Kelly White: Comfortable in the Ocean
Kelly White shares about learning to swim in the ocean.
My first experience with ocean swimming was a disaster. I was living in Southern California and had signed up for a sprint triathlon with a coworker. I was a committed runner, decent biker, but not much of a swimmer, so I practiced at a nearby pool. A pool is not the ocean! On race day, I barely made it halfway to the buoy before I panicked. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. A lifeguard on a jet ski assured me I was ok and encouraged me to exhale; it didn’t work. I got a ride back to shore. I felt relieved I could breathe again and embarrassed that I had failed.
I didn’t want fear to be my ocean story. After moving to San Francisco, I found a swim coach, took classes, and spent hours swimming in Aquatic Park. With practice, I could feel my body balance in the water, see where I was going, and choose my breathing pattern. As my confidence grew, I completed several races and point-to-point swims. The morning I swam from Alcatraz was unusually sunny, clear, and beautiful.
After my son was born, ocean swimming didn’t fit into my schedule. But I wanted him to be comfortable in the water, so baby lessons at the pool were my “swimming” for awhile. I hardly thought about the ocean until he was four and asked to learn to surf. When he was six, he was old enough for surf camp at Linda Mar. He never looked back, and I realized how much *I* missed being out there.
Over the last decade, I’ve had terrific ocean experiences with my son, like watching dolphins play while we surfed and swimming together while he trained for his own Alcatraz crossing. This summer, seeing him practice rescues as an aide in the Half Moon Bay and Angel Island State Junior Lifeguard program reminded me how far I’ve come since my own rescue: not only am I comfortable in the ocean, but now my son is out there, taking care of people and reminding them how to breathe. With a Perspective, I’m Kelly White.
Kelly White is a writer, attorney and community volunteer. She lives in San Francisco.