Recovery: A Love Story

Swimming Through Rough Waters with a Lifelong Friend

Hi friends and welcome newcomers!

Thanks to Barbara for giving me permission to tell this deeply personal story. First published in the July 2024 edition of Delaware Beach Life.

“People assume I’ve had a stroke,” says my friend Barb, who lurches down city sidewalks almost sideways, hauling her left leg and arm along like reluctant children. “When I was younger, they assumed a car accident. Usually, I say yes to whatever they’re assuming. Or I say, ‘Brain injury.’ I don’t share the true story except with close friends. It’s too upsetting to people.”

Barb and I get together each summer in Rehoboth Beach or Cape May, where the lifeguards let us swim out beyond the breakers. Sometimes one guard will call ahead to the next guard farther down the beach. (“Two swimmers coming your way, with permission” they’ll say.)

We met in first grade. We’ve been friends for sixty-one years. We grew up swimming on the same team in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, and vacationed with each other’s families at the Jersey shore. We’d practice freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly in the ocean, then dry off and laugh together during cutthroat card games.

In high school, Barb and I played field hockey, basketball, and lacrosse. She was our valedictorian.

During her senior year at the College of William and Mary, Barb was abducted at gunpoint while out jogging. Her assailant drove her to a remote field where he raped her, shot her twice in the head, and left her for dead.

The field was part of a pig farm. The pigs, upset about the human lying prone in their territory, cried out in alarm. The farmer heard the commotion, investigated, discovered my friend, and called for help. “Thank goodness for the pigs,” says Barb.

Barb spent four months in a rehab hospital, summoning all her athletic discipline and mental fortitude to recover. Then she finished college, earned a masters, and pursued a successful career as a school counselor.

She can’t see very well. She can’t use her left hand very well. Her left leg doesn’t function the way it should.

But she can still walk. (“Could you add that I walk fast?” Barb requests – her only request – when I ask for her input on this story. “I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.”) She walks fast.

And she can still swim.

This year, before the swim, we check in with the guard, an inscrutable teen veiled behind shades and a baseball cap. We tell him today’s plan: to swim beyond the breakers, back and forth between two jetties.

“I advise against it,” he says.

This is a surprise. It’s a green-flag day: minimal waves, no riptide. Dozens of elated kids in colorful outfits jump and tumble in the waves.

“Why?” asks Barb.

“I’m concerned you might have trouble getting out.”

How do we appear to him? Barb’s got that limp. I’ve got hair as white as sea foam and a leg still bloated and scarred from a knee replacement several months ago. We’re sixty-seven. Old enough to be his grandmothers.

“We’re swimmers,” I explain. We’re the only two women on the beach in Speedos. We’re fit. Neither of us has gained weight since we wore similar tank suits as teenagers.

“I saw you swim yesterday,” he replies, addressing Barb. “There’s a steep drop-off today, and shore break. You might fall getting out.”

Ah, so this is personal. And insulting. Barb and I detour, taking a walk down the beach to privately process this development. What now? Is he discriminating against my friend? Or protecting her? What should my role be?

Last summer, before the knee surgery, I had trouble getting out of the ocean myself. Strong waves would hurtle my torso toward the shore while the receding undertow tugged my feet out to sea. More times than I can count, my knee buckled, and I wiped out. Should we listen to this guy?

“I’m going to swim,” Barb says decisively. “If I fall, I fall. It’s only sand. And after I get out, I’m going to flip him the bird.”

With that new plan in place, we wade in. It’s June, early in the summer, and the frigid water shocks my feet, then legs, then chest, making me gasp. Just before I dive under a wave, I spot Barb, who has already swum to one jetty and is smoothly stroking back.

In the water, she does not limp. She also swims fast. (That’s my addendum this time, not hers.) I join her and we start making our way toward the other jetty.

As kids, Barb and I were essentially the same speed. One would be faster one summer, the other the next. We always teamed up for relays.

This summer day, as we swim south, then north, then south again, we glide into a freestyle rhythm, our bodies parallel to each other as well as the shore. Each time I turn my head to breathe, there’s Barb, turning her head to breathe toward me. As I raise one arm out of the water, I can see her raise her arm, our bodies in satisfying sync, schooling like fish.

This never happens with other friends. Someone always swims faster or slower or crooked, so we each do our own thing, periodically popping our heads up like prairie dogs to find each other across the swells.

Barb and I stay together. That arm lift – the part of Barb’s stroke I can see when I breathe – it’s called the recovery. It’s the final phase of a freestyle cycle. It begins after the pull, when the hand eases out of the water down by the hip. The arm’s only job, then, is to travel through the air, transporting the hand forward, toward the destination, in preparation for another stroke. While it’s up there, swinging like trapeze artist, it rests. Recovers.

Delightfully exhausted, we bodysurf toward the shore, then deftly tilt upright into a walking position. We have no trouble getting out. We stride past the lifeguard stand without incident.

There is no need to flip anyone off.

Our swim tells the whole story.

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• Micro-Healings: An Assist from Former Teammates

• Drawing My Way Through Loss

• A Funny Thing Happened When I Stopped Resisting