My mother, Marylyn Sims, never learned to swim. For some reason she had a fear of deep water, although none of us know where it came from. Sadly, she passed that fear down to me somewhere in my childhood. Until I was about nine years old, I buckled myself into ski belts and life jackets every time I went swimming. (The inflatable arm swimmies hadn’t been invented yet.) I wasn’t afraid of the pool, or of water in general; I just wouldn’t swim. I played in the creek beside my home almost every day of my life, but the water was shallow. When my brother or a friend would hassle me about not being able to swim, I just responded with, “So what? Mom can’t swim either.” I had made up my mind that swimming wasn’t for me. And that’s the way it was until the Lady of the Lake changed everything.
