Reuniting with an old love

For about a month and half now I’ve been swimming  at the Y.  It feels like I’ve reconnected with a beloved childhood friend that I haven’t seen in ages. It’s been quite the happy reunion.

As a kid I took swimming lessons at an outdoor city pool for a few summers. My mom never learned to swim and she was determined to see that her nine children would.   I wasn’t bothered by the early mornings, the long drive to the pool or the chilly water.  I thought learning to swim was exciting and fun and I progressed quickly to become a competent swimmer and diver.  I didn’t go to pools much after lessons. I played in lakes and in our neighbor’s quarry pond; being able to swim was my ticket to endless water-based fun. I leapt off docks and rafts, I water skied and floated around on giant inner tubes. I’d swim underwater and see how long I could hold my breath. I’d dive endlessly to pick stuff up off the bottom of the lake.

Here I am, at age fourteen in 1973, after competing in my one and only swim meet (in a bikini my mom made for me, no less!).

 

Sadly, there comes a time when most of us stop hurling ourselves off docks and racing our friends to a raft.  By the time I reached college, swimming, aside from the occasional late night skinny dip, had slipped away.  When I vacation on beaches, swimming is more to cool off or to bob around with my son and daughter than actual swimming.

But now, as part of my training to surf, I’m back in the water and really enjoying myself.  It couldn’t have been simpler to just get in and go.  I love the feeling of propelling myself through the water. The rhythm of the strokes is soothing and meditative. The weightlessness and freedom of movement feels wonderful . I always get out feeling better than I did going in.

I do a variety of strokes in no particular order and take short breaks to catch my breath. I started swimming for thirty minutes and am now bumping it up by five minutes every week or so.  At my trainer Jeff’s suggestion, I climb out of the pool every time I’m in the deep end to work my upper body.   No pounding joints, no getting hot and sweaty and, unless there are classes going on (only once so far), wonderfully quiet.   It is the most pleasant and mellow way to work out that I’ve ever experienced.  

How sweet that my new infatuation with surfing has brought me back to an old love. It won’t surprise me if I continue lap swimming for the rest of my life.  It makes me wonder how many other things I’ve forgotten that I love to do. I’ve read that a person’s "core genius" is revealed by the time they are eleven. Could our true passions be revealed by then too? A trip down memory lane to recall and reconnect with the things that delighted us as a child could be a trip well worth taking!