water makes me feel like a child. at 40-41 now i behave like one when i refuse to get out of the pool every day even after an hour. this summer, whenever i am not swimming i am watching youtube videos about swimming, obsessively. i am found walking between our home and the pool imitating free style arms and imagining improvisations. i still cannot tread water. but i can swim in many ways. and i can flip from back to stomach and back again, again and again, inventing my own style to tread in place. i can do handstands, while the water keeps me upright before swirling me around and throwing me back up. and i can finally go under, crawl along the floor of the pool, deaf and oblivious to the world and the instant i raise my head i find it being led upward gently and magically till i almost hold and push the surface down and gasp for a big breath of air. how did i live this long without knowing this world, this lack of solidity, but which catches me reliably like a friend a mother a playpal whenever i fall in it, and that cradles me like a loving hammock on its surface. i love its density, its resistance, it counterintuitiveness, and its silence. its now even started to get back out of my ears easily, softly and quickly. how is it that i've gone from fearing i will sink when i fall in it to realizing how hard it is to sink? how do my mouth and nose instinctively now know not to breathe in and to start giving soft bubbles out soon as i submerge my head in? the water isn't just teaching me how to swim and float and dive, it is also teaching me who i am and how my mind and my brain learn to be in this world. its teaching me that drills help me make new connections in my brain, new ways of moving that i learn through repetition, and that which felt impossible a few weeks ago becomes elemental almost on its own.