Last night an interesting thing happened. Our son, Aaron dropped by yesterday afternoon while I was out at the pool. I was in our single-lane lap pool swimming my mile on this cool fall day when he showed up. After a quick visit, Aaron left to go see John, who was planting Vinca in front of the Farm House.
Our little family communicates by SnapChats every day. The kids send snaps to our phones of their kids, and as Grandparents, we watch them grow up from afar.
Last night as John and I watched our family SnapChats, Aaron had posted a short video clip of me swimming. I stared at it, realizing that for the first time ever in my life, I saw my own self swimming!
When I was a little girl, my Mom took us to the Reedley Swimming Pool every day for swim lessons. We started in the kiddie pool blowing bubbles and kicking our feet. We graduated to deeper parts of the pool as we got older. By the time I was 7, I was on the swim team. By the time I was 8, I set my first 2 of many records in the Central Valley Championship swim meets.
I competed seriously for the next 12 years or so, swimming for the Reedley Marlins, State Center Swim Club (AAU) and CHAOS Swim Club (AAU). I was a High School All-American Swimmer and participated in dozens of Jr. Olympic meets. When I went to BYU, I retired from being on a swim team, but I swam on a championship intramural team for a few years.
In all those years, no one had video cameras. There was no technology to capture us on film, to study our strokes and turns. The closest I ever got to seeing myself swim was the year our State Center Swim Club went to the Keo Nakama Invitational Swim Meet in Hawaii. It was the year the movie “Jaws” came out. The night before we flew to Hawaii, many of the kids on the team went to see “Jaws.” When we arrived in Hawaii the next day and had a few hours on Waikiki Beach before the meet started, no one who had seen the movie put a toe in the water. I determined then that I would never watch that movie (and I never have). I did not ever want to be scared to swim!
At that swim meet, my coach Tom Tyner, noticed a girl, about my same size and build. We had the exact same gold, orange and brown swimsuit on. At one point, in a race, he was cheering for her, calling her by my name. I tapped his shoulder and said, “I’m here, not there!” He was shocked. He said, not only did that girl look like me, her stoke looked exactly like mine. I sat there with him watching her swim, wondering if that really was what I looked like.
One of my dreams for Heaven is to watch the movies of Ann Laemmlen swimming, competing and setting records. I would LOVE to watch and cheer my little self on. I would like to see what those races looked like and how I moved so fast through the water. I only have a few old newspaper clippings and photos of myself when Valley records were broken and new records set.
For a few seconds last night, I got to see my old 66 year-old self swimming. I’m not so fast anymore, but I still love moving through the water while imagining my young strong swimmer’s body doing what it once did.
Here’s a collection of my blue ribbons from my childhood swim meets. They are all labeled with dates, times and places.
