everything in its place first loves and last tales

I developed a strange skin disease: “erythema annulare centrifugum,” said one expert “erythema gyratum perstans,” said another-fine, rolling, orotund words, but neither of the experts could do anything, and I was covered in weeping sores. “What do you mean, waking an old man of forty-three like this at six in the morning?” Now that my father is dead, and I am almost twice the age he was then, this memory of so long ago tugs at me, makes me equally want to laugh and cry.Īdolescence was a bad time. “Let’s come for a swim.” He turned over slowly and opened one eye. I have a vivid memory of a summer holiday at the seaside in England the month after my fifth birthday, when I ran into my parents’ room and tugged at the great whalelike bulk of my father. But I could see how my old man, huge and cumbersome on land, became transformed-graceful, like a porpoise-in the water and I, self-conscious, nervous, and also rather clumsy, found the same delicious transformation in myself, found a new being, a new mode of being, in the water. The children, in particular, were so at home in the water that they appeared, in the words of one explorer, “more like fish than human beings.” (It was from the Pacific Islanders that, early in the twentieth century, we Westerners learned the crawl, the beautiful, powerful ocean stroke that they had perfected-so much better, so much more fitted to the human form than the froglike breaststroke chiefly used until that time.)įor myself, I have no memory of being taught to swim I learned my strokes, I think, by swimming with my father-though the slow, measured, mile-eating stroke he had (he was a powerful man who weighed nearly eighteen stone) was not entirely suited to a little boy. Magellan and other navigators reaching Micronesia in the sixteenth century were astounded at such skills and, seeing the islanders swim and dive, bounding from wave to wave, could not help comparing them to dolphins. Everyone there swims, nobody is “unable” to swim, and the islanders’ swimming skills are superb.

I was reminded of this when I visited the Caroline Islands, in Micronesia, where I saw even toddlers diving fearlessly into the lagoons and swimming, typically, with a sort of dog paddle. Swimming is instinctive at this age, so, for better or worse, we never “learned” to swim. Our father, who was a swimming champ (he won the fifteen-mile race off the Isle of Wight three years in succession) and loved swimming more than anything else, introduced each of us to the water when we were scarcely a week old.

We were all water babies, my three brothers and I.

Everything in its place first loves and last tales