How long can you hold your breath under water?

When our planet takes its seasonal turn and the hot summer months arrive in California, nothing can be more enticing than the beautiful cool and crystal clear water of a well cared swimming pool. It is almost as if my skin feels drawn towards an oasis and is begging to be tempered by its wonderful cooling effects. A few years back before I bought my home and while I was living in Redlands, California, my boys and I spent quality time having fun in the main pool of the apartment complex that we lived in. The second floor two master bedroom unit which we occupied was just around the corner from the gate that gave us access to a basketball court, racquetball court, a gym, the jacuzzi, and a very large pool. In all, the apartment complex had a total of three pools. However, the main pool was at least three times larger than the other two and the closest to our place. As a prerequisite for all three of us to decide to go and get wet, my oldest son would first take a peek from his bedroom window to make sure that nobody else was using the pool. To my surprise, even though hundreds of people lived in the surrounding apartments, very few would actually make use of the pristine water hole, making it a lot easier to meet the mental requirements that my son had established in order for us to have some fun. Several times I made it a point to try to convince him for all of us to go to the pool while just a few other people were in it, but I only recall being able to twist his arm once and never again. When this happened, the outdoor sharing time was limited to me and my youngest son, whom almost never declined an invitation to go have a good time with his dad.

In the few years that we lived in that apartment, my oldest son never made a single friend from the surrounding area. As I have already mentioned in previous posts, this behavior began a lot earlier. In elementary school he rarely had more than two friends at a time. It is interesting though, if you saw him interacting with his current pack of buddies it would never cross your mind that he has any kind of social interaction deficit. As I have recently mentioned, it is not uncommon for me to arrive at my home and find him surrounded by anywhere from six to nine other teenagers having a good time. To be honest, even though many times the tribe which he hangs out with can drive me to the brink of madness, I feel a lot better with his current social interaction than when he would be locked up in his singular mental and emotional world instead. These boys and girls that are contained within his social bubble are far from the ideal choice that I would prefer he interact with, but the alternative of limited or no social interaction frightens me even more. At least within themselves I have been able to watch as they all make mistakes and then provide each other a support system to recover from the consequences of their deeds. It is a very slow process, but nevertheless it is a positive process, which allows them to learn from each other's failures as a collective.

I have discovered that it is not uncommon for anonymous letters to float around among this clan of teenagers that has been created. A concerned individual will write about his or her worries with respect to some of the wild behavior that goes on amongst themselves. The empty envelopes which originally contained these letters find themselves dropped on the floor for me to carefully inspect before filing them away. With terrible penmanship they address one, two, and even three individuals at the same time while the sender keeps his or her anonymity by simply writing "from a concerned friend." Rarely am I able to get my hands on the original content which would probably scare the life out of my parental mind. Most frequent than not, the remains of the letters are burned in the back yard of my home and then left mostly in ashes for me to pick up as the ground's keeper. I always ask, just in case my son is willing to share any of the content of these letters, however, their secret society is kept intact with his persistent silence. My second query is typically with respect to the well being of the parties addressed on the envelope, for which an almost angry "everything is fine DAD!" reply always follows leaving me clueless to the main drama at hand.

A favorite thing to do when we would all jump together into the pool was to time ourselves to see who could hold his breath the longest under water. We'd play tricks on each other trying to make the record holder lose control and start laughing during his record breaking attempts. It has been a while and I cannot remember what the standing record was at the time, but it really did not matter because the point was for us to share and have a good time together. Some time while residing at the apartment complex we watched a magician try to break the world record for holding his breath under water. In the show they showed techniques that he used to slow down his heart rate and oxygenate his blood during his attempt. As all three of us learned to do the same things, little by little our under water breath holding personal records got better with time. Afterwards the planet took it's course around the sun and we found ourselves embracing colder months with pool access limited and then eventually closed for the winter. By the time warm weather came back, our fun for free had expired with much more serious problems creeping their ugly head within us and even though I tried to get us all to go into the pool together, we never did make it back in.

Now we have our own pool with a beautiful view of the San Bernardino Mountains in the back yard of my home. When warm weather shows up we are back to sharing in the water by tossing a ball and a few other things between each other and sometimes we compete a little by trying to break records of how many laps each of us can do. However, instead of holding my breath under water I find myself holding it above while waiting for things to get better between me and my son a little bit at a time. Every time I discover the ashes of a burned letter between teenage friends, I find myself feeling much of the same sensations that I used to feel while holding my breath under water. Anxiety, doubt about my abilities, and strangely enough sometimes a lot of a peculiarly and similar solitude that I felt while submerged inside a pool. Even though my kids are just a few feet away, I feel isolation. Is that not the strangest feeling? I hope this feeling goes away soon. I am very used to being able to connect and be part of their lives and I do not care for the current disconnect.

Dad