Walden Pond

My sister got the chicken pox from Walden Pond. This is what I think of when I think of Walden Pond. I also associate it with drip sand castles and diving from the cement dock into shallow water and hitting the bottom before my body was submerged.

My father is a strong swimmer. My father would swim across Walden Pond, using the breaststroke to swim towards the buoy line delineating the limit of the deep end where the lifeguard was responsible, and then my father would lift the buoy line and keep swimming across the pond.  Sometimes the lifeguard would say something, to him as he went out of bounds, and my father would respond with a knowing smile and say he'd be back.  I wanted to follow him but at the time my swimming ability was limited to floating on my back and the breaststroke keeping my head out of the water.  I was not permitted to the deep end until I could swim with my head going into the water.  So that summer, when I must have been in either second or third grade, I overcame my fear and learned to swim the breaststroke with my head in the water.

We went to Walden Pond until the Town of Lincoln built a temporary above ground pool that sat in the parking lot of the Smith School.  We swam there for a while until the in-ground pool near the Brooks Junior High School was built. The Lincoln Town Pool was my home away from home.  Every day of my summer between sixth grade and seventh grade, I would bike to the pool and hang out for the day.  I brought a quarter with me every day so I could buy a Good Humor Popsicle from the ice cream truck; and that was my lunch.  I went to swim team practice and lounged all day at the pool. My swimming gave me a sense of great accomplishment and freedom.

Team sports are valuable experiences because they teach the value of hard work and practice; but also they teach the value of good sportsmanship. While it is fun to win races, it is important to make room for others to participate.  I learned a lesson in humility during one swim meet where I had been handed a list of many races I would be participating in, but my swim coach approached me prior to the start of the meet and told me that he would need to pull me from some of the races so we could give another girl a chance to swim, even if it meant losing that race.  Up until that point, this girl had not been given a chance to swim because she was not a particularly fast swimmer. I was upset, of course, to not be swimming in those particular races, but felt badly that I was the one stopping her from swimming at all during these swim meets. Although she didn't have any chance of winning, I had to make room for her to simply participate and be a part of the team. That was the summer that I learned that in order to win in life, it is sometimes necessary to abstain from the race and acknowledge the presence and importance of others by making room for them to participate.