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Between the Lines |
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Interview with Penelope Niven |
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Swimming Lessons
Life Lessons from the Pool, from Diving in to Treading Water
Penelope Niven
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Biography |
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| Penelope Niven is the author of Carl
Sandburg: A Biography; Steichen:
A Biography; and, for children, Carl
Sandburg: Adventures of a Poet. She is coauthor with
James Earl Jones of Voices
and Silences. She lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where
she is writer-in-residence at Salem College. |
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Interview |
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Q: What prompted you to write about your own life experience?
A: I was forty-four when I finally found the courage to learn to swim. I had just been fitted with bifocals. I was wearing orthodontic braces to correct a lower jaw problem. I was teetering on the brink of menopause. My daughter was coming into puberty and my husband was deep in the throes of a mid-life crisis. What is a person to do in the midst of these inevitable life changes? I might as well learn to swim, I thought, a Southern woman caught in the midst of an endless Indiana winter. Take on one more challenge. Overcome a lifelong fear. Nothing to lose.
This was a pivotal time in my life, and I began to write about it in my journal. At first my swimming lessons, terrifying as they were, gave me respite from the current challenges of daily life. Next they gave me exercise, stress relief, even fun. Then they struck me, full force, with parallels to life outside the pool. It’s more dangerous to dive into shallow water than into deep water, my swimming instructor said. “Aha!” I said in return. All the regrets of my life have to do with settling for the safe, shallow end of the pool, rather than risking the depths of the unknown.
I have written about my own life experiences in this book because the metaphor of those swimming lessons helped me to clarify and understand and, in some instances, reshape my life outside the swimming pool. I came to believe they could do that for other people, too.
Q: Why did you choose to use a swimming metaphor in respect to your own life?
A: As a writer, I see metaphors all around me, and as a writer learning to swim, I found a startling new metaphor every time I went to my swimming class. The metaphors of diving, floating, treading water, swimming the backstroke, and swimming in the ocean seemed so obvious, so natural, so resonant that I couldn’t resist applying them to my own life, and following wherever they might lead me. When I shared them, tentatively at first, other people said, "I see! I know what you mean!" Then they would share their own life experiences with me.
The reality was that learning to swim helped me through some hard times in my life. Metaphorically, learning to swim helped me to understand those hard times, to find courage and hope, to “float” supported by faith and love, and, as my daughter Jennifer taught me, to trust the power of the water. If the swimming metaphor can work for me, it can work for other people.
Q: Why did you choose to include exercises in addition to your own autobiographical reflections?
A: You can’t learn to swim just by reading the swimming manual, or having somebody
talk to you about swimming. Learning to swim is a messy, exhilarating, hands-on experience. I wanted readers to explore their own experiences in some tangible, interactive way. This is a universal journey we are sharing, after all, whether we are swimming upstream or down, or in the shelter of the pool or the intimidating vastness of the ocean.
I work with writers in classes and workshops, writers who are composing memoirs or chapters of autobiography. I have found that these suggested exercises, adapted to the reader’s own needs and own favorite forms of expression, can be of help
Q: Do you feel you’re a biographer at heart?
A: I am a writer at heart. Biography is one compelling literary form that allows me to say what I have to say.
Q: Have you found more joy after writing Swimming Lessons?
A: Writing Swimming Lessons has led me to important personal revelations and synthesis. I believe the most significant release has come through the act—the privilege—of writing about my remarkable mother and father. The journey of writing this book converged with their final illnesses, and then my father’s death in 2000 and my mother’s in 2003. Writing about them has helped me immensely.
I am blessed to have been born with the joy gene. I discovered years ago the paradox that you can experience a sustaining joy in life in spite of, as well as because of, external circumstances. My parents and my daughter have taught me the enduring value of a vivid sense of humor. Joy and humor help keep us afloat. They help us keep on swimming.
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