Breathing Underwater for the First Time

My dad loved shows like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. He was endlessly curious and liked shows about wildlife or far-off places.

I loved watching these programs with him, usually while eating my mom’s homemade dinners atop very 1960s TV trays. The worlds we glimpsed through those shows were breathtaking, but also incredibly distant. That was part of the magic. It felt like the only way we would ever experience places like that.

As Jacques and his fellow divers moved through the water, the grainy footage felt both miraculous and a little terrifying. Scuba diving was not something you imagined doing yourself. It felt rare and exclusive. Not something the average person could ever picture trying. I certainly never pictured it for me.

Fast forward about fifty years. The idea entered my life thanks to an invitation. A dear friend reached out to invite me on a trip of a lifetime: twelve days on a liveaboard in the Maldives. It was exciting to be invited, but it felt far and expensive. Probably too much of a splurge. Also, I did not scuba dive. There were lots of other activities...snorkeling, paddleboarding, jet skiing...the trip sounded amazing.

At the same time, my husband Tom was in an extremely intense stretch at work, nearing retirement while helping sell the company he had been part of for years. When I floated the idea of joining the trip as my friend’s roommate, I expected resistance. Instead, he surprised me by being supportive. I was in.

Then Covid arrived, everything stalled, and the trip was postponed.

When planning resumed in mid-2021, a few things had shifted. Tom was now fully retired. I had turned 60. And I realized that if I did not learn to dive, I would spend the trip watching from the boat while everyone else disappeared into the beautiful blue waters. I found myself uncertain about being a spectator on this incredible trip.

Scuba kept circling back. Could this be something I could learn and do? It felt big, and honestly a little ridiculous. But because it appeared at a moment when our lives were already shifting, it landed differently than it might have years earlier. It felt possible. When I finally pitched the idea of getting certified, after weeks of researching, Tom was lukewarm, his curiosity piqued, and after a while, he was in for the trip too.

Not long after, we decided to go for it, and things moved pretty quickly. We found a local dive shop where several friends had gotten Scuba certified over the years. We signed up, sat through classes, learned more terminology than I expected, and passed the written tests. Then came the pool sessions. Scuba requires a surprising amount of gear. Heavy, clunky gear. We lugged tanks, wetsuits, masks, fins, and snorkels into a high school gym pool, and I remember thinking, wow, this is a lot.

Before we knew it, we were in the water. The instructor guided us through a buoyancy check, reminded us to equalize our ears, keep breathing slowly, and asked if we were ready to descend.

I remember that moment clearly. Trusting the training, and the gear. Taking that first breath through the regulator, and realizing it worked. I was underwater. And I was breathing.

The pool was only thirteen feet deep, but the feeling was enormous. Calm, not scary. The noise of the world just dropped away into a unique silence that allowed only the sound of breathing through the regulator, and bubbles. As we floated, and practiced quiet movement through the water, I started imagining where this might take us.

Open water certification dives came next. We chose warm water over a cold quarry and headed to the Florida Keys with our dive shop. Diving in the open ocean for the first time in Key Largo was breathtaking in a way that is hard to explain. I was completely smitten. I was so excited and proud, but also just astonished to enter this world that had always felt closed to me.

As so often happens, the story took a few twists and turns. A health scare that thankfully resolved interrupted our plans, and we didn’t make it to the Maldives. Eventually, we signed up for a group trip to Roatán with our dive shop. It was affordable, well organized, and wonderful. We made new friends, relied heavily on our very patient dive guides, and slowly grew more comfortable underwater. We’ve since taken a few more dive trips, and we hope there are more to come.

Thanks to Cousteau and his fellow pioneers, and major advances in equipment and training, scuba diving shifted from something exotic to something accessible. Still intimidating, but possible.

Sometimes I think back to those old TV shows, to my dad watching Cousteau on our small screen, fascinated by places neither of us thought we would ever see. My dad passed away in 2020, just before all of this began. I regret that I never got to share these experiences with him. He would have loved knowing that Cousteau’s magical underwater world was not quite as distant or unreachable as it once seemed.

It was out there, just waiting.