Some people don’t like water. I know that, but I do not understand it, because I am not one of those people. I love water and have since I was a kid. I love swimming in it, paddling across it, jumping into it. I love watching the ripple of currents or the surge of the tides. I love putting my feet in streams. I love lounging next to pools. Water and I are friends.
It seems logical, therefore, that someone who likes being in the water as much as I do would enjoy scuba diving.
Spoiler: not so much.
Logic has its limits.
I’d been kicking the idea of scuba certification around for awhile, and when Peter stumbled and I across a class being offered, we immediately signed up. I entered the pool that night with a mix of excitement and nerves.
We were tucked away on a subterranean floor of a community rec center, in a windowless room where the air smelled of chlorine and every clanging pipe in the building seemed to echo. Human voices had a lot to contend with, and I struggled to hear the instructors. Not to mention, the vocabulary of scuba is unique. Regulators. BCDs. Words that were as unfamiliar to me as a foreign language (or an explanation of benefits from my health insurance.) Basically, taking scuba classes at an indoor underground pool is like listening to a lecture of which only 50% was English while your head is wrapped in a wet pillow – and you’re treading water. It made me grumpy.
Secondly, scuba requires a lot of stuff. Weight belts, the aforementioned BCDs* and regulators, tanks, masks, snorkels, fins. Wetsuits. I’m a minimalist when it comes to sports equipment, which makes lap swimming ideal. It requires a bathing suit, goggles, maybe a swim cap. That’s it. That’s the way I like it.
Not so with scuba. And with diving, it’s not just the amount of equipment, it’s the energy needed to use it. Moving the stuff is exhausting. Putting it on is exhausting. Rinsing it and putting it away is exhausting. Plus, the techniques for moving underwater in scuba gear required unlearning habits that had become second nature from decades of swimming unencumbered. Instead of strokes, I wasn’t supposed to use my arms. I had to put appendages on my feet, and rather than timing my breath and forward motion as I did on the surface, I sucked oxygen through a device. I wondered how many other peoples’ mouths my regulator had been in.
Bottom line: it was too much. Too much noise, too much stuff, too much to think about. My body has a natural tendency towards buoyancy, and would stubbornly insist on rising towards the surface despite the weight belt I donned and my efforts to stay submerged. I spent ridiculous amounts of time expelling air from my BCD and then reinflating it in what became a constant slow-motion, underwater game of yo-yo. Maintaining a consistent depth required relentless effort.
I never really relaxed in scuba class. It never became fun. The weeks of instruction and practice were something I endured rather than enjoyed. But endure I did.
Finally, the day came to complete our certification dives. For this we needed deeper water than what the pool offered, so we drove out to a former quarry on a hot Saturday in July. There, in the murky waters where visibility was minimal, we dove. And dove.
On land, my wetsuit felt suffocating. Once we descended and hit the quarry’s thermocline, it offered some insulation from the chill, but not enough. My regulator slipped out on a few occasions, so I ended up gulping mouthfuls of brown quarry water. The aquatic life consisted of mainly sunfish, who approached us fearlessly; the novelty of being that close to another creature underwater wasn’t lost on me. Still, my happiest moment in the quarry was when I emerged from it after my final dive.
I lurched ashore, thinking only that I’d soon be free of my wetsuit and the cumbersome gear. The day had left me tired and thirsty and hungry, not to mention wet. I couldn’t wait to make a beeline for the car and change.
A stranger approached. As she came closer, I saw that she held a container in her hands. She extended it towards me.
“I made banana bread. Please, take some. I remember being absolutely starving after I finished my dives.”
I could have hugged her. Instead, I simply took a proffered slice. Then I took another. The bread tasted sweet and toothsome and delicious. I could have eaten half of the loaf, but I didn’t. Still half-stunned by unexpected and generous gesture, I thanked her.
Maybe it was my fatigue, maybe it was my sheer relief to be out of the quarry, but I felt suddenly emotional. It wasn’t just banana bread this stranger had offered me. She’d offered the gift of unearned kindness. I felt the unexpected grace of being given something I’d done nothing to deserve.
I hobbled on towards the car. Yes, I’d finally completed my scuba certification. But what I took away from the day felt far more meaningful. When you are barely standing upright, when you least expect it, you just might be seen.