The only place I've ever felt myself -- that is, my best self -- has been in, on, or around water. Amphibian ancestry? Amniotic memories? Whatever the reason, I have always been happiest afloat or submerged. Coastal or island beaches are best, but a nice lake or river will do. Indoor swimming pools don't cut it. Neither do bathtubs, though an outdoor Jacuzzi will do in a pinch. My watery environment must be in the open air, in the sunshine, where all the elements meet.

My love of the water came early. From ages 3 to 10, I was privileged to live in an apartment house with its own swim club. The Nautilus (so named because of its proximity to the Brooklyn seashore) was a mid-sized building, spanking-new in the early '60s, with a medium-sized in-ground pool: a great blue tank smelling of chlorinated water and Coppertone. Surrounded by a concrete patio -- hot, rough, and unkind to the tender bare feet of the children who ran about on it -- it was the place where the women of our building congregated for Mah-Jongg, changed fussy babies, and mopped at freckled cleavages as they sun-bathed in girdled surplice tank suits on towel-draped woven chaises. Nearby, men in trunks and cabana jackets read the paper, talked sports, cars, and business, and admired the half-clad figures of other men's wives.

The street-level pool bordering Avenue Y was hidden from view by both metal and wooden fencing, plus a menacing coil of barbed wire up top. Still, from the street, one could smell the chlorine and hear the sounds of splashing and childish laughter, the voices of old men arguing over card games and mothers trumpeting threats at their offspring, the music of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, or Chad and Jeremy blaring from the teenage lifeguard's staticky transistor radio.

The pool club's back border shared a wire fence with Atlantic Towers, the fancier apartment complex catty-corner to ours. Their natatorium was a grand Olympic-sized structure that dwarfed the Nautilus' lesser vessel. We kids would look enviously through the fence, kicking toes already stubbed from our pool's rough floor, muttering, "It's not fair." But that never lasted long, as the Brooklyn sun beat down and our own aqua oasis beckoned.

Chubby and unathletic with no sense of balance, I could never skate, play ball, or skip rope as well as other kids. I rode a bike, but gingerly. When we ran around the pool area playing Superman, beach towels fashioned into capes, I'd almost always fall and scrape both knees; but once in the cool water, I was buoyant and confident and free, unencumbered by bulky clothes and clumsy body.

I learned my first swimmer's moves in the bathtub's shallow suds, immersing my three-year-old face and blowing bubbles. By the time summer arrived, I knew how to hold my breath and was ready for the big drink, armed with rubber bathing cap, skirted swimsuit, and bulky tangerine life jacket.

Alas, in that orange prison garment with its white restraining straps, I could only splash about in circles, bobbing like an out-of-control cork. I longed to imitate my mother's long and steady strokes as she propelled herself through the water like the svelte swimmer on the label of her Jantzen resort apparel. I longed for the "deep water," where I was only allowed to venture in my mother's arms or on my father's back, my hands clasped around his neck as he swooped and plunged like a dolphin.

I was so motivated, it didn't take long before I was swimming on my own. My father taught me by holding me up by the back straps of my bathing suit, exhorting me to paddle and kick. Then he'd bolster me from underneath so I could float on my back. Sometimes he'd loosen his hold for a second, catching me just before I went under. One wonderful and wondrous day, he simply let go, and I stayed put, the chilly water lapping at the back of my head and on my small limbs and sides as the sun beamed its approval on my smiling face.

That was a long time ago. I don't swim that often anymore. The beach is inconvenient, its current too rough for bathing solo. The city-run outdoor pool near my home is urban, noisy, too crowded for anything but a quick dip. Today, I know when I'm cold or tired. Today I am afraid of germs and of drowning, of getting winded, of cramps, of skin cancer from a sun broiling through holes in the ozone, of too much flabby pale flesh revealed in immodest in bathing attire. It takes a lot to get me to go from that first icy toe-dip to the full-body shock of total immersion, and not much to get me out.

Still I long for water. A recent trip to the American Southwest left me longing for surf amid desert sands. A warm, sunny day still calls me to the seashore, even if I don't always hop the train and go. On vacations, I want to be by the ocean, even if only to watch it in awe from the safety of the shore, to smell its potency and hear its life as it slaps and laps and roars.

On summer afternoons, I take long walks along the lower half of the city, where the rough Hudson smacks the posts and piers. Sometimes I'll stop at the boat house just off Hubert St., where I borrow a kayak and paddle around for half an hour, as waves from passing yachts upset my equilibrium and threaten to toss me into the Manhattan murk. I must, from time to time, walk from my apartment to the river's edge, to inhale its aroma of lives and deaths, and contemplate the piscine and vegetal mysteries below its surface.

Other times, I go wistfully past the public pool, inhaling the familiar smells that bring me back to a more innocent, less fearful time. Hearing the gleeful squeals of children through a familiar-looking metal fence, I know I must return for ten minutes' baptism in that human and chemical soup. And once I am there -- prone on a towel damp with splashings that reek of chlorine, sunscreen and the diluted sweat of swimmers -- there is that sense-memory of what I knew so many years ago; that return to the communal bath where I am weightless and free. I close my eyes as the golden towel of sunlight stops momentarily between tall buildings to healingly heat the bodies laid out to dry on the rough, damp concrete.

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Essayist, humorist, and sometime poet Carol L. Skolnick's writings have appeared in magazines and newspapers (including Glamour, The Sun, The English Journal, AKC Gazette, and I Love Cats), in anthologies (CHOCOLATE FOR A WOMAN'S DREAMS, Simon & Schuster), and on the web (Salon.com, Paraview, Writer Online, MillenniumSHIFT, and elsewhere).

As web mistress of her own domain, http://www.eclecticspirituality.com/, Carol explores various spiritual scenes, practices, teachers and perspectives with a sharp eye and edgy humor.

©2001 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved. Distribution via hyperlink, e-mail, disk, print, or any other form is prohibited under U.S. copyright law without express permission of the author.