Almost Drowning
Swimming sad,
Looking just for
An arm to grab.
I don't need to
Understand.
I'm just lending you
The two that I have"
- Drifting, by Plumb
A few weekends ago, I went on a trip which was organized by the Costa Rican school I am attending to learn Spanish. We stayed in a hotel next to an active-yet-sleeping volcano. It used to erupt regularly; lava drizzling from the top of the mountain spectacularly yet not really dangerously. The last eruption was in 2011, and now only smoke is visible at times from the top. Although the mountain is impressive and beautiful, the town has suffered economically because a volcano with visible lava is a much bigger draw than a sleeping one. Poor little volcano town.
The hotel that our group of students stayed in had a number of pools with cold or hot water. On Saturday afternoon I was with some friends and two of us went down this long, winding slide that ended in one of the larger pools. It was probably about 6 feet deep. I swam about 10 feet to the edge of the pool and waited for my friend A. to come down. When she did the force of the slide tossed her under the water, as it did me, but when she bobbed up she was gasping and flailing. That's when I recalled that she said she couldn't swim.
As a native Texan who grew up near a lake and spent plenty of time at pools, I learned to swim at an early age. A., however, told me that she can doggie paddle if she has to but avoids water that she can't stand in. I jumped in and swam to her, expecting to grab her hand and reassure her as she paddled to the edge, but she was panicking and barely keeping her head above water, and I realized that she just couldn't make it on her own. I pulled her arm over my shoulder, supported her with my right arm and started to swim using my left arm. As a young age my Mom had made sure to teach me what to do to save someone who is drowning. I had forgotten, when we practiced all those years ago, how hard it can be to swim with one arm while carrying another person. I did remember the danger that can arise when someone who is panicking throws themselves on their rescuer and can cause them both to drown. Thankfully, A. was able to calm down enough to float her other arm and even paddle a little. Even so the ten feet or so to the edge of the pool seemed much longer. Another person helped reach out and pull us to the ladder (there was no lifeguard - I don't even know if there are any lifeguards in CR). I got A. out of the water and sitting down. She was fine, though she told me later that she was so scared that she couldn't get her brain to tell her body to doggie paddle or even to call for help. The panic written on her face told me that she needed help.
At first, A. was slightly embarrassed by the event, yet in the days since we talked about it a number of times. Things could have gone so differently: what if we hadn't become friends during our time here, particularly what if we hadn't sat together on the bus during the drive to the hotel, which is when she told me she can't swim? What if I had gone down the slide after her, or not at all, or hadn't waited for her? She told me that she knew she needed to call out for help but was so paralyzed with fear and embarrassment that she couldn't do it. She had swallowed a mouthful of water when she first went under, so that when she bobbed to the surface all she could do was gasp. But as I swam to her I saw the panic in her eyes. If I wasn't there someone else would have surely jumped in and saved her, at some point. However, we simply both don't feel that it was a coincidence that I was the one person she told about not being able to swim and was there waiting for her, able to see that she needed help and able to get to her.
As I've said many times before, "It's A Wonderful Life" is my favorite movie, because I believe that all events and relationships happen for a reason, and that there is always reason to have faith and hope. God can put us in the right place at the time before we ever know it. It's a treat, I believe, to look back and see those moments line up and lead to something important.
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