At 59, I don’t feel particularly old, but sometimes my joints do. Old injuries to both knees have turned into arthritis, and a ruptured ligament and long-gone cartilage have left me a bit wobbly. Bursitis in my hips and bone spurs in my feet don’t help much.
So when my son suggested that my husband and I learn to scuba dive for a trip to Turks and Caicos, we resisted. We love snorkeling, but scuba has always seemed daunting. Too much equipment, too scary, too late in life to learn. Plus, with my knee trouble, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stand up with all that heavy gear on.
Never one to give up, my son told us there was a dive shop with its own swimming pool not far from our home, and that he, his wife and our other son would be getting certified without us.
Weeks went by. Then, one Saturday as my husband and I sat at a red light, I glanced around. “Hey, look,” I said. “There’s that dive shop.”
Soon we were immersed, literally, in an intensive weekend course to learn dive science and safety information. After viewing an endless video and reading through a 300-page manual, we learned to use the air tanks, regulator, weights, a depth gauge, a buoyancy vest and the mask, snorkel and fins. If we could pass a series of written exams and skill tests in the pool, then we could move on to the next step — four test dives in open water that would lead to certification.
My husband and I, and another woman in her 50s, were the only students. She had multiple sclerosis. Suddenly my knee problems seemed trivial.
I can’t say we got off to a great start. In the pool, the regulator, the mouthpiece that you breathe through, was a new, strange sensation. I felt as if I was struggling to suck air through it, and the Darth Vader sound of my own breathing was disconcerting.
Our instructor, a young woman half my age, said shrilly that she had never encountered anyone with so much trouble so early in the game. If we kept this up, she lectured, we would never finish the course.
I felt put off by her impatience and wondered how often she had students our age. And despite her dire predictions, we did manage to finish the course.
The next phase was open-water certification, which for New Yorkers often entails a trip to a quarry in Pennsylvania. But friends had given the quarry bad reviews, so we took a trip to Key West, Fla., instead.
It was windy and the water was rough. We took seasickness pills, but as the boat rocked and rolled at the dive site, I started feeling queasy. The best thing would be to get into the water, fast. But for me, getting off the boat was the scariest thing of all. I had learned the hard way long ago that it takes only a split second to rupture ligaments and tear cartilage, and the fear of it happening again had only grown over time.
The dive instructor, attentive to my knee problems, had kindly set up my gear near the back of the boat, so I’d have the shortest possible distance to reach the water. It took several tries and all my strength and nerve, but I managed to stand up, lock my knees, clutch every railing and strong arm within reach, and do what I can only call my “crone hobble” to the edge of the boat. Then I took the diver’s “giant stride,” dropping feet first into the ocean. My ligaments held.
But on our first dive, my husband and I found out what we had not learned in the pool — how to achieve “neutral buoyancy,” the ability to control your depth, to float effortlessly in one place in a column of water without popping up to the surface like a cork (which can fatally injure your lungs) or sinking like a stone (which can be painful for both you and the environment if you land, as I did, seat-first on fire coral).
Neither of us had a clue. Buoyancy control involves wearing the right amount of weight, adding just enough air to your buoyancy vest and learning how to use your breathing to help yourself rise and drop. The skill comes with time and practice, and you just have to get a feel for it.
I was feeling queasy, sore from the coral, scared about my knees and unable to control my depth. I found myself thinking that I never wanted to do this again. Swallowing salt water and throwing it up later didn’t help my spirits. But I had come too far to quit. We finished the four dives and got our certification.
A week later the five of us were 80 feet down, exploring a coral wall that dropped off to 4,000 feet. Looking up, I saw the shimmery light of the sky, and the sun glinting down through schools of snapper. Below us was a navy blue abyss. Sharks glided by. A whole new world had opened up. Being weightless in blue water was as close as I would ever come to flying. On land, I sometimes feel hobbled by arthritis, but in the water, nothing hurts.
I still felt embarrassed about doing the crone hobble off the boat. And I needed to remove my gear in the water and hand it to an instructor because I could not climb back into the boat wearing the tank and weights.
Despite the hobble, I got a little of my dignity back, in an unexpected way. Divers can get competitive about the amount of air they use. Those who use less can stay down longer. Smaller people use less air, so women usually do better than men. For some reason that was a mystery to everybody, I used less air than the others, including people who were smaller than me. I admit I enjoyed seeing the surprised and envious looks on the dive boat when they saw how much air I still had left.
So my ocean adventure taught me that I could still learn a physically and mentally challenging sport, and face down some of my fears, even at this late date. I think it took more time and effort than it would have 20 or 30 years ago, but it was still possible. In some ways, my age might have even worked in my favor: I’m more confident now and probably more tenacious than when I was young. That discovery was almost as exhilarating as the diving itself.
