FIRST TRIALS
1959
Soon after we got back from nationals, Coach called a meeting of senior swimmers and their parents. Some of our times in Redding had met the qualifying standards for the trials, he told us. Mr. Johannesen had advocated for us. The Club would sponsor four girls for the Pan Am Trials: Lynn. Noel. Nancy. And me. We were leaving Portland on August 3.
I bounced in my chair. We were flying in an airplane to the trials! Hardly anyone I knew had ever been on a big plane. Lynn pounded me on the back as Coach settled us down with details. We’d spend the night in Chicago at the Sheraton Hotel where he had previously coached. Nancy, who’d swum for him there, described the pool to us: mosaic tiles and marble, a gigantic fountain, and located on the fourteenth floor. I tried to imagine a pool in the sky but couldn’t picture it. In Portland, pools were always in basements or outdoors. After a night in Chicago, we’d take a small plane to East Lansing, Michigan.
“But where will they stay?” I could hear worry in my mom’s voice.
All swimmers would be in the college dorms, Coach told her. We’d eat in the cafeteria, and the Club would give each of us five dollars per day food allowance.
“I’ll take care of her, Mrs. Wood,” Lynn said. “Don’t worry.”
My mom blinked. Dad reached over and patted my shoulder and then Noel’s. “You girls. Pan American Games. That is something.”
“It’s the trials,” I corrected him, not wanting anyone to think I didn’t know the difference between trials and games.
“I wish the games were going to be somewhere besides Chicago. Why couldn’t they be in Brazil or Argentina?” Lynn knew she’d make the team. She’d already proved that she was the second best backstroker in the world. All I could expect was to fly from Portland to East Lansing. Lynn leaned over and bumped my arm. She promised that we’d be roommates and that we’d sit together on the plane. She even offered me the window seat.
Lynn and Nancy shopped downtown and found red blazers for us to wear with white skirts, our Club travel uniform. Mom sewed the MAC insignia, a Winged M, on the pocket and then bought me a red purse with a long strap, a pocketbook like Helen Burke’s. At the airport we posed for pictures, and then Lynn insisted we all buy flight insurance from an airport kiosk so the plane wouldn’t crash.
Mom pulled me aside before we walked down to the concourse and delivered her final instructions. “Carolyn, I want you to behave yourself. I’ve talked to Mr. Burke—”
I interrupted her. “Bob. He told me to call him Bob.”
“And he promised to look after you and your money. I’m going to tell you something that they taught me in my sorority.”
This sounded really serious. Mom talked about being a Theta as if it were a religion. She had a little sermon she needed to deliver, one I would hear in various forms over the years that went something like this:
“ ‘Remember who you are and what you represent.’ The Multnomah Club is paying your way. They expect you to swim fast, yes, but you are representing every member of the Club at this meet. It’s an honor, Carolyn. So don’t make any trouble. And when you get there, I want you to send a thank-you letter to Mr. Perry.” She straightened the collar of my blouse while she looked at me.
“Okay.” Usually I’d feel like pulling away, but I looked hard at Mom. She meant it. For the first time since her illnesses, when I’d gone to Scout camp, she was letting me go off by myself.
“Remember who you are and what you represent,” she repeated as she pulled me into a hug. “I know you will.”
Mom’s words made me think past the excitement of a plane ride and the chance to be on my own. We weren’t a swirling gang of age-group swimmers about to converge on some local pool. We four girls wearing our matching white skirts and red blazers were like Cody’s Kids, those MAC swimming stars from the 1940s, or Maureen Murphy the Olympian. We represented the Club, which had paid for our plane tickets, room, and board. Mom was worried that in her absence, I’d be influenced to take a dare or run wild. But I wouldn’t. I’d do my best for the Club and the team. I couldn’t let them down, and I wouldn’t disappoint Mom either.
Our plane left late in the evening. At the counter Lynn picked our seats right next to the galley. We’d get served first and might even get seconds, she said. When we got on, she gave me the window like she’d promised, but the seats didn’t recline. Not one bit. At first it didn’t matter. I watched the four propellers start up, and then the ground rushed by and slowly receded as we lifted off. Below, the Columbia River snaked along and headlights flooded roadways. It looked like Richard’s train-set world, the trees tiny and the fields dusky-brown squares. Pretty soon we flew into the clouds and then above them; after that there wasn’t much to see. The stewardess brought us dinner on a tray with silverware and cloth napkins like in a restaurant. Lynn fell asleep sitting upright as soon as she finished dessert. I stared out the window through the condensation trapped between the panes. Everything vibrated and buzzed. Off in the distance, I spotted the first forks of lightning.
