Close Your Eyes

The first danger I encountered was at the age of three years old at Bali. My mother was chatting with her third elder sister whereas my cousins and my elder sister were playing enjoyably at the other side of the swimming pool. Excitedly, I took off my dress and jumped into the swimming pool without my mother realizing it. Dive abruptly into the bottom of the shallow pool. Since I was young then, my whole body was dipped with water and my buttock sat on the pool. At first, I felt nothing. Bubbles of water flowed upward as I whistled. The image continually sticks in my memory. But when I needed to breathe, water entered my nose and hard to breathe. Choked with water and I began to fear. Unknowingly, my cousins and sister saw and signaled their mothers. Thank God for two hands dived in and I was out of the pool in my mother’s hugs. Tears welled up at my eyes and she brought me to the shower room. Comforting and asked me the reason of diving. Then she laughed at me as my tears rolled down my cheeks. I don’t know how to explain back then. Since then, I resolute to myself that I must be able to swim.



During the holiday of my primary days, my parents brought my siblings and I to Cipanas at Puncak. We learned the swimming style, but I still couldn’t swim. Even though I managed to learn the frog style, my head couldn’t go up of the water. All I remembered was my dad often pointing to me that my butt stick out of the pool. This meant my body was straight like a log floating on the pool. As my dad focused on my mother and sister, I slipped out of their eyes and ran towards the middle of the adult pool.



“For sure, I can learn how to swim.” That was my frustrated enthusiasm to learn swimming. Jump! Dive! It was too deep. I was crazily gasping for air. Hands and legs were struggling to stay afloat. Oh! My mouth gulped the water pool. Thank God for a man to rescue me. This scared enough for me to return to the children pool. Again, my butts stick out of the pool. The fear was of drowning still scared me, but I still insisted to dive one more time. The same situation occurred again where I gasped for air, drank the water and rescued by a man. The third time I dived, the same things happened. Then it was time to go home.

During holiday, I still learn to swim. Once the 1998 riot occurred, my siblings and I studied in Singapore. In year 2001, when my friend Hui Tze invited me to her house to swim, it was the time I realized the correct swimming posture. The angle of my body need to be 30 degrees to enable my head to rise up and gasped for air. Since then, I am so glad to be able to swim frog style until now. Thank God and praise God for that. Whenever I close my eyes, my heart is filled with gratitude to God for the perseverance attitude though I failed many times.