The Bull Who Taught Me to Swim

Every morning with my coffee, I take my vitamin C tablet. It's a small orange disc that dissolves slowly on my tongue, and each time, I think of Martha. She was the one who started me on it sixty years ago, claiming it would keep me healthy 'until we're both ninety and causing trouble at the nursing home.' Martha's been gone five years now, but I keep taking it. Some habits you don't break.

Martha was my oldest friend, the kind you make in childhood and never quite outgrow. We grew up on neighboring farms in Iowa, back when children were allowed to roam free from dawn until dusk. The summer we turned twelve, her father bought an enormous Hereford bull with horns like crescent moons and a temperament that matched his size. Old Bessie's boy — they called him The General, though we children knew him as something else entirely when we dared sneak past his pasture.

'He's just a big puppy,' Martha insisted, though we both knew better. The General had chased more than one curious child up a tree. But Martha had a way with animals that bordered on magic. She could scratch that bull behind his ears while he closed his eyes and groaned with pleasure.

That July was hotter than blue blazes. The heat shimmered off the cornfields in waves. Martha and I had discovered an old swimming hole in Miller's Creek, cool and deep and perfect for two overheated kids. The problem: you had to cross The General's pasture to reach it.

'What if he comes after us?' I asked, watching the bull graze from the safety of the fence. 'What if we don't make it to the creek in time?'

Martha gave me that look — the one that said I was being foolish, the one that made me feel brave simply because she believed I could be. 'Then we scatter,' she said. 'Bulls can't turn fast. Everyone knows that. You run left, I run right, and he'll just stand there confused.' She paused. 'Besides, think about how good that water will feel.'

So we ran. We ran across the pasture with hearts pounding, The General lifting his massive head and snorting, then giving chase. We scattered left and right, just as Martha said, and the bull indeed couldn't decide which way to turn. We made it to the creek and dove in, clothes and all, surfacing to find him still standing at the water's edge, watching us with what looked suspiciously like disappointment.

We swam every day that summer, always with The General as our escort and guardian. We grew strong and confident in that water. By summer's end, we could both swim across the creek and back without surfacing for breath.

Martha and I remained friends until the end. We swam together in lakes and oceans and pools throughout our lives. She always laughed about how we started, how a bull taught two farm children the courage they needed to dive into deep water.

Now, alone in my kitchen with my orange vitamin tablet, I smile. Martha didn't quite make it to ninety, but we had more than sixty years of causing trouble together. And I learned something she never said out loud: sometimes the scary things we run from become the stories that define us. Some bulls, it turns out, are just there to teach you how to swim.