“Lynn. Lynnie.” I nudged her. “There’s a storm.” I’d never seen lightning so close before. What if we got hit? The plane lurched and dropped, righted itself and dipped again. Lynn nodded, mumbled something, and curled away. I watched through the night. The storm went on and on—sometimes close and sometimes lighting the bulging clouds and ground far, far away. When we landed in Chicago that morning, my eyes felt swollen and sandy. I wished Lynn had been awake and seen the storm too. For the first time, I felt the regret that comes when you experience something intense alone and want to have shared it.
The trials ran from Friday until Tuesday with Sunday off. Coach only entered me in the butterfly, even though I swam faster than either Noel or Nancy in the freestyle. Butterfly was scheduled for Saturday, Lynn’s backstroke not until Monday. We lay around in the dorm room most of the time when we weren’t warming up, eating, or watching a race. Lynn shaved her long legs, painted her nails pink, touched up her hair with peroxide. She offered to give me a haircut, but I declined, content to read a comic book on my bed.
Michigan State had a brand new outdoor fifty-five-yard pool, the same length as Jantzen. The women’s locker room held a modern sauna, something foreign to us, different from the Aero Club’s tiny, tiled hot room with old canvas sling chairs or the MAC’s men-only steam room. On Thursday after warm-ups and a light practice, we sat in the wood-paneled sauna with a swimmer from Philadelphia and three others from Los Angeles: Carolyn House, Molly Botkin, and Patty Kempner. Carolyn House told all about how she’d been blind since her premature birth, and Molly told us about their plane dropping a thousand feet over the Rockies and all the dinner trays flying up to the ceiling. I told them that we had flown through a storm too but that nothing happened. I felt kind of disappointed our storm hadn’t been as dramatic as the LA kids’. Probably if Lynn had awakened to see it, she would have made it into a better story.
Coach got pretty mad when he heard we’d spent about an hour in the sauna. He said that it would sap our energy and that we were in Michigan to compete, not relax. “What’s the matter with you girls? Don’t be so stupid.” His dark mood reminded me of Richard. For some reason it felt like we were fighting with Coach even though no one said anything back. My event was two days away, and Lynn’s was four. It didn’t seem stupid to be in a warm place telling stories. The next day, Chris won the 110-yard freestyle in a new national record. Molly Botkin came in second, and Joan Spillane third. The sauna hadn’t hurt Molly much.
Saturday morning I qualified for the finals in the 110-yard butterfly—sixth out of eight. Nancy Ramey set a world record in the prelims, but Becky Collins beat her in the finals. Molly Botkin finished third, qualifying her for the USA team in two different strokes. I moved up one place to fifth with my best time ever, two spots away from making the team. Next year, Olympics, I told myself. It actually seemed possible.
My perspective changed after that trip to Michigan. Being on a college campus with young women from across the country provided a view of my competition in ways magazine articles and time lists couldn’t. It was completely different from saying, “I want to go to the Olympics,” or pledging with Lynn, “Let’s make the team together.” I had met the girls who stood between me and the Olympic team, sat beside them in a sauna, observed them in the cafeteria. Between nationals and the Pan Am Trials, famous swimmers had become real people, and those girls whose times were barely better than mine became vulnerable because I had seen them, seen their bodies, their strokes and turns, had heard their stories, dreams, and fears.
In a way I felt like I had gained an edge, a way to beat them. Molly goofed off, Shirley Stobs was short, and Joan Spillane trained alone. On national teams, four girls qualified for the freestyle relay. I could be one of the four if I kept working hard and improving. In butterfly I needed to pass three competitors to be one of the top two. Now I knew who they were. It never crossed my mind that they might be observing and evaluating me too.
There’s nothing friendly about racing when the point is to beat people. Swimming for fun or for medals, for pictures in the paper or a personal best would not get you on the team. At the Pan Am Trials, you came in first, second, third, or you were nothing. Only place counted. The goal became clear: next year I would have to finish first or second to make the Olympic team.
Lynn took me to my first-ever Catholic Mass on Sunday. Inside, the church was dark and smoky, and the priest spoke in Latin and never even looked at the people. Lynn prayed on her knees as I sat on the bench and watched. One time she stood up and caught me with her elbow, and I started to laugh. “You brat,” she whispered. When her shoe kicked the kneeler and made a loud clunk, my shoulders shook, but I kept my eyes down, held my breath, and swallowed the giggles. Afterward on our way out, she called me “brat” again and said she’d prayed for me and that she’d make the team. Her prayers worked because the next day, she finished second in the 110-yard backstroke. Lynn made the team with Chris and all the American and world record holders.
