swim

I swam aggressively - lurching myself across with all my might. Arms fast, legs kicking straight and hard. Two lengths and I was out of breath.

I watched someone else swim and remembered: swimming is meant to be long strokes, steady and smooth. That the goal is lengthening, pulling. That speed is born of efficiency, when it is done right.

Apparently, I have no muscle memory for the sport. It doesn't come naturally to me. I enjoy the silence, the regularity. I like aligning myself with marks on the pool floor, emptying my head, going across. But, like running, I never lose the sense of the work of it.

I do not slice through the water, torpedo-like and silent. Rather, my arm-paddles slap the surface and work against me. My feet follow, useless nubs attached to weighty logs that connect to my torso, which contributes precious little.

We lived, before here, in south Florida. We were in a townhouse, the giant five of us (though the children were little, littler and littlest). It was on a school campus, a school known for swimming. Pool access was one perk.

In an effort to 'get in shape,' I swam. I did so with a neighbor - my savior and advisor, Cheryl. She had coached swimming for a time in an earlier version of her, and she was amenable to coaching me. She talked me into it, as I recall.

We swam first in the little pool. It seemed safer, but apparently suffered from a chemical imbalance. My arm hairs burned off and my hair turned a frizzy orange shade that sparkled oddly in the sun. Once I got pregnant, I wisely retreated from that pool.

After that baby was born, Cheryl got me out again, coaxing me to move up to the Big Pool. I would tiptoe out of the house at 5:15, ever grateful for my time alone- careful to wake no one. I would vaguely hope Cheryl was not on her stoop, goggles and towel in hand, so I could return to bed guilt-free. Rarely did she comply.

The big pool was Olympic-sized, diving depth, with a disarmingly distant pool floor when peered at through goggles. I never trusted the drop from where my feet could reach to where no feet could reach.

Here, we were coached, at 5:30 in the morning, three days a week. Over time, I got to where I could swim many laps uninterrupted. Always at a pace slower than those around me, with a clumsiness that looked like defiance to the coaches who tried hard with me, to coach.

I sometimes watched, one lane away, young Olympic hopefuls who had traveled from across the globe to train at my side. Inches from me, a Speedo-clad adolescent would barely flutter one chosen body part - an arm, or a leg - and slip effortlessly past me, as I put everything I had into some version of the common freestyle stroke.

When I swam the follow-up rounds of laps tonight, some of the coaching came back. Head down, aligned, look at the bottom of the pool. Lead with one arm, pull with the other, meet in the middle. Pull arm in the water as far as possible until hand passes the waist.

I felt the difference, and swam four more lengths, mostly uninterrupted. I dusted off faint instructions found on the shelves of my back-brain, and again tried to follow them.

Feeling like an eight-year-old, I looked around for someone to watch me, tell me my movements made some sense. Shout, "good job!"

I need to remember, once I get past tonight's insomnia, sleep, and wake again... to apply this metaphor to other things. Now, smelling faintly of pool chemicals at 2:30 in the morning, I remind myself: slow down. Take long strides. Head down. Lead, pull. Be patient. Don't imagine that work = speed, or efficiency. Be deliberate in actions: each time through is a chance for improvement.

Borders

I wonder, at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning, where this post will land.

I am awake, again and still. No real reason why. My brain hasn't fixed on one thing, the thing that has me awake and troubled - rather it flits through things. Page after page of small anxiety: there is a perpetual laundry basket on my unfurnished bedroom's floor, my office has some papers that have been on the desk a year, our garage is a bit too full of unfiltered clutter, and Annabeth didn't read enough this summer.

A couple of undisciplined hours of non-musing of that sort, and I found myself here. I went through phone pictures and came upon this one, from the summer. Mid-summer, with family, on the Bay, that I wrote about in July. I like it.

It looks like change, this picture. The green of grass, the brown of cut wheat. It looks like human imprint on nature, of protected agricultural space in an area near water - always in danger of being over-developed. It looks, to me, like quiet and someone else's property line (which I know it to be), and it looks like 8:30 in a morning with no real agenda and a desire to push through to the end of a run (also, which I know it to be.)

As of Wednesday of this week, the rest of us will all have Somewhere to be. The older two start school - with backpacks too loaded for their size and homework assignments. Expectations - theirs for a new year, and those thrust upon them by the rest of us. First and fourth grades. Lofty stuff.

Gavin will minister guidance and reassurances to the older set at the same school- those anxious to leave, and the parents that watch them go. I will marvel at that process and wonder about when our kids are that age - if knowing the college process, if being on the periphery of so many teenagers (between football and college counseling... around 100/year... for 20 years - give or take - thousands of kids...) will make it any easier for us when ours matriculate.

Of course, it won't. Not really.

For my littles, it is the special new that is the beginning of a school year. The new that is specific to elementary school: sharpened pencils and book bags with zippers that still stick a little. Scuffless shoes, and sharp haircuts. Skin still warm from extra sun. Brains that fell so easily into not-so-much, now creakily trying to grab hold of words from new teachers' mouths. School lunches on little green trays at weird hours of the morning. Friends not seen in months to whisper to from desks still perfectly ordered.

They all just live here. And for those parents of now teens, their kids live there for even shorter. The littles - more and more as they grow - believe themselves to be wholly separate from us. We know different.. but for this to work, we have to pretend we agree with their version of things.

We are all of us always on the edge of something. For me now, the edge of sleep. The edge of another day. The edge of a new week, and the edge of a new year. The periphery of other lives led, influencer and influenced. I will shuffle them off to school at 7:30 each day. And for a few days - the silence will alternately welcome and confuse me.

Onward.