The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [88]
Miles and I spend a lot of time at the pool.
Him not putting his head under.
Me swimming the laps of the racer I was.
We’re making our first progress, though. As long as I’m the waterhorse, he puts his arms around my neck in a near choke hold and, gasping for air and speech, I swim around and go, “OK, I’m diving down now,” and we go down into the dangers and depths of public pools. He holds his nose tight enough to pull it off.
After we eat the multi-colored gummy worms, that is. You can’t even think about going underwater without eating gummy worms.
My father never learned to swim.
Water
THERE IS A PLACE ON THE OREGON COAST CALLED Gleneden Beach. It’s between Lincoln City and Newport, both tourist towns. The main thing that is at Gleneden Beach is a mildly well known resort called Salishan.
The resort is nestled up against a little saltwater bay and estuary. Beyond that, the ocean. It has a famous golf course, which I’ve actually played. When I was a kid. My father took us to this resort as a family. It is the only thing we did together as a family that worked.
I don’t know exactly why it worked, but I’d watch my father sit out on the balcony of the luxury hotel room and look out at the ocean. At the windblown signature tree of the resort. At the birds and the way light changed over the water. He looked at peace.
At the resort there is a fine swimming pool and hot tub. As a family my mother, father, sister and I spent hours in the waters. My mother would side stroke her suddenly weightless swan body up and down the pool, smiling like a girl. My sister and I would swim the goof off way kids do - going under and up and splashing and racing and treading water and diving for coins. Despite our age difference. My father would wade in up to his hips, his chest, sometimes up to his chin. Since his feet were still touching the bottom, he felt safe. And though he’d only venture halfway down the pool to avoid the depths of the far end, he looked happy. Five years we went back to Salishan - until my sister left.
Of course, Salishan is not just a resort. The Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest. They are characterized by fusional and inflected language and astonishing consonant clusters. And all Salish languages are either extinct or endangered. That’s not something I knew as a kid. But the word embedded itself in my head and heart differently than other words anyhow, and so it had a meaning secret from regular talking. Sometimes when I was hurt or angry or scared as I kid, I’d close my eyes and whisper, “Salishan. Salishan.” Hoping it could work some kind of magic on the terror of family.
After we moved back to Oregon, when my son was about five, I took him and Andy back to Salishan. I did not know what would happen. Perhaps that kind of return would bring me nothing but sadness, and we were driving to the ocean of my childhood. But I trusted the ocean’s pull. When we got to within a mile of the resort - when we drove past the estuary and around the corner where the Douglas Firs make a mound of forest in the heart of which is Salishan, my heart let loose. It wasn’t the resort. It was the word. It was a space of ocean or peace that offered hope differently for a child. I rolled the window down and the salt air bathed my face. My son seemed excited but didn’t know why.
My husband Andy said, “Is this it?”
“Yes,” I said, this is the place.
My son had never been to a fancy place like that, so he spent the first 10 minutes running around the room in a little kid glee dance. Then he found the white terrycloth robes in the closet, stripped naked, put one on, went out on to the balcony, and said, “This is the life.”
Then we all went down to the pool. The pool of my childhood hope. Miles kept saying the word Salishan. Words carry oceans on their small