Submerged - by Nova Weetman
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There must have been other people we knew at the Croydon pool, but I don’t remember them. It was like all that space existed just for the three of us. All January, Mum would be in her spotted bikini, sunbaking with reef oil splashed across her skin, and I’d be in my bright yellow bather bottoms with ties at the sides; my long hair in two messy ponytails and zinc in a stripe across my freckled nose. We’d try to arrive just as the turnstiles opened, then we’d dash across the hot concrete to the patchy grass that skirted the 50-metre pool. We’d stretch out our towels, marking our territory before the first of many hours in the water.
The only way Mum could lure us out was with snacks packed in Tupperware. After white bread sandwiches with dried-out crusts, my little brother and I would clutch our coins and visit the outdoor kiosk, buying Banana Paddle Pops or maybe a Sunnyboy in the hope we’d find the word ‘free’ stamped inside the foil wrapper. Even then, my brother was fearless. He’d jump off the edge of the deep end, dog-paddling to the side with a wide grin on his face like he understood the risk. I approached it all differently. Learning, always learning, before taking any big chances.
“Even then, my brother was fearless. He’d jump off the edge of the deep end, dog-paddling to the side with a wide grin on his face like he understood the risk. I approached it all differently. Learning, always learning, before taking any big chances.”
The Croydon Pool witnessed me growing up. From a toddler clutching Mum’s hand, to a teen who no longer wanted to be seen with her family. I learned Santa wasn’t real one summer and all about periods another.
Mum had grown up poor in Williamstown. A housing commission kid who lived wild, she joined the local lifesaving club and won swimming medals for her freestyle. I still have them, wrapped in tissue paper in a box in my room. She swam because her siblings couldn’t. She swam to meet boys. She swam to escape. When she was barely out of her teens, she bought a boat and spent weekends water-skiing at Lake Eildon. Until she met my dad, who couldn’t swim a stroke, and she found herself back on land.
Perhaps to ensure my brother and I grew up with the same love of water, Mum would drive us to Templestowe twice a week for swimming lessons, to an indoor lane-pool thick with the smell of chlorine and cloying air. We worked our way up through the certificates, until we reached our Bronze medallion. Swimming was the only thing Mum insisted we learn. When we stopped going poolside all summer, I started canoeing on the Yarra. Friends and I would borrow big old plastic canoes and spend the afternoons drifting downstream, wedging ourselves on patches of rock, laughing as we sped through mini sets of rapids, and trailing our fingers through the cool, dark water.
Over the years, as I grew up, moved away and saw Mum less and less, we’d catch up once a week and swim together. With her frozen shoulder, she could only manage backstroke. I would swim alongside doing freestyle, and we’d pause to chat at either end. There was something freeing about meeting up like that. While I bumbled through uni and jobs, messing up, never earning enough to be truly independent, the pool was a place to park all that. We stopped swimming together when I moved northside, fell in love and started trying to be a writer. Mum and I drifted during those years. Not quite coming back together until I had my daughter and Mum was right there, ready to teach her how to float, blow bubbles and jump from the side of the deepest end into her waiting arms.
“Mum and I drifted during those years. Not quite coming back together until I had my daughter and Mum was right there, ready to teach her how to float, blow bubbles and jump from the side of the deepest end into her waiting arms.”
There are photos of the two of them together in the pool on long holidays in Queensland. I’m never present. Maybe I’m the person clicking the button and recording their joy at being together in water.
At some point, I stopped swimming altogether, found other ways to exercise. Until Mum died. She had non-smoker’s lung cancer. A beast of a disease that settles in the tissues of your lung. It’s inoperable. It’s quick too. Eighteen months from diagnosis to death.
Within weeks of watching her go, I drifted back to the pool closest to my house. A 50-metre community pool with busy lanes. I swam. Up and down, up and down, until I was so exhausted I couldn’t cry. There was something necessary about testing my lung capacity – making sure I didn’t have what Mum did – that made me swim four, five, six strokes before taking a breath.
I hadn’t remembered swimming through that grief until my partner, Aidan, died in Melbourne’s hard lockdown and I found myself chasing water all over again. It had been months of caring for him, locked in our house, with only the twice-a-week community nurse visiting to help wash him, and I craved being tossed in ocean waves.
A few days before Aidan’s death, when the funeral director arrived at our house, wearing a black mask and carrying sanitiser to talk me through the next steps, she told me that she found water helped move grief through the body. She said it was normal for people to shower more than usual or lie in a bath for hours on end. She told me to drink litres to make up for all the tears.
“She said it was normal for people to shower more than usual or lie in a bath for hours on end. She told me to drink litres to make up for all the tears.”
I didn’t think much about it at the time. I was too consumed with Aidan’s last days to imagine them ending.
But they did. And when they did, we cried. Sometimes with such force that I couldn’t stand. With the kids tucked under each arm on the couch, we sobbed through old episodes of Gilmore Girls, eating ice-cream from the tub.
About a month later, the local pools started reopening. Conditions were strict and bookings were almost impossible to get. But a friend told me that she’d heard it wasn’t so hard to book at the Carlton Baths because the pool was only 25 metres, and most of the lap swimmers wanted full-length pools.
I booked my first swim in many years. My body was sore. I’d spent six months caring for Aidan, running up and down stairs, helping him in and out of bed, feeding him, and sleeping on the floor next to him. Everything ached. My knees hurt. I’d gone into lockdown, fit, with a partner who seemed to be doing okay with his cancer treatment, and came out the other side aged and widowed.
I arrived at the pool several minutes before my allocated 50. A long line of swimmers already queued down Rathdowne Street. As we slowly shuffled in, masks on, having our temperatures taken, the feeling of being out in a changed world was overwhelming.
I’d forgotten goggles and had to buy some. I slid into the slow lane, joining the other swimmer. We nodded at each other, but didn’t speak. I hadn’t talked to strangers for so long, it didn’t seem right to start then.
I let the other swimmer go first, waited until they were almost at the far end before stretching out and swimming. The water was cool. Three strokes in, I started to cry. I felt held by something bigger, by the force of the water that pressed against me as I lifted my arms and moved down the pool.
“Three strokes in, I started to cry. I felt held by something bigger, by the force of the water that pressed against me as I lifted my arms and moved down the pool.”
I had to pause at the end, to tip the tears from my goggles.
I swam until the attendant leaned down into my lane and told me my time was up. Nobody could use the changing rooms, so I pulled on my clothes, feeling them stick to my wet skin, and carried my Ugg boots out through reception and into the street.
I’m still swimming three times a week and it helps with the grief. Sometimes it makes me cry. Other times it stops me. Afterwards, my body is so loose from the laps that I come home, lie on my bed and drift. Swimming deflates me. It takes all my anger, all my rage and spreads it across the pool so that it’s gone for the day, and I can manage the other parts of my life a little easier.
I still think about Mum when I swim. How she held me, with her hands firm under my ribs, holding me afloat and teaching me to kick. It makes me want to drive back to Croydon Pool, to the blue water and the grey concrete and the long lines of shivering kids at the kiosk, and buy a Sunnyboy, just in case I find a free. ▼
Photo: Thomas Park
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