The Aquarius Who Wiggles through the Water

I have never enjoyed waking up...although, I am thankful I wake up but (God forgive me) I hate the process of waking up. Yet, every Saturday morning, I have the opportunity to go to a pool and teach adults how to swim, my labor of love. My love for swimming does not stem from getting paid to teach or my access to a pool but it is a hope of passing it along to another individual. I have learned swimming, or even just being comfortable in the water, is a lifelong investment no one can take away from you. It is your investment into your health, well-being and longevity (not to mention its ease on your body’s aches and pains).

I have swum all of my life. My mom had me in the pool at 6 months. From there, I became fish. I taught my grandparents when I was 8 years old how to dive to the bottom of our backyard pool using a nickel as bait. I taught swimming lessons at my hometown pool starting at 16, then off and on throughout college and now, after a brief haitus, today.

Aquarius babies are genuinely free spirit. Generally, they are known to be "friendly and humanitarian, honest and loyal, original and inventive, independent and intellectual." They are ruled and run with their emotions. Although I do not believe everything my daily horoscope tells me, I do believe there is some truth to being a free spirit, which probably explains my love for swimming. Swimming is the closest thing to flying as a person can get. And flying is the closest thing to being free from restraint as one can obtain.

Always having a pool, or the ocean, at my feet helped too. I was as tan as a brown leather purse, my hair as blond as California sand. I would pretend to be a mermaid, with legs glued together, wiggling my way through the water, holding my breath as long as possible. The light in the deep end of the pool was a porthole to The Mermaid City (see Aquarius’ are original and inventive). I remember watching the movie The Big Blue (1988) about a man who was more dolphin than human. I thought, hey I could do that…stubborn, silly Aquarius. My mom encouraged this love by letting me ride on her back while she dove deep under water. My aunt and I would play Sea Storm, our own made-up game where we sat on a floatation device and when one of us yelled “SEA STORM!” we would rock and tumble and flip the floatation device trying to throw the other off while trying to stay on.

While I might not include mermaid swimming or Sea Storm into my lessons, I can only hope my love of swimming transfers from me to other swimmers every Saturday morning (that’s the humanitarian side of me peeking through).

PS...does anyone see the irony that I'm an Aquarius baby who loves the water? Any lions out there who love to RRrroarrr! (sorry, bad joke!)

Thanks for reading!