I lived through drowning once but how many lives did I have?

     I was seven when we went to California to visit my Grandfather and his wife, a step grandmother who sent me sweaters every Christmas and who my mother hated. She blamed "Aunt Florence" for the failure of her parents' marriage. It was my grandfather's philandering which had destroyed the marriage, that and the fact that he was an inventor who was unconcerned with such mundane things as holding down a job and supporting a family.

     I was too young then to understand that, though, and I liked my grandfather. I hated my step-grandmother because I knew that somehow she had hurt my mother deeply. I never gave her a chance, which was really too bad. The gifts she sent were beautiful and she must have taken a great deal of time to choose each one. Maybe I could have learned to like her if we had had a chance, but we didn't. That was the only time I met her.

     During our visit to California, we went swimming with cousins I didn't know. My sister was ten and there seemed to be more children in the family her age. I remember the public pool. It was huge and full of hundreds of noisy, boisterous children on that hot, sunny summer day. It was a California dream day. The pool sloped from the concrete edge and just kept getting deeper. Young children played close to the edge and those who could swim played in deeper water. The area appropriate for diving was roped off but there was a section in the shallower part that was about five feet deep. In that corner a rowdy group of teenage boys was playing basketball with a floating hoop.

     My sister and cousins were off somewhere else and there was no one for me to swim or play with. I watched the boys playing basketball and, misjudging the depth of water by them, I decided that I should be able to walk all the way across the shallow part. What a fun thing to do. Young children are imaginative. They can usually create things to do if they are given only half a chance. I started my trek. I waded easily, dodging the toddlers and preschoolers. When the water got about chest high, it provided a buoyant effect which bolstered me higher from one step to the next. I was closer to the basketball players and the water was up to my neck. I kept my chin up and bounced on my toes one step at a time, but the boys' splashing created waves which I had difficulty navigating. The water was still getting deeper and I started to worry. I turned around but could no longer touch the bottom in any direction. I gulped in air before I stretched my toes down to push and get my head back up above the water line. I managed three steps this way until, when I rose for another gasp of air, a giant wave of water from the basketball game caught me full in the face. It knocked me off balance and I was drowning. I could not get my feet under me and I could not get my nose and mouth above the water long enough to get air. "Help," I yelled, but it gurgled in the water. I was frantic, waving my arms, reaching out to grab someone. Anyone. I panicked when I gulped in a mouthful of water and watched waves closing over my head, the daylight flattening out in a silver sheet above me and the waves distorting my view beyond the water. The terrifying curves and rings of light and color ceased to reflect reality and began to hint a grotesque death.

     I rolled over and pushed myself up off the concrete above the water line at the shallowest part of the pool. Somewhere I had lost my new blue swim cap and my long hair hung down like wet seaweed on either side of my face. I looked iito my own shadow as I began hearing the joyful sounds of children playing. Droplets of water were falling from me, each drop shining like a round silver orb, catching the light of the brilliant sun overhead before it soaked into the dark grey of the flat, wet concrete. I coughed and spit water, dark and murky from my stomach. I thought I might vomit as my stomach contracted, forcing air and water from my lungs. My mouth hung slack and I simply let it run out. There were no silver orbs, no light reflected, only a residue of death.

     I rose slowly, weakly, and wandered off to find my parents. How did I get up on the concrete? I could not have gotten there by myself. Who would have dragged me there and then left without making sure I was alive? Was I alive?

     "What's the matter, sweetie?" my mom asked, "Where's your swim cap?" She squatted down to peer into my face. "Do you feel alright?" she asked, concern coloring her voice. She put her hand on my forehead like mothers hive done for centuries when their children don't look well.

     "I almost drowned." I rasped, confused and still uncertain why I was alive.

     "Oh, honey," she smiled at me, "I don't think you'll drown here. Look at all the kids playing and look," she pointed around us, "there are lifeguards everywhere." She turned back to the relatives she hadn't seen for years, dismissing me, although not unkindly. I didn't feel like talking, anyway. I wasn't going to go back in the pool, either. I wandered away in search of some shade, away from the glaring sun. My head pounded with every throb of my heart in my ears. "Don't go too far, honey," my mother called after me, "We're going to be leaving pretty soon."

     When I was ten we bought a houseboat on the Columbia River for weekends and summertime. We had a speedboat and water skis. It was wonderful. I took to the water and the skis the way an eagle takes to the air. A ballerina on the boards. It was my greatest joy to be out there on the end of a tow rope, jumping back and forth across the wake of the boat (green and white stripes of living, churning froth), or sailing smoothly on the glassy surface of the river in the early evening when the sun turns it into liquid silver and slowly transforms it to flowing rubies. I was mistress of it all, harnessing the power of the river and subduing it. The speed was exhilarating. I regretted that girls had to wear bathing caps in the 50's because I would have loved to have let my hair loose in the wind as I became the wind.

