Even though I wake up tired this morning, and all I want to do is sit on the couch and let the kids run wild, I pack my swim bag and the kids and we head out. Even as I drop Audrey and Colton at childcare, I tell myself it's ok to just get a coffee and sit in the lounge. But I go to the locker room and change, and think "I'll just sit in the hot tub for a while." But I walk across the pool deck and watch the still water as I tuck my hair into my cap. "Just swim a 50," as I slip into the cold water.
I swim 50 yards, then 100, then 200, then 1,000. I swim. I swim. I swim.
Even though I took a twelve year break, I swim, now, because I am a swimmer. Even though I am recover from a shoulder injury, I swim because I am a swimmer. My shoulder is weak and my arm hesitates and seeks the path of least resistance and cannot keep up with the rest of my body and I push forward because I am a swimmer. Its cold outside and cold in the water and I swim. Nobody watches and nobody times me and I swim. I swim because I am a swimmer.
Showing posts with label In the Pool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label In the Pool. Show all posts
3.31.2014
10.17.2013
Circle Swim - Part II
When I enter the pool, I feel, sometimes, like I'm swimming against time.
There is, always, the time I have to pick up the kids. Because of our schedule, I usually have an hour and fifteen minutes to swim and shower before I have to retrieve the kids from childcare. That means I have to swim at a quick pace. No time to hang out at the wall. Just a minute to chat in the locker room. Certainly not like high school swim practice.
There is the pace clock, clicking seconds by. If you must know, 50 yards free on the :55 and 200 yards IM on the 4:30 (heaven help me!).
Then there is a life time. My life seems written in my body and the story exposed when I swim. My breaststroke kick tells of the asymmetry in my hips, seemingly born with and DQ'ed in every breaststroke race swam since the age 8. There is the weakness in my left arm. Will my shoulder ever recover fully from it's dislocation ten years ago? And then the literal separation of my abdominal muscles, the result of two pregnancies. Who thinks of their abdominal muscles, until they are gone? Or until doing flip turns. Mine, repairable only by (elective) surgery, so says my doctor.
Time can be a mirror, reflecting who I was into my present. Perhaps there is some way swimming may erase the passage of time? Circling myself back to the speed and strength I once had? If I just swim fast enough.
There is, always, the time I have to pick up the kids. Because of our schedule, I usually have an hour and fifteen minutes to swim and shower before I have to retrieve the kids from childcare. That means I have to swim at a quick pace. No time to hang out at the wall. Just a minute to chat in the locker room. Certainly not like high school swim practice.
There is the pace clock, clicking seconds by. If you must know, 50 yards free on the :55 and 200 yards IM on the 4:30 (heaven help me!).
Then there is a life time. My life seems written in my body and the story exposed when I swim. My breaststroke kick tells of the asymmetry in my hips, seemingly born with and DQ'ed in every breaststroke race swam since the age 8. There is the weakness in my left arm. Will my shoulder ever recover fully from it's dislocation ten years ago? And then the literal separation of my abdominal muscles, the result of two pregnancies. Who thinks of their abdominal muscles, until they are gone? Or until doing flip turns. Mine, repairable only by (elective) surgery, so says my doctor.
Time can be a mirror, reflecting who I was into my present. Perhaps there is some way swimming may erase the passage of time? Circling myself back to the speed and strength I once had? If I just swim fast enough.
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