The Swimming Lesson

Margaret stood on the dock watching seven-year-old Lily splash in the shallows, her pale legs kicking up diamonds of water. The summer sun warmed Margaret's shoulders through her linen blouse, and for a moment she was eight years old again, standing on this very dock with her father's rough hand holding hers.

'Grandmargaret!' Lily called, waving. 'Watch me swim!' The girl doggy-paddled with fierce determination, if not much grace.

'Swimming,' Margaret murmured, the word tasting of 1957 and chlorine and her father's patience. He'd taught her in this lake, day after endless summer day, while old Barnaby — the family cat — sat on the dock watching them with judgment in his yellow eyes.

Barnaby had been no ordinary creature. Most cats despised water, but Barnaby had followed Margaret to the lake's edge daily, tail twitching as she practiced her strokes. One particularly hot afternoon, Margaret had climbed onto the dock, exhausted, and found the cat standing at the water's edge, gingerly testing the surface with one paw. Then another. By summer's end, Barnaby was wading chest-deep, bobbing beside her like a furry little mermaid.

Her grandchildren still told that story at family gatherings, the legend of the swimming cat, though Margaret suspected some embellishment had crept in over the decades. She didn't mind. Some truths grew more true in the telling.

'Grandmargaret, come in!' Lily shouted.

Margaret laughed softly. 'Oh, sweetheart, those days of swimming are past me now.' Her rheumatoid arthritis saw to that. But then she remembered Barnaby, defying every cat instinct, stepping into that cold lake as if he belonged there all along.

Some kinds of courage were small, ordinary things.

She thought about what she'd learned watching that cat — how you could be afraid of something and do it anyway, how the scariest first steps were often the ones that led to the sweetest memories. How wisdom sometimes came wet and shivering and breathless.

Lily had stopped swimming, treading water and watching her grandmother with wide, serious eyes.

'Your great-great-grandfather taught me here,' Margaret called, her voice carrying across the water. 'And I had a cat who swam with me.' She paused, smiling at the impossible, wonderful truth of it. 'Some creatures surprise you, Lily Rose. Even the ones you think you know.'