Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: deep end


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To get deeper.

It was a year ago that I was swimming in Lake LeHommeDieu. It was perhaps unusually warm for a September afternoon. But what surprised me the most is how far I had to go to get deeper. 

I suppose everything seems “far enough” when you’re young. The distance from shore. What we give to each other — our family, our friends. Maybe I thought it was accumulative, giving this friendship. This love. But I’m not sure that it is. I think the more we live, the more we need to give. Every day. And not just for others, but for ourselves. 

Each year as I grew in the cold of winter, I found my summer self going deeper. Wanting to. Needing to. And sure, it was a little scary, wandering further from the safety of shore. But oh, how exciting. How joyful to be in the deep. 

In life and in love, I want to do the same — get in way over my head. Daring to feel it all. Give it all. In every shade of blue. 

It might sound silly, but I always thought the water remembered me. Remembered how far I went out the year before. Knew how much I had grown, and encouraged me to keep going. Buoying me when my feet no longer touched the bottom. 

On the hardest of them, I like to think the day remembers me as well. Knows how much I can handle. Tells me how much I have grown. Encourages me to keep going. Of course some days I’m frightened, but I learned long ago, I’m only ever buoyed in the deep.

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Three minutes in the deep end.

My mother didn’t know how to swim. But she knew how to drive. And from the age of six, even on the harshest winter Saturday morning, she dropped me off at the Central Junior High School pool for swimming lessons. Under the domed roof, we learned to crawl – the crawl stroke. We learned to breathe, and to hold that breath. To trust our bodies. We learned the side stroke – pick an apple and put it in the basket. The breast stroke. The backstroke. We learned to dive. We learned to tread water. Three minutes in the deep end with our hands in the air. We swam 50 laps to pass the exam. We would be safe in any of the 10,000 lakes.

At noon my mother would pick me up. I exited the glass doors that surrounded the pool. Head steaming in the cold air, I wondered if my long blonde strands would freeze. They never did. My mother was never late to pick me up. Never. I never worried that she wouldn’t come.

Perhaps that is the sole reason I dared to go in the deep end. That I still do.

Teach me with honesty and I will know trust. Teach me with gentleness and I will know strength. Teach me with kindness and I will know love.