It’s Never too Late to Fall in Love With Swimming

Opinion|It’s Never too Late to Fall in Love With Swimming

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/opinion/disability-paralysis-swimming.html

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It’s Never too Late to Fall in Love With Swimming

At first, being in water made me feel defeated. Now it’s transformed me.

By Todd Balf

Mr. Balf is an athlete and author who was partially paralyzed in a spine cancer surgery.

April 15, 2021

Credit…Ashley Mackenzie

I took a selfie in front of the locker room mirror before getting in the pool. I was wearing a snazzy new black and red “shortie” wet suit. “Steve Zissou going to work,” I texted my son, referring to the Bill Murray character in a favorite film of ours, Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic.”

I’m 59. I hadn’t swum since my spinal cord injury seven years earlier. Even though I knew other paraplegics found ways to swim, I kept putting it off. “I’m not sure what my relationship is toward water,” I told my neighbor when I declined his invitation a couple of [...]