I swam across the shallow end without my father holding me

Dear Delyara, I nearly drowned at nine and avoided swimming pools for twenty-six years. I would sit beside the water during family holidays, pretending I disliked getting wet. After my son began lessons, I realized I was teaching him that water was dangerous while asking him not to fear it. I enrolled in adult classes without telling anyone except my husband. The instructor started with standing chest-deep, then floating while holding the wall, then breathing with my face in the water. It took four months before I let go. Today, I swam across the shallow end alone. Twelve metres. Halfway across, panic tightened my chest, but I rolled onto my back exactly as I had practiced, breathed, then continued. My father had been the one who pulled me from the river when I was nine. He died before I began these lessons. When I reached the wall, I put both hands on the tile and cried because for the first time, water had held me without requiring my father to save me from it.