The Summer I Learned to Swim

Eighty-two years old, and I still remember that summer of 1947 like it was yesterday. Every morning now, as I line up my pill sorter—orange vitamin C, white calcium, the little blue one for my heart—I think about how those warm afternoons shaped who I became.

Our golden retriever, Buster, was my constant companion. He'd sprawl on the concrete edge of the community pool while I took swimming lessons, his tail thumping a steady rhythm against the metal fence. The pool was where the neighborhood gathered, where mothers traded recipes and fathers discussed the war that had ended just two years before.

But my real education happened on the baseball diamond behind the pool house. Old Man Miller—though I realize now he couldn't have been more than forty—taught me to hit a baseball. 'Keep your eye on the ball,' he'd say, 'but don't grip the bat so tight you strangle it.' Life advice wrapped in sports lessons, the kind that only makes sense decades later.

Yesterday, my great-grandson asked why I take so many vitamins with breakfast. I told him about Buster, who lived to be sixteen. About how Mr. Miller's baseball lessons taught me to face life's pitches with a relaxed grip. About the day I finally swam across that pool without stopping.

The old community pool is gone now, replaced by a senior living community where I play bingo on Thursdays. Buster's been gone for forty years. But every morning, as I count out my vitamins, I'm still that ten-year-old girl standing at the edge of the pool, dog at my side, baseball glove slung over my shoulder, ready to dive into whatever comes next.