Coach and Nancy stayed on in Chicago, Lynn went off to train with the US team, and Noel and I flew back to Portland, where our parents met us at the airport. In the car Mom chattered away about how she’d missed me and what had happened at church and what Georgie had said. Then she turned around. “We have a surprise for you.”
“What?” I wondered if they’d gotten me a dog or a new radio.
There was no dog when we got home. She led me to my room. The Goldilocks and Three Bears wallpaper behind my bed had been covered with a pink floral-patterned paper; the other walls, once papered in cheery red polka dots, had become pink. An early American maple twin bed set had replaced my old bed, plus a new bed stand, bureau, and fancy lace-shaded lamp. I hated everything about it.
“Isn’t it beautiful? You’re a young lady now, and here’s your new—”
“I’m not a young lady. I’m going to the Olympics with Lynn.”
Mom’s smile fell away, and she said I’d get used to it, that it had just surprised me.
Another girl, some mythical daughter she didn’t have, would have thanked her, but I didn’t want this change. I wanted the old wallpaper and the comforting pictures of the Three Bears. Maybe her friends’ daughters wanted pretty clothes or redecorated rooms, but I didn’t. She would never know me, I thought, angry that she tried to make me conform to her hopes and resentful of her pressure to change or hide who I was. In Lansing, I’d set my own priorities: practicing focus, improving my time, racing the best. There I could be who I really was—a swimmer. With Lynn, not my parents, as guide, I’d navigated the world of national competition and become more confident. Back home, nothing had changed except my bedroom decor.
The bedroom was almost as bad as the Junior Olympics the next week. I hated the dinky pool at Wilson High—not even long course—and all the pokey kids from all over the state. Driving home from the finals, I tried to tell Mom that it wasn’t fun racing kids that you beat by a mile, but she answered that everyone was doing their best. Of course they were doing their best, but that wasn’t it. I’d learned that doing your best meant more than trying hard or improving your time. It had everything to do with evidence: finishing first, setting a record, making a national team. Anything less was not good enough.
I wished I were with Lynn and the kids from California. I wished I were still in Michigan, eating in the cafeteria, talking to the girls from Vesper Boat Club and learning chess or laughing in the sauna with Molly Botkin instead of back home. It had been so different at nationals and the trials. There we all had dreams that stretched beyond the ocean. The races mattered. But Mom didn’t know what I meant any more than I could understand why she’d painted my room pink. We were in different places now.
After Labor Day, high school classes started. The MAC team took September off, so I swam with the high school team some afternoons. Every day I scoured the paper for news from the Pan Am Games. Chris won all her events, but Lynn didn’t win a single medal. She sent one long letter telling all about training with George Haines, the team coach, and she sent a little USA patch that I sewed inside my MAC sweat suit. In late September, when practices started up again at the Club, Lynn still hadn’t returned.
Late one Saturday afternoon, the phone rang and I knew it was Lynn. “I’m not coming back to Portland. I’m going to Santa Clara. And guess where I’ll live? With Chris, your idol!” She sounded so excited. “Now you gotta make the Olympics, Woody. Blood sister. We’re all going to Rome. Veni, vidi, vici. Right?” She talked so fast, I couldn’t even answer. I couldn’t think.
“But what about Coach? Does he know?”
“My dad told him. Listen, Woody. You gotta work hard. I’ll see you at the Far Westerns and nationals. And then…” She rattled on, her voice dissolving along the line, the long wire stretching from my house out into the darkness and across all that land we’d flown over, a barely discernible voice far, far away in the dark.
“I’ve got to go now, Lynn.” I could feel hot tears starting. “I gotta go.”
Curled on my side in bed, I wept, grief unfamiliar. If my mom hadn’t recovered from her cancer, if she had never returned from the hospital, I’d have known grief, but this was my first loss and I didn’t think I could bear it.
After a long time Dad came into the room. “Enough. Enough tears now.” He never talked sharply, but he meant stop.
“She’s not coming back. It’s not fair.”
He sat on the bed and told me I’d have to train on my own. I’d have to train hard and make the team because Lynn and Chris would be on it. Then he patted my shoulder and left me alone.
I had counted on Lynn’s return: training another year, making the team, and being on the relay together. I had believed in it, but now everything had spun away and disappeared without explanation. I felt abandoned and utterly alone, as if someone I loved had died. All those tears may seem silly now, teenage hyperdrama. And yet, then I could no more have explained the depth of my loss than I could have recited the capitals of South America again.
I lay in the dark thinking about what I had lost—a spirited training partner who’d been on the Pan Am team, a blood sister. But I still had the dream. Lynn didn’t have to be in Portland for me to work hard. She didn’t swim my laps or race my races. I could rise up to the next level, hers and Chris’s. I belonged with them. I just needed to prove it—every day at practice and in every race.