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THE LADY OF THE LAKE

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.

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