By Charlotte K. Jarmy

Reflections

There is a certain mystique about water that draws me to it. While I manage to swim laps in a pool, I have never felt confident enough to swim in deep water in the ocean. My childhood in Brooklyn gave me, and thousands of others, access to the Atlantic. I jumped waves with my cousins and enjoyed the tingle of salt water on my body, but I took pains to hold my head above water and certainly out of my mouth. My strongest memory is of being dumped into the waves by my older male cousins. Swallowing gobs of salt water left a nasty impression on my mind.

When we moved to the Bronx, my friends and I made many trips by bus to the peaceful waters of Orchard Beach, which mimicked the ocean in size but had no waves to frighten an inexpert swimmer. I loved the cold water on my sun-toasted skin and would paddle around for hours, happy to be out of New York’s exhausting humidity, which made the bus ride back home to city streets a dampening experience - pun intended. The beach had clean white sand, which scorched our feet until we became expert at hopping from blanket to blanket. It was a great way to meet teen-age boys.

In California, my family traveled to Santa Cruz and made tentative forays into the chilling surf of the Pacific but no real attempt to swim. My sons became adept at swimming in local pools but lost out on the exhilaration that would come with daring the ocean waves to knock them over.

Best of all was Lake Tahoe, whose beautiful clear water first numbed our limbs and then became delightfully safe to swim in. We made our annual summer trip to Tahoe, never tiring of the first sight of that sparkling, azure jewel that greeted our eyes as we drove down the mountain. Our three sons loved the cold water and had to be ordered out, shaking and blue but eager to return. When I recently tried to cool my toes in the frigid lake, I realized that there was a reason why all the others in the water were children!

I still yearn to drive along the Pacific, watching the changing colors as waves smash against rocks or ripple up gently to the shore. But pool swimming gave me back some of the delicious sense of being embraced by water.

My accident and subsequent operation kept me away from my water aerobics class at the YMCA for four months. I missed the exercise and the warm friendships I had found there and kept urging myself to find the strength to return. This past week I did so, and when the women saw me, they erupted into shouts of welcome: “It’s Charlotte! You’re back!” The water felt as wonderful, or “glorious” as I always described it to Howard, and my happiness knew no bounds.

I feel so lucky to be with these special friends. There is no doubt that real healing came from the smiles and embraces as well as from the power of the water.

Charlotte Kaye Jarmy is a Los Altos resident and longtime contributor to the Town Crier.