“Leda, do you want to drown?” Mom yelled. “Come here, now!”
I was terrified whenever the water rose above my waist, her screams warning us to stay near the water’s edge. It happened every time we went to Lynnhaven Beach in Virginia.
Mom, herself, had never learned to swim, although she grew up in a small town near the Atlantic Ocean in Puerto Rico. Born in 1923, she experienced natural tragedies, like the hurricane in which the family lost all their possessions. Decades afterwards, apprehension of the ocean passed on to her offspring. Read more