Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [53]
Candlelight danced in his eyes, and when he smiled, I was so happy.
“Will you come back to race in the Nile next year?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think I ever want to swim in the Nile again,” I said, flinching.
“Then I don’t think I will see you again,” he said, his voice heavy.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure someday we will meet at an ocean or a swimming pool,” I said.
We sat beside each other on the bus back to the hotel. I was very close to him, leaning against his side. I still felt so fragile. Somehow Monir understood it all, and he held my hand again.
“You know, during the race I thought about what you said and it really helped me. You will always be a champion; you will always do your best. Nothing more than that can ever be expected. I learned that myself. But you can’t learn everything at once. It takes time,” he said gently.
I slid my arm around his back and hugged him. It was not acceptable behavior in a public place like a bus, but fortunately, the bus was dark. He turned and faced me and we just hugged.
It didn’t make any sense, but my feelings for him were deep, unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
I think I had fallen in love with him. And I think he had the same feelings for me. There were big smiles on our faces and tears in our eyes when we parted.
9
Lost in the Fog
Within my first couple weeks of being home, I got my first letter from Monir. I was so happy to hear from him. In barely a week and a half, he had made an enormous impression on my life. I thought about him all the time and wondered how he was, what he was doing. Until that point, I had never been that caught up in someone else, but from what I’d seen, I knew he was someone special. So I wrote and told him how happy I was to hear from him, that I had recovered physically from my experience, that I had returned to high school and finished out the year with my studies and swimming for the girls’ swim team. Then I explained to him that I wanted to continue with my long-distance swimming. It had always bothered me that I could have broken the Catalina record, so I’d decided that I wanted to attempt it again.
A month passed. It was the summer of 1974, and nothing had really changed in a big way. I was still seventeen, living the same life: getting up, going to work out, seeing friends in the neighborhood, working out again in the afternoon, going to movies. But when Monir’s second letter arrived from Egypt, and I opened it, the whole world seemed suddenly to be cast in a new, warm, vibrant light. Everything around me was blooming, awakening, and intensely beautiful. I read his letter at least five times, then put it away in my desk drawer with the first one, so I could read them again sometime.
He said he had decided to take a coaching position and he was very excited about that choice. I told him that I was about to swim the Catalina Channel. With Coach Gambril at Harvard and Dave on his way to college, for a brief time I had continued swimming for what had been Gambril’s team. The name had been changed to the Long Beach Team. I’d swum for the new coach, Dick Jochums, but we did not mesh at all. So I’d changed teams and started training with Jim Montrella at the Lakewood Aquatic Club.
At midnight, my support crew assembled: my father and mother, Fahmy; John Stockwell and Lyle Johnson, the veteran lifeguards who had accompanied the Seal Beach Swim Team crew three years earlier; Mickey Pitman, who would pilot the Bandito; John Sonnichsen, who had worked with other channel swimmers and had volunteered to help with this swim; Mr. Yeo, who had also been along on the previous crossing; Jim Montrella; Lynn Simross from the Los Angeles Times;