A compulsory swim lesson at Friday Mountain, a sleepaway camp in the Hill Country outside of Austin, Texas. The counselor posed me at the edge of the pool, where the shallow end slanted into the deep, told me to curve my arms over my head like a swan's neck, one hand pressed on top of the other, to bow my head as in prayer and fall forward. When I hit bottom, the thud had a stifling thickness to it, which stayed inside my skull long after the shock of the impact. I inhaled water, kicked and clawed my way to the surface, and dragged myself choking and crying onto the side of the pool, where the counselor applied pressure to my head, to stop the bleeding.
An afternoon at the beach in Manzanillo, Mexico, with my mother and her beloved friends, known to me as Tío Jorge and Tío Lalo....
