They often come to me on my swims along Chicago’s lakefront, the memories of my parents teaching me to swim. As I tunnel through the calm morning water lapping the beaches of Rogers Park, it is as if my parents have returned to swim by my side, still needing to watch over me.
Though I learned to swim in the lakes and ponds of Indiana, it was here in Chicago where I became a lake swimmer, a member of a unique tribe for whom swimming is more than just an exercise. It is something closer to a spiritual practice, a ritual to observe in the sanctuary of Lake Michigan.
I remember the day I was initiated into this tribe. It was a late October afternoon while I was walking along the lakefront at Promontory Point in Hyde Park, stopping and staring at the lake, as I often did in those first months after moving to the South Side to attend divinity school. Well off shore, heads were bobbing in the undulating waves. I couldn’t believe that anyone would be swimming in such cold water and so far out.
Alarmed, I looked around thinking I should alert someone and call the police. But slowly the four swimmers made their way in and hoisted themselves up onto the rocks. To my shock, they were not young. I watched them in awe towel off and dress, two sturdy women with thick arms and their partners, two husky men with gray hair sticking out of their broad happy chests. When I asked if the water was cold, a man dismissed my worry with a wave of his hand and proudly informed me. “Cold? Nah. Good for you!”
From the South Side to the North Side, from the beaches and concrete boardwalks between, I have taken refuge in this lake, swimming to think and not think, to escape and to remember, but mostly to be healed by the curative powers of this body of water the Ojibwa aptly named Michigami, or “great water,” so great in fact that it is visible from the moon.
I am not alone among my tribe who swim to maintain their health and sanity. We who live with chronic conditions, suffer from trauma and work the steps of recovery, we swim to feel our agency, we swim to feel our joy and we swim to feel our bodies alive.
Exercise physiologists are discovering what swimmers have always known: Swimming, particularly in fresh water, is a perfect exercise with multiple benefits for the mind and body. Engaging almost every muscle in the body, swimming develops core strength and flexibility, expands lung capacity and respiration, enhances stamina and cardiovascular health, aids in the function of the immune system, helps in weight management and is easy on the joints. Swimming also reduces stress as rhythmic breathing and movement trigger the release of brain chemicals such as endorphins and dopamine, which produce a sense of euphoria and well-being.
But as summer brings domes of heat over this city of bricks and concrete, not all Chicagoans can find relief and pleasure in the cool waters of Lake Michigan or in the neighborhood pools far from the beaches. For most residents here as well as across the country, swimming is an exclusive type of recreation, not just because people don’t know how to swim but because they have never had the opportunity to learn. Structural inequalities and socioeconomic factors continue to determine who can enjoy the benefits of recreational swimming and who cannot. And this explains part of the reason why swimming as a form of recreation is on the decline across the U.S.
According to surveys taken by the American Red Cross and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, well over half of adults in the US (56%) have never had formal swimming lessons and can’t pass a basic skills test. For Black and Hispanics adults, the percentage is much higher. There is a gender gap, too, with women less likely to have learned how to swim than men.
For many children in Chicago as well, swimming lessons are a luxury that their parents can’t afford. In a study done by Lurie Children’s Hospital a few years ago, researchers canvassed parents in all 77 neighborhoods and found that 46% of children
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had never been exposed to water safety or swimming lessons. This is a tragedy, as learning to swim for children not only aids in their physical and emotional development but is also a lifelong skill that will benefit them as well as their children in the years ahead. Moreover, with drowning deaths on the rise among those under the age of 19, at nearly 900 deaths every year, learning to swim can be a matter of life and death.When I am not swimming in the lake, I join my fellow lap swimmers at the nearby YMCA. There, I have taught swimming to children and adults. What joy there is in witnessing children learning to swim, their fears and struggling little bodies giving way to confidence and smoother strokes. But working with adults of every age, gender and body type, I was moved and inspired in ways I didn’t expect. When a woman, who’d told me it had always been her dream to learn how to swim, finally made it across the pool by herself, her triumphant tears sent a shiver down my spine.
And while teaching swimmers to float, my hand holding them up, I realized I was passing on the lessons I had learned from my mother years ago in the shallows of an Indiana lake.
Michael McColly, a Chicagoan, is the author of the book “Walking Chicago’s Coast: A 63-Mile Journey to the Indiana Dunes.” He also is a former instructor in the creative writing graduate program at Northwestern University.
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