The Lightning That Taught Us to Swim

I sit on the porch watching the storm roll in, and it takes me back to that summer of 1952, when I was twelve years old and my friend Margaret taught me something about courage that I've carried all these years.

We'd been running through the fields all morning—Margaret could outrun anyone, though she'd never admit it. We were hot and breathless when we reached Miller's Creek, the water sparkling like diamonds in the midday sun.

"You need to learn to swim," Margaret said matter-of-factly, already wading in. Her dress was bunched up, sensible white panties showing, but she didn't care. Margaret never worried about appearances.

"I don't like water," I said, but I followed her in anyway because that's what you do when you're twelve and your best friend is fearless.

She taught me to float on my back, to trust that the water would hold me up. "Relax," she'd say, "let yourself be carried." I was starting to get the hang of it when the first drops of rain fell—big, heavy splashes that sent concentric circles rippling across the creek's surface.

Then came the lightning.

It struck a tree not fifty yards away, the crack so loud it felt like the sky itself had split open. We scrambled out of the water, breathless with fear, running toward Margaret's house through sheets of rain.

Later, wrapped in blankets with mugs of hot cocoa, her grandmother chuckled at our wild-eyed recounting. "The Lord's got a way of showing you what matters," she said. "You two girls were so busy running and swimming, you forgot to look at the sky."

That storm became the touchstone of our friendship. For sixty years, through marriages and children, through heartbreak and loss, Margaret and I would reference it whenever life threw us a curveball. "Remember the lightning?" we'd say, and we'd both laugh.

Margaret passed last spring. I still visit her grave sometimes, still talk to her. The other day, I found myself telling her about my great-granddaughter, who's just learning to swim. "She's got that same look in her eyes," I said aloud. "That same fear before the first plunge."

A bolt of lightning flashes now, illuminating the darkened yard, and I smile. Some things circle back, don't they? The old fear tries to rise, but I push it down with decades of wisdom. The lightning isn't the end of the story—it's just what makes the floating possible.

I'm still learning, even at seventy-eight. Still learning to trust that I'll be carried.