Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Features

Healing water

The shackles of life are no match for Miss Edie and her YMCA pool, where unpleasant things seem far, far away.

By LANE DEGREGORY
Published June 18, 2006

[Times photos: Lara Cerri]

Miss Edie is 68, but she has no intention of slowing down. How can she? People are waiting to get a spot in one of her classes.

	Edie Christiansen helps Barbara Marie Smith, 80, a former dancer, exercise her legs. Barbara, who was partially paralyzed on the right side by a stroke, has been working with Edie for eight years. It’s the only time all day that she’s able to leave her wheelchair behind and look another adult in the eye.

ST. PETERSBURG -- They ease themselves into the pool slowly, one arthritic ankle, one replaced hip at a time. Most wade down the ramp in the shallow end, clutching the handrail.The water is warm: 86 degrees. Miss Edie makes sure. She checks the temperature every morning when she opens the indoor pool at the YMCA. If it’s too cold, the babies’ lips turn blue and her seniors’ joints don’t loosen the way they should.

“Okay, spread out, arms extended,” Miss Edie calls to the 32 people in the pool. “It’s time to start stretching.”

Many of these people are regulars. The 96-year-old man and his 85-year-old wife come three times a week. And that woman in the blue bathing cap never gets her face wet; her makeup is always perfect.

Miss Edie doesn’t wear makeup. Her face is lined, her graying hair cropped short. Her only concession to vanity is a monthly manicure.

“Okay, now head turns side to side,” she says. She does every movement with them. “Hands behind your neck, bend elbows in, and out.” She has them twiddle their thumbs, circle their fingers, stand on their toes. Motions people can’t do on land are possible when water eases the stiffness and helps hold them up.

Miss Edie calls this class “Happy Hinges.” Anyone who can get into the pool unassisted is welcome. For some people, it’s the only time they get out of their homes. To others, it’s a social hour. Mostly, though, it’s about movement.

By 2 p.m., Miss Edie has everyone pumping their legs as if they were pedaling bikes, singing “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do.” Her low alto is the loudest voice of all. “Okay, now, give yourselves a round of applause,” she says. “You all did a great job.”

She’s tired. Her left foot, the one she almost lost, is throbbing. She’d like to dry off, get some Gatorade, sit down for a few minutes.

But Barbara is waiting.

***

Edie Christiansen has been working in the water for 50 years. Infants and toddlers, teenagers and triathletes, frightened adults — Miss Edie helps them all. Her oldest success story is a 94-year-old woman who came to the pool wearing water wings and had never put her head underwater. After an hour, Miss Edie had her dog-paddling in the deep end.

She can tell, just by looking, whether someone is going to sink or float. She holds up the sinkers, shows the floaters how to breathe. By keeping her hands under them and her voice calm, she gives folks the confidence to face their fears.

In the last year alone, more than 800 people have taken Miss Edie’s classes. She runs the YMCA’s swim team, teaches scuba and snorkeling, canoe paddling, synchronized swimming, water rescue. She spends more time in the pool than at her bungalow on Coquina Key.

She also works with people who are paralyzed, victims of strokes and accidents, people with muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy. She rolls them into the water in wheelchairs, lifts them out and carries them to the ladder. She pulls men twice her size across the pool.

She knows how hard it is when your body won’t work. Last year, after knee surgery, an infection spread through Miss Edie’s left foot. Doctors told her they’d have to amputate it. For months, while she was doing rehab, she taught her swim classes from a wheelchair parked on the side of the pool.Miss Edie is 68, a great-grandmom. Her son and daughter worry she’s working too hard. They keep begging her to slow down.

“How can I?” Miss Edie keeps asking. Waiting lists are filled with people who want to take her classes. She’s teaching a one-armed boy to swim straight, helping an elderly nurse relearn the side stroke.

Other things drive her, too. Things Miss Edie doesn’t like to admit — even to herself.

***

“Oh, Barbara, you look so pretty. You got a new bathing suit, didn’t you?” Miss Edie says.Barbara Marie Smith is in a wheelchair by the shallow end. She’s wearing a one-piece swimsuit splashed with blue and yellow flowers. The left side of her mouth is smiling.

“I noticed it when you came through that door,” Miss Edie says, unlocking the brakes on Barbara’s chair. “You look lovely.”

Barbara is 80. She doesn’t talk much, since the stroke. She’s partially paralyzed on her right side.

In the eight years Miss Edie has worked with Barbara, she has asked about Barbara’s husband, kids and grandchildren. She heard about Barbara’s heyday. And her dream.

Sometimes, when Miss Edie is introducing Barbara, she slips and mixes hope with history.

“This beautiful lady was a Rockette,” she tells a woman at the pool. She straps a 5-pound weight around Barbara’s right leg so it won’t float. “She danced in New York, years ago.”

Barbara smiles at the stranger, shakes her head. Very slowly, carefully forming each word, she explains. “I wasn’t really a Rockette. Back then, they didn’t let girls like me in the Rockettes.” She stops to catch her breath. “But I danced in all the colored clubs — every one from Manhattan to Miami.”

“And you can still do a mean high-kick,” Miss Edie says. She turns Barbara’s back against the wall, props her right arm on the side of the pool. Barbara wraps her left arm around Miss Edie’s shoulder, chorus-line style. Miss Edie counts off, “Five, six, seven, eight.”

