My Dirty Little Secret

Lida & Maurice Weidenthal 1911

   There are photos of my grandmother Lida and my grandfather Maurice romping in the water in the strangest kind of swimming attire. Defying simple description. There was my Dad hanging from a tree limb over the beach, playing some kind of ball with the others and running in the the water.

  I cannot identify the day my body and my mind become completely obsessed with the need to swim.  Not the ordinary, once a week “let’s go the beach” kind of need. That’s controlled, modified by weather, where you happened to be, one’s mood etc. This is uncontrollable. I need to do it every day. The circumstances are irrelevant. Much more scary, much more psychologically mysterious.

  I certainly wasn’t addicted when I was a kid. I had ear trouble, and kept away from the water much of my youth.  When I went to Cumberland pool as a youngster, my friends would jump off into the deep end.  I would timidly approach the three feet, splash around pretending that I knew what I was doing, and then return to the safety of the deck and hide behind a book or something. 

Me and my twin sister Margaret

  Not that I didn’t love the beach and the idea of being in water.  That always appealed to me, from the day I splashed out of my mothers womb hanging for dear life onto my twin sister’s big toe.

   In an earlier article I mentioned my going swimming with my Dad at Twin Lakes.  (That, by the way, might be the key to this whole matter, Dr. Freud.)   Later it was going to Cedar Point with my mother and members of my family.  I loved the beach and the sun. I recall screaming when mother decided one year that we had to leave Cedar Point because I got sick and was running a fever. I was furious. I loved the beach. I loved the shallow water. The smell of it. The feel of it…but I was too young then to call it an addiction.

  This whole matter might indeed be genetic. Handed down through the DNA from my father’s family.  Not long ago I came across a hundred year old family photo album.

Aunt Babette (kneeling top left) and friends at the beach  1911

Almost all the photos were taken in the summers of 1910 and 1911 at the cottage on the beach called “Willowdale”, the English translation of Weidenthal.  It was located at Villa Beach just west of Euclid Beach around 152^nd and Lake Shore Blvd. There the family and many of their friends spent the summers at the cottage rented annually by my grandfather.

Babette 1910

  Photos show Dad's attractive sister Babette, with her many boyfriends.  The photo book was literally photographs from the beach from beginning to end.  So maybe I simply inherited the need.  But laying blame on inheritance is no cure. Not for me.

  Looking back I remember when my friend Tom and I drove drove his sister Nancy to Providence, Rhode Island for her first year at Brown in 1947.  We visited Boston and Harvard Square where Tom and I recklessly devoured sizable a bag of freshly fried clams.  As we headed east toward the Cape I became very sick.  I mean, extremely sick.

  Just as we crossed the Bourne Bridge over the Cape Canal, we spotted through the fog, a small beach. I struggled into my suit and dragged my sickly body into the water. Within minutes, it seems, as I remember it, I was magically cured. We stayed for a week or more enjoying our days on the beach, and ventured regularly in the water.  But to this day I have never eaten a single clam since, beach or no beach.

  The obsession seemed to take on a life of its own when I began working downtown in very stressful environment, a daily newspaper, not exactly like you saw in the movies, but similar.  125 people in one room. Screaming to each other about deadlines, fatal accidents, shootings, political scandal, and deadlines, eight of them a day from eight a.m. until four. Tense, you might say. An understatement.

  Well, I joined the downtown "Y" at E. 22nd and Prospect.  It had a nice pool and steam room. Virtually every day, no matter what was breaking, I managed to sneak away, hop in my car and drive to the "Y", undress and make my way to the pool. (Undress literally. It was men only and for years we swam naked…no women allowed. When PC caught up to us, we all had to buy suits, so as not to upset the ladies.)

  With a swim, an encounter with the steam room where all kids of guys hung together every day, a soup and sandwich, then back to the office a new man.  Creative, enthusiastic and ready to be promoted to top dog.

  One particular challenge stands out.  During the nearly five years that I covered the desegregation trial of the Cleveland Public Schools, Judge Battisti had this habit of carrying proceedings well into the noon hour.  I managed to work out a deal with the judge’s baliff and the guy from the Plain Dealer to fill me when I returned refreshed after my swim, steam and lunch. I was much better prepared to write the complex story for the next day.

  Traveling on vacation in those day was a serious problem. We could never book a motel without a pool.  Not long ago when my family and I were traveling back from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, I decided, since we had two cars, that I would spend the night at a Hampton Inn in Pennsylvania, while the others went on home.  They had a pool, of course. That goes with the trademark. But this one was outdoors.  It was in the 50’s outside and the pool was not heated. I was cautioned that it might be uncomfortable.  Totally out of control, I got into my suit, plunged into the water and swam until my fingers began to freeze.  Even a hot shower couldn’t  stem my shivering. Two weeks later, back home, I was diagnosed with Pneumonia.

   Another intriguing clue. Much earlier in life, my wife Grace and I and another couple, booked a room on the French side of the island of St. Martin, in the magnificent and very blue Atlantic. It was really French, at the Corolita, which we booked because it was the cheapest on that part of the island. Owned by a French doctor who specialty was injecting aging patrons with a fluid concocted from sheep gonads, assuring them a long and healthy life.  The place had a precious few more "normal" and English speaking guests. One of them was an attractive and extremely well endowed young woman who turned out to be a fellow journalist, a movie critic from the New York Post.  She was topless as most were, here in this Caribbean island of paradise. Well, she jumped into the water at the pool, and I joined her, allegedly feeling the need to talk shop and compare the Cleveland Press to the New York Post.  Those who were there testified later, that no two human beings ever swam as many laps together as I and my new found topless colleague.  I emerged, as I recall, totally (intellectually) stimulated when it was over. Others may decide decide whether this event contributed to my growing addiction to lap swimming.

   Living as a addict became a bit simpler when I took on a job at the at the downtown headquarters of the local community college. I was basically my own boss and most could easily break way at noon, unless we had what the ultimate boss called the “executive cabinet” meeting” that would often start at 9 and go on into the lunch hour. (No bathroom breaks.) At times I had to feign illness, a prostate problem, or an important appointment in order to slip away, as the boss, who was the ultimate control freak, glared at me.

   This unforgiving need follows me to this very day,  I mean this very day.  As I read this, my mind wanders to the swim club, which I will visit momentarily.  Whatever ails me will magically slip away and I will be ready to take on the world and be nice to people, smile a lot and face the world.

  What is clear from all this is that I am helplessly drowning in an addiction over which I have no visible control. 

  Please Dr. Phil, tell me what I should do before it is too late.