     Today was another beautiful day with a sky as blue as perfect lazurite with wisps of cirrus clouds. I waited anxiously for my parents to get home from work. My sister had started dinner and I knew that after the dishes were done and my dad had relaxed and read the paper, we'd all be out on the river. I waited with all the patience an eleven-year-old could muster for my turn on the skis. Since I was lightweight, I could ride high in the water even though the skis were narrow and had only one inch fins.

     Hunkered over my skis, I watched the coils of the rope, a writhing water snake, before it finally became taut. I signalled my dad who hit the throttle. The rope rose into the air and pulled me into the rushing water. It hit my midriff and rolled up onto my chest before I stood, tall and straight, leaning back, becoming one with the rope and the skis.

     The river was a shimmering mirror without a single whitecap and I was scudding across the sky like one of the clouds. I picked my right foot up out of its ski and planted it behind the boot which cradled my left foot. We'd have to come back to pick up the loose ski but my dad was used to it. I was showing off. I hooked the tow bar with my right elbow and swung my left arm ride, squatting to gain speed and height as I leaped and cleared the wake, twisting to grab the bar with both hands and pulling hard to race up even with the boat. We were flying downriver directly into the sun, low on the horizon The western clouds were turning cerise on the bottom, creating their own dark shadows along the top edges. I slowed, pulling the rope high to take up slack before swinging back toward the wake, spraying diamonds with the edge of my ski.

     As I settled myself joyously in the center of the wake where I was an extension of the power of the motor, I stopped abruptly. The tow rope was ripped from my grip by the speeding boat as something struck me in the back of the head. There was only that brief heartbeat before I lost consciousness.

     Now I was surrounded by a sea of viscous malachite and it took long moments to remember where I was. It was so beautiful. I was lost in the most incredible chlorine-green mercury. I began swimming for my life, moving in slow motion. The water caressed me but I would not give in. I pushed my body through it, stretching for the surface, for the brilliant light shining there just out of my reach. All around me were satin-soft swirls of opal foam and bubbles. I swam in a glorious liquid rainbow of yellow and green and blue, of autunite and jade and turquoise. Beyond the illuminated shaft in which I swam, the shadows were deep marine and purple, sapphire and amethyst. And everywhere there were bands of opal foam. Iridescent bubbles escaped from my nose, pulling out my life one bubble at a time. Death tried to seduce me, tugging at my feet, but I would not come. I yearned for the indescribably beautiful light which I thought must be like an echo from the sun. It was not a reflection which shines all of the light back, but a single brilliant ray captured and shining only to lead me home, pulsing like an echo and beckoning me. It seemed to shine brighter than the sun as if it was magnified by the water but did not hurt my eyes. My lungs felt like lightening bolts were tearing through them and burned anew with each stroke. How many lives could I have? How many times could I drown and still survive?

     An eternity later, I could swim no more. I had no more strength. My brain screamed for oxygen with an unbearable searing pain and the shadows began closing in around me. I failed; I could not reach the light. An elusive aroma, sweet and delicious, filled my head, pushing out the pain. As my body gave up its resistance, I was aware of my life belt pulling my limp form away from the comforting glow; away from the prize I had worked so hard to gain. I lacked the stamina to fight and in anguish, I knew that I would die.

     My father plucked me from the river, snagging the faded yellow water ski belt which had successfully pulled me to the surface when I again lost consciousness. He heaved me into the boat like the days catch, my hair stringing across my face. I had lost another swim cap. I looked up into his dark and worried face and saw the pain in his eyes. Where was the sun? The day was only dark shadows and my father's face. I closed my eyes and let him bundle me into a towel and cradle me like a baby. My head hurt. Breathing hurt, but I was breathing. I was oblivious to all the commotion around me, sorry to have left the smooth caress of the river yet content to be alive and enfolded in my father's protective, shaking arms. I had spent another life.

     My ski had struck a partially submerged log with a nail protruding from it that imbedded itself in the ski, ripping a deep gash in the wood. It was my ski that struck the back of my head with such force I suffered a concussion. I never blamed the river because it welcomed me and loved me. I began dreaming of a mermaid swimming forever in seas of liquid emeralds. She is always in a shaft of light echoing from the fathoms of the water itself and encircled by swirls of opal foam that flash iridescent sparks of diamonds into the shadowy depths and light the way home. I am the mermaid and I do not fear death.