My memory of how it felt to glide through the water without my mother is still so fresh, so visceral, even though it was forty years ago. The sensations were both physical and intellectual. How strange and glorious it was to be anchored to nothing, to be free, in some particular way, for the first time in my life. How quickly I shifted from the shock of my mother’s betrayal to the terror of my new reality to the pure delight of how it felt to swim. My mother had been right: my bubble held me up.
