and teen years, all of which increased my strength and confidence. I found some kindred spirits who became lifelong friends. And I experienced many firsts: My first crush on a boy, from a rival swim team; my first extended overnight camp, and the first time I traveled to many beautiful parts of Yugoslavia.

All this came to a crashing halt when Sarajevo came under a military siege in 1992 and the war shut down the pool for years. Although the absence of swimming was the least of our worries at the time, my subconscious was flooded with a recurrent dream of drifting through a sunlit pool in a foreign land. The dream was often interrupted by night shelling or sniper fire.

The next time I plunged into a real pool was at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where I landed after escaping the war. After a long shift as a lifeguard — a campus job I got as soon as I could — I swam fast, as if to make up for all the lost time. But as I inhaled the reassuring chlorine smell and my eyes got lulled by the blue-green tiles underneath, my body eased into a predictable rhythm. Gliding through the sparkling pool, I felt protected from the rest of the world. There, suspended in water and in time, I finally let go of my post-traumatic spasm.

Over the years, I became a regular at neighborhood pools wherever I lived. When the pandemic closed the pools, I read every article I could find on the safety of communal swimming. Evidence suggesting that chlorine and bromide in the water would prevent transmission made me ecstatic, albeit prematurely. It would be another five months before any pools opened — during which I obsessively checked all the D.C., Maryland and Virginia sites.

On a walk in late July 2020, I saw someone working on the lane dividers in a nearby open-air pool. After rushing home and navigating the pool’s website, I realized that the limited timed slots were already taken. I stayed up past midnight, when each day’s slots were released, and tried again and again. I finally made a reservation for the following week. As the date approached, I was tingling with gratitude and joy, like a child anticipating a birthday party. When I finally dove into the pool, the world seemed safe, familiar and beautiful, if only for an hour.

When I got the OK to return to swimming after this year’s fall on the ice, I was apprehensive but hopeful. As I anxiously stood at the edge of the pool, adjusting my goggles, the shimmering water transformed into a kaleidoscope of the sun rays that beamed through the high windows surrounding the pool.

I carefully submerged my aching body in the water and started to breast stroke. Feeling invigorated, I switched to freestyle. I picked up speed and started counting laps as my mind relaxed into a meandering stream of consciousness.

I was well again.