SHARKS AND OTHER PREDATORS
Just before the corona closures, I participated in the 3 km open water "Swim for the Roses" in Curacao. As a passionate open water swimmer, it was not the distance that was the triumph for me, but the overcoming of my childhood fear of swimming over all those "dark spots" where you cannot see the white, sandy bottom. As a child, I would feel so vulnerable, so open to attack by predators, and would not enter the water at beaches where I could not see the clear white sand below me. And I certainly would not dare to swim out beyond the protected bay, into the open sea.
Here are some thoughts while participating in that open water swim in Curacao, and about the long process of getting myself ready to jump in.
these passages are from my essay “Swim for the Dark Spots”. (not yet published)
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Learning to swim at age five was a traumatic experience. As I have always been athletic and well-coordinated, I quickly picked up the ability to keep myself afloat and do the movements of the breaststroke in shallow water. Then one day we were told to jump into the deep end of the pool.
Standing on the edge, looking down, I was overcome by terror and started to cry desperately. I was not yet ready for the jump, the deep, dirty-green water – saltwater from the sea mixed with chlorine – would certainly pull me down to the depths, swallow me whole into an endless void. What if there were monsters down below, predators that I could not see in the cloudy water, that would devour me alive.
It was my swimming teacher, a Dutch ex-marine, who was the shark. “Jump in”, he ordered “Do you think I have all the time in the world?” His yelling grew louder and louder, but I just stood there, crying even more. Then he marched up to me, picked me up like a package under his arm and carried me demonstratively to his office, where he sat me on a chair and locked the door behind us. He pulled out a pair of scissors, and I was sure he would rip me to pieces with the sharp teeth of a barracuda. Instead, he cut a large piece of bandage tape and plastered it over my mouth. “That will teach you to stop crying” he said, and went back to his class, leaving me behind near the changing rooms, trembling. Feeling deeply ashamed, I hid from the others what happened in his office, as if I had done something terribly wrong. Of course, I never returned to that class, while the other children went on to get their swimming diploma.
I might have given up on swimming after that painful incident, but they say you must always get back on the horse when you fall, and my mother, who had been a trained swimmer in her youth, allowed me to practice with her at the beach, and I learned quickly. Still, when my mother was not by my side, I had to wear that large, bright red swimming vest to my great embarrassment, until I actually got my swimming diploma a few years later, of course with a different teacher, but the scars in my psyche took an immeasurable time to heal.
photo by my grandfather Benjamin Gomes Casseres - from the nineteen forties
(...) Even though I was born on a Caribbean island surrounded by magnificent coral reefs, I never went snorkeling in its clear waters – not in my youth and not even on my frequent return visits. I was afraid. (…)
After I had finally gone snorkeling in the Sinai, my brother Fred, an experienced scuba diver, took me snorkeling the next time I came to Curaçao, showing me the forests of corals near the entrance of a bay, not so far out into the open sea. I can’t say I was not scared, but it is easier to swim over those reefs swarming with fish when you “look them in the eye” as it were – and can admire their beauty, as well as see what is coming, rather than imagine it. Even a barracuda, my brother assured me when we actually saw one, can be like just an innocent aquarium fish, if you just let it be.
There is certainly something sexual in my fear of the sea. Rather than a fear of drowning in the waves or strong currents, it is a fear of the violation of my body, of being raped. Immersed in water, you are at your most vulnerable – your body almost naked, open to attack from all sides, and with no ability to run away from rapists and murderers. Like the iconic shower scenes in movies.
I ask myself if this irrational fear of being ambushed by some menacing creature can be attributed to the way girls were raised in that patriarchal society where I grew up; if those fears were not deliberately instilled in little girls in order to keep us inside the protected home.
Perhaps there was more to it than a sensible warning to protect little girls from being violated by men, particularly by strangers – we were never told to watch out for men who were close to us. Perhaps the grownups meant to frighten us about the chaos outside the safety and order of the home, a chaos that would certainly awaken our closely guarded sexual desires. Perhaps those fears of the deep blue sea were inculcated in little girls as a barrier against erotic temptations, keeping us far from the luscious beauty and freedoms of the world.
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