중학교 영어 3 (NE능률 김성곤) 연계 글

My grandmother grew up in a mountain village, but she never learned to swim. As a girl, she was too busy looking after her four younger brothers. While the other children played in the stream, she watched them from the bank. Last March, a week after her seventieth birthday, she signed up for a swimming class.

The class meets every Saturday morning at the public pool near our apartment. She was so nervous on the first day that I went with her. Most of the other students were young enough to be her grandchildren. The pool is only twenty-five meters long, but it looked as wide as the sea to her. What frightened her most was putting her face in the water. Each time she tried, she came up coughing and grabbed the edge of the pool.

Her coach, Ms. Heo, never hurried her. For the first month, Grandma only blew bubbles and practiced floating on her back. At home, she lay on the living room floor and kicked her legs during the evening news.

Grandma has been taking lessons for eight months now. I have been going with her every Saturday since that first morning. Lately, she has been practicing in the deep end, where her feet cannot touch the bottom. Last Saturday, she swam the length of the pool four times without stopping. She climbed out breathing hard, but she was smiling. "What I love now is the quiet under the water," she said.

I quit swimming lessons at nine because I hated getting water in my nose. What Grandma wants to do next is swim in the sea with me next summer. So last week, I joined the teenagers' class, which meets right after hers. Now she watches me from the bench and cheers louder than anyone else.