There beside the twisty slide, in the warm water of the YMCA pool, the two great-grandmothers each pull off three high-kicks.

***

Her granddad. The bodies she found. Living in a tent.

Miss Edie doesn’t like to talk about those things.

She’d rather tell you about the 42 years she taught school, the last 32 at Clearview Elementary. Or the Sunday school classes and Girl Scout troops she led.

But if you ask her about swimming —  when she first got in the water, why she pushes herself so hard at the pool — she’ll sigh and shake her head, insist she’s nothing special. Then she’ll share snippets of her story.

As a child, Edie lived in Ohio, but she spent half of every year in St. Petersburg. Her dad managed the Magnolia Hotel, which stood near the open-air post office. Edie and her brother would deliver linens and meals to the elderly residents. Even as a girl, she enjoyed hearing older folks’ tales, learning who they once were.

One day when she was 6, Edie’s grandfather took her to the beach by John’s Pass. Neither of them could swim. They were wading in the knee-deep surf when a wave hit them, and the undertow swept them away from shore. Edie still remembers struggling to the surface, sputtering saltwater, screaming for her grandfather.

Someone finally pulled them to safety, but her grandfather was in a coma for a week. When he recovered, Edie’s mom put her and her brother in swim lessons.The bodies and tent didn’t come until much later.

***

Sunlight streams through the wide windows of the pool room, striping the water with shadows. The air is sharp, laden with chlorine. Miss Edie doesn’t notice. Her world has always smelled like this.

In the shallow end, she’s holding Barbara up, helping her slowly stride across the pool. It’s the only time all day Barbara is upright, able to look another adult in the eye.

“Okay, you’re doing great,” Miss Edie says. “Another two laps and I’ll let you try it on your own.”

Barbara’s left eye widens. She hasn’t taken a step on her own in 10 years. “You’re ready,” Miss Edie tells her. “The water will support you. And I’ll be right here.”

Before Miss Edie took over, the YMCA called this class “Special Needs.” Miss Edie changed the name to “Moving Forward.”

Barbara crosses the pool two more times, then leans against the ladder. Miss Edie steadies her, lets go and takes four steps backward. She stretches out her arms, beckoning Barbara.

“You can do this.”

***

Kids started calling her Miss Edie when she was in college at Kent State, where she taught her first swim lesson. She was 18, lifeguarding, learning to scuba dive. Her freshman year in college, she married a fellow diver; they later adopted two children.

As a young woman, Miss Edie volunteered as a rescue diver in Ohio. The worst case she worked involved a drunk who drove off a bridge with his two daughters strapped in the back seat. The man lived. Miss Edie spent two weeks in the icy Ohio lake, searching for the girls. After she helped haul their bodies to the surface, she quit the team and started concentrating on teaching swimming and lifesaving: survival skills.

In 1969, Miss Edie’s first marriage ended and she moved her children south, back to the banyan trees and sailboats and blue, blue water of St. Petersburg.

She didn’t have money or a place to stay. So with two toddlers in tow, she drove to Fort De Soto campground. For months, they lived in a tent.

Her first husband forced her to be independent, she says. She’s still trying to forgive her second one. He’s part of the reason she spends so much time at the pool.

***

Miss Edie doesn’t think much about the metaphors of water: the sanctity of the womb, baptism, rebirth.

She just knows how much better people feel when they’re in the pool. Water is healing, she says. It makes you free.In the shadows of the shallow end, she tells Barbara again, “You can do this. You’re ready to walk.

”This time, Barbara nods. Slowly, gingerly, she slides her left foot along the pool floor. She staggers slightly. Miss Edie reaches toward her. But Barbara rights herself in the waist-deep water. She drags her limp right leg in front of her.

“Good. Great,” Miss Edie says. “Keep coming.”

Grimacing, Barbara lifts her left foot and lunges forward. Three whole steps. Then she falls onto Miss Edie, who catches her in a hug.

***

Miss Edie’s second husband was the maintenance man at the YMCA. He didn’t swim well, she says, didn’t really want to learn. His first wife had died, so Miss Edie raised his four children along with her two, in the bungalow on Coquina Key where she still lives.

In 1992, when Miss Edie’s husband was in his 60s, he ran off with an 18-year-old girl. Miss Edie’s children were grown and gone by then. So she started spending more time in the water.

At the pool, she never stops moving. She’s surrounded by children, old friends, people who need her. At home, there’s only her old Australian cattle dog, Bandit. He waits for her every night by the door.

***

It’s dark outside when Miss Edie finally finishes teaching. She’s the last one to pull herself out of the pool.

“Good night,” she calls to two lifeguards who are leaving. “Be careful.

”Limping, shivering, Miss Edie crosses to the maintenance room and shuts off the pumps. She drains the hot tub, then climbs in and scrubs its sides.

At 9:25 p.m., an announcement blares through the loudspeakers. “Attention members: The YMCA will be closing in five minutes.

”Miss Edie turns out the lights, locks the locker rooms. She grabs her T-shirt and shorts from the office and pulls them over her wet bathing suit — no time for dry clothes.

“Good night, Miss Edie,” the security guard calls.

“Good night,” Miss Edie says, dripping down the hall. “See you in the morning.”

Lane DeGregory can be reached at (727) 893-8825 or degregory@sptimes.com.

[Last modified June 17, 2006, 11:38:24]