Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [7]
Sunlight as if from the gods poured down through the skylight in one solid, bright beam, illuminating Hans and Gunnar. As they stood up in the pool, glistening water streamed down their faces, rippled down from their wide shoulders, along their muscular chests, and tapered along their powerful arms. They looked like Greek sculptures of Olympic athletes, only better, for they were alive and they were speaking to me. I could hardly believe it as, in a strong German accent, Hans was saying to me, “Welcome to the team.” He extended his hand to each of us. It must have been twice as large as mine and thick with muscles.
Gunnar echoed the welcome: “Glad to have you join us.” His voice lilted with his heavy Swedish accent. And he reached up, too, and shook our hands. His hands were bigger than Hans’s, like paddles instead of hands.
Getting to talk with them was pretty heady stuff. But somehow I managed to reply, “Thank you. Someday I hope I will be able to swim in your lane.” I was a chubby, awkward twelve-year-old girl without any intense training and with no reason to believe I could ever be as good as they were. I was only filled with hope and promise. And they were also so much older than I was, perhaps nineteen or twenty years old. But they recognized that they had once been like me, at the very beginning of their dreams. And they understood what it was like to leave everything they knew behind, in pursuit of their dreams.
Hans smiled at me and there was real kindness in his brown eyes. “If you work very hard, someday you will swim here in lane eight with us.”
“And when you make it here, then you will have to work even harder.” Gunnar laughed. His light blue eyes shone. He had a pleasing face, oval shaped with a square jaw, light clear skin, and very blond hair.
Adjusting to life in California was difficult. Seventh grade was miserable; I was shy and felt like I didn’t fit in. In New Hampshire, students never spoke unless the teacher called on them for an answer. Students never moved out of their chairs. It was so different in California. Classmates blurted out answers, and even turned around in their seats to talk to other students without the teachers disciplining them.
My parents always stressed that first I needed to be an excellent student, and second an athlete. So I paid attention, worked hard, and got good grades, but in my physical education class I was terrible. I was the slowest runner, the worst softball thrower, and during my introduction to gymnastics I broke my foot in two places attempting a back walkover. Worse than that, my physical education teacher, a woman named Miss Larson, disliked me. She thought I wasn’t making any effort at all in class. She screamed at me every day to try harder. I did, but how can you do better if no one shows you how? How can you make corrections if someone doesn’t show you what you need to correct? I dreaded being in her class and I even had nightmares about her. But in her class I made my first true friend, Cathy Kuhnau. We had spoken a few times in French class, and she had helped me understand French grammar. We were also the worst tennis players in Miss Larson’s class. Cathy was petite and I was chubby; no one wanted us, so naturally we became doubles partners. We tried hard, but we were both so unskilled that neither of us could hit the ball over the net. This became an advantage; when Miss Larson