From the Zoom Memoir Class

Water Memories

by Patti Koo

There’s a photo of me dripping wet in my swimsuit, pixie hair flattened against my ears, stiff arms held to my sides, and an overflowing smile. My daughter gifted me with a painting of this photo, and I hang it in a spot I see every day. I often stop to ponder this happy child, and I pledge allegiance to the joy of swimming.

Swimming was always a part of our family’s summer road trips. Phil, a year older than me, played the pesty brother in the pool. “Here comes the little riverboat,” he would announce as he paddled his hands towards me, innocently. Then, “Uh, oh, there’s a bomb on the riverboat!” Wild splashes and screams. This memory flashes up every time I enter pool water. Teaching this paddleboat move to my girls was my way of remembering Phil in the best way.

In the summertime, in the early 1960’s, my mom would take us to an old motel on Houston’s busy Interstate 10. It was called Blue Skies. No one was there but us, and the water was freezing. She explained it was from a well, which in my 6-year-old mind meant it was clean and “countrified.” My mom would know this because she was raised in deep East Texas to cotton farmers who fished and swam in a freshwater pond at the end of their work week. But this was our respite from suburban street heat, not farming.

Our family camped at the Blue Hole many times with family friends.

The Blue Hole is a spring-fed swimming hole near Wimberley, Texas, with towering cypress trees overhanging the aptly named Cypress Creek that feeds into the Blanco River. One of my favorite memories is sitting on the rocks of this creek, wrapped in a shared towel with my mom.

In East Texas where I attended college, I found respite from class and worries alongside a hidden creek with a trickling waterfall.  I rode my bike across Nacogdoches on the pretense of finding the perfect study spot, but reaching utopia always led to a nap under the sun as I listened to the cascading water.

Later, my husband and I would create our own water memories. We vacationed at a Corpus Christi motel with our young family. I took photos of him, walking towards the pool, with our daughter by his side, each year taller. Many summers later, he carries our second daughter while holding our first daughter’s hand. Then, later, with the same pool and beach in the distance, the three of them walk hand-in-hand. I captured the essence of our family vacations: the eager anticipation of pool time fun.

Years later, living in the Rio Grande Valley, we enjoyed family time at South Padre Island. I was observing my husband underneath a waterfall in the pool, standing between our girls. We had just had a fight that felt like the last straw. I looked at all three of them, with the water gushing over them, and I realized how much I loved this man who loved our girls the way I did. Maybe it was the water splashing over their bodies, or maybe the glistening pool. Something washed away the anger and I dove in to be with them.

We have our family swimming stories that get told year after year, like how one daughter learned to swim with a simple $20 bribe. The deal started with $5 and made its way up! And the other daughter, at two years of age, was inspired by a purple dinosaur to go under the water. And family legend has it that the only reason we moved to McAllen, Texas, was to enjoy their city swimming pool, complete with two huge slides.

Our biggest water adventure was taking our girls to my husband’s homeland of Malaysia and snorkeling off the coast of the South China Sea. We swam in crystal blue water, gawking at the colorful fish. I took mental photographs so I would never forget this ocean paradise in the middle of nowhere.

Photo by Zhen zz on Unsplash

As our family life grew busier, my parents slowed down, and after my dad retired, they moved from Houston to Texas’ Hill country. They built a small house on the street where their old camping buddies lived, on the Guadalupe River. This river originates from an underground limestone aquifer, making it clear and freezing. The Guadalupe flows reliably in front of their house due to an ancient upstream dam that creates three perfect waterfalls for teaching young ones how to tube the rapids. Those young ones once included me, my sister and my brothers. But now, with our parents gone, it includes our children and their children. My sister lives in the homeplace, and my husband and I live next door. We are the keepers of the water memories.

This river centers our families. The broken-hearted find comfort. The broken feel whole again. Memories are revived. Our youth is re-lived. Generational joy is palpable here. This river draws many happy returns from our families as they come to float the river, remember their grandparents and learn about their great grandparents. We laugh, remembering the famous rope swing over the river, and who chickened out the most. Or when we all piled into my dad’s pick-up truck for the bumpy ride home after tubing the “horseshoe.” Eight years ago, we all gathered after my mom’s funeral on a cold and cloudy day in March. Someone got the idea that we should memorialize mom properly. So, everyone ran down to the river deck and jumped into the freezing water. I stood watching, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, so I did both.

As I grow older, I am drawn to the calm of the river. I move more slowly as I sit on the deck and ease my feet into the freezing water. I might see the bass swim up to kiss the surface, or the elegant Great Blue Heron sailing close to the glassy water.  I see the sunset reflected upstream: red sky means red river. People and situations are changing chaotically in my life right now. This river, for now, is my constant.

This year, we returned to Malaysia with our oldest daughter and her family, including her 5-year-old son. He met his aunts and cousins, ate strange fruits and tried every noodle dish. He saw the field where his grandfather played soccer, and the home where he survived a tough childhood. After long days of cultural and culinary lessons of this foreign land, we returned each day to swim in our hotel pool. We laughed and splashed, and played “Here comes the little river boat,” and I told my grandson about his great uncle Phil. And so the family water memories keep growing.

That painting of my six-year-old self helps me remember good things, like water, and its recurring theme in my life. Pools, rivers, oceans. Life-giving, love-saving, forever flowing, growing, changing, and staying the same. Just like us, I suppose. Just like us.'

Patti is a new member of LLC.