(SCUBA Diving Try-Dive, November 2021)
Yellow tiles in neat, cemented rows surround me and I decide to pretend it’s sand. A pink clip draws my attention and I analyse the exposed metal corner for signs of rust. This could be a shell, or better still it could be from a wreck. I drop the clip and remind myself to breathe. Move onwards. Give the OK to my buddy who could easily be a seal at my side. We turn left and pass some of the others, and I watch neoprene-covered pairs making hand gestures to each other. We make another lap of the pool and I pretend the chlorine is salt, and that the warmth of the water is the Indian Ocean.
I learned to swim in this pool. Every Friday during swimming term, my primary school would bring us here and I’d sternly explain to my teachers that I was convinced I couldn’t float. When I was really young, I would come here with Dad and Edna. I hadn’t known that she was a member of the same diving club as him. The same club that I’ve just joined. With a child’s trust to accept, I’d never thought to question why the woman from down the road took me to the leisure centre. Now I know that she took me whilst the dive club completed their pool training. As I remember to kick from my hips, I consider how everything really does seem to stem from the past.
My buddy explains to me how to fill my jacket with air. How it’s used to regulate our balance. I sink to the bottom of the pool, feel the pressure in my ears and struggle to pop them. Beyond my buddy, I recognise my sister - her blonde hair swaying like kelp in the middle depth, and my focus drifts to the kelp forest in Cape Town I want to visit, where the sky is swapped for sea, the birds for fish and grass becomes a garden of red algae. We swim to the opposite side of the pool, staying in the deepest end. My buddy points upwards, followed by the OK signal. I mirror her. Hold my finger on the jacket’s button until I expand like a pufferfish and rise back towards the surface.
We went to Majorca for my eighth birthday and again for Dad’s birthday the following October. I mostly remember Mam stressing out about sun cream-stained clothes, and playing on the beach whilst Dad went scuba diving. He showed me how to spit in the lenses of my mask to avoid it steaming up and I remember looking at all of his equipment and noting that his fins were longer than my legs. We teased the sea on burning sand by running to and from the waves until the sea bit my ankles and dragged me under. I fell on my back and the pull of the tide held me flat. I reached up my arm, sticking it out of the water in the hopes of a parent pulling me up. I’m not sure how long I laid there, looking at the squiggles of the water, my eyes somehow tolerant to the salt. Panic was replaced with curiosity. The movement of air bubbles, of patterns, of salt and -
Chlorine pinches my skin and stiffens my hair. In a few months, I’ll be qualified to scuba dive in the sea that I call my hiraeth, my longing, my sense of home and adventure. Soon, I will swim in nature’s tears and nourish, in the blue escape that kisses the sky.
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