My hairdresser called me last week to give me a chance to get my hair done before her vacation. I declined. I went swimming.

It has been frustrating getting in my swim time lately. I must go in much later in the morning than I used to, and that runs into other peoples’ schedules. Last week, it ran into my daughter’s schedule, so I swam for 15 minutes or so. I was able to get 500 yards in during that time. Today, my swim time ran into the pool’s schedule. I got in maybe 35 minutes of swimming. I was able to eke out a 1/2 mile.

But today I did more flip turns. I ignored my daughter’s voice in my head that told me I wasn’t doing the turn right. I figured I could work on form after I got used to doing those turns. Somewhere along the way I realized that I could hold my breath long enough to do this.

I noticed something else. There are words on the wall at the pool! I have never been able see anything on the wall, and today, thanks to my contacts, I found myself distracted by reading while I came up for a breath.

I swam my 100 IM slower than I did last time, probably because of distraction.

I plan to swim again next week before I get my hair done again. I look a hot mess.

I just went back through a discussion thread on Diversity in Aquatics. It all started in response to Errol Dupplessis’s question, “Can African-Americans swim well enough to save themselves?” At first, I was perplexed by the question. Surely the more appropriate question should have been, ‘do African Americans want to swim well enough to save themselves?’ I thought that desire was more the issue than ability.

Now I see that he wasn’t speaking about specific people, but about the black community as a whole. Even though not all white people can swim, for example, as a community, they see the importance of swimming. The Black community as a whole has yet to value swim skills.

So the burden on Diversity in Aquatics is to make swimming of value to the Black community. How do you do that? This whole each one teach one mentality could take a looonnnng time to bear fruit.

Mr. Dupplessis has some good ideas. One is to talk to ministers. I hadn’t thought of that. Why not go to church leaders with the message of swim literacy? How better to make it a value than to have it addressed from the pulpit? I remember when our pastor spoke about how we all needed to get in shape. Then he put his money where his mouth was by offering a church-wide discount in Y memberships. We joined the Y that year, as did several other church members. Other churches in town have built their own fitness centers. I say right on, but I think it’s not a fitness center without a pool. That’s my bias, of course.

Another idea Mr. Dupplessis puts forth is to have all the HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) open their swim facilities to the community. They could start learn to swim and competitive swim clubs that would train and recruit other black swimmers. I like the responsibility of this option. Since drowning is such an issue in our community, it only makes sense that we address it. What better way than to use our college and university pools to teach swimming?

So I guess my question is, how do we implement these great ideas?

The last I talked about my daughter’s swim career, she’d passed lifeguard training, and received her certification.

And. . . she continued to work as a swim instructor, until she got so busy with basketball and a pageant. In short, she took off a month or so from work.

Today she got to go back to the pool and shadow with another lifeguard. She gets to do this a few times before she can get her own lifeguarding hours.

I have been wanting to get my other daughters in the pool for a while, so I thought we’d hang out at the Y while the oldest daughter did her shadowing.

I had planned to leave the non-swimmers at home, but we ended up taking the baby with us. My 9 year old and almost 8 year old daughters had swim lessons when they were younger, but not for the past 3 years. They both started when they were 3 or so, and the older girl was ready to work on swimming lengths when they stopped taking lessons.

I have been trying to get them back in lessons ever since, but we’ve had a few obstacles in the way. I hope to enroll them both this summer. They need the work. The 9 year old needs to boost her stamina. She keeps stopping and standing when she should be swimming.

The almost 8 year old doesn’t know how to do any strokes. She can doggie paddle and do a little back stroke. I urged her to work on her streamline kick past the flags. She managed to do it once or twice before she started pulling her arms out of streamline and just tried swimming underwater and trying to breathe. She has the stamina, not the skills.

Meanwhile, the baby was cold, so I tried to get her used to the water. She enjoyed jumping up and down, and I even coaxed her to blow a few bubbles. I didn’t want to blow her trust by bobbing her under the water like I used to. I’d rather she volunteer to do that. She really liked throwing sinkers down to the bottom of the pool for her sisters to fetch.

I used to have the attitude that I’m a homeschool mother; I should be able to teach my own children to swim. I could get them to a certain point, remembering what they’d learned in lessons, but I didn’t know how to get them beyond that point. It’s time to consult the professionals.

How did your children learn to swim?

I can’t see a thing. When I’m swimming, this impairment has led to my crashing into another swimmer, jumping, thinking I see another swimmer, when it’s really a pylon at the end of the lane, etc. I couldn’t time myself using the clocks on the wall or the pool deck because I couldn’t see them.

I usually wear my glasses to the pool so I can find an empty lane, and I leave the glasses at the edge of the pool as climb in. I check them every time I finish a lap.

This morning, I couldn’t find my glasses when I got up, so I put on my contacts. When I went back to wearing contacts in 2005, I had planned to swim in them, knowing it would make it much easier for me. I asked my Optometrist if I could swim in m contacts, expecting him to say , “Of course!”

But he didn’t. He said it could possibly lead to an eye infection, especially if you were swimming in a lake. He went on to say that going barefoot could put you in contact with some deadly worm. . .

I thought what he said was ridiculous, but it violated my conscience to swim in my contacts. I found that if I had them on while I had the kids in the pool with me, it was SO much easier for me to keep up with the children, but I just had to suck it up, because the Optometrist warned against it.

My husband knew where my glasses were, but by then, I had made up my mind to swim in contacts. I put my goggles on, and they formed a tight seal around my eyes.

My contacts never got a drop of water on them! And I could see! (Except for when the stupid goggles fogged up, and I wasn’t going to bread that seal just to get rid of the fog!

The goggles were something I hadn’t mentioned to the Optometrist. So I had left out a valuable detail. It was quite the ‘duh!’ moment when I thought about it.

As I was trolling for stories tonight, I stumbled upon this picture. The caption said that Alia Atkinson helped put Texas A&M’s women’s swimming on the map.

March madness doesn’t just refer to basketball. The NCAA swimming championships also occur in March. They just wrapped up, and a black swimmer rose to the surface.

Alia Atkinson is a senior at Texas A&M who specializes in breast, sprint free and IM. This year, she and Julia Wilkinson won their school’s first ever NCAA titles. Atkinson won in the 200 M breast with a time of 2:07.38

But that’s not the first time Atkinson tasted swimming glory. Last year at the NCAA finals, she became the third fastest breast stroker in NCAA history, behind Olympic gold medalist Rebecca Soni and Tara Kirk.

In 2008, Alia swam in the Olympics for her native Jamaica, finishing 26th overall in the 200 M breast, setting a Jamaican record with the time: 2:29.53. Her list of achievements goes on and on.

Who knows what the future holds for this member of the class of 2010. Hopefully we’ll see her in the 2012 Olympics.