floating
swimming still brings me peace
It’s my final foot, and I let go and put my head back like a pillow, and I’m floating.
I’m floating, I’m floating!
Can I tell how miraculous it is to float?
Can I tell you how it’s a wonder of wonders, and I’m so lucky that she is still mine?
I am sleeping but awake. I just want to lie here forever.
All limbs up. Head all the way back. I move slightly to stay floating and then a bit more of a kick. I want to yell in excitement like “I got the new move” I got in my swimming lesson. But there is no teacher. Only me.
I thumb up my sister-in-law and her mother. I told my niece, who was barely taking a breath between dives for the rings. Smiles all around.
Do you know, I just want to lie there until the sun sets, and I watch the moonlight and the stars and have a slumber party until sunrise again?
The liberation comes to me is unlike anything else: I do not need to worry about my right leg. I can just be. The in-and-out pins and needles, some numbness, that go in and out are gone.
I can finally be.
Acupuncture works on this weekly, and I noticing a difference but its always there. The worry.
Swimming is still mine. I have lost so many things, maybe momentarily, maybe briefly, maybe a bit longer, and other things we don’t know.
When I was 4 or 5, my parents took me to my local Boys and Girls Club for lessons. And I didn’t move from the wall. Didn’t budge. For a week, I stayed there.
My parents decided to try something else; my mother was a swimmer of swimmers, while my dad had been thrown into a pool to swim on vacation. They wanted to ensure I got it. They bought me an above-ground pool, and I will basically lived there.
Surprised to learn that I was cold in the early lesson. Whenever there is a free moment, I’m swimming. Swimming throughout, flips, games, my dad would make it this huge whirlpool, and because I was so small, I would get the benefits. The circle he left behind and me: drifting. We basically centered everything on swimming. Cousins and a friend would come over to swim, the main attraction. We would swim for hours.
I went to a Boys and Girls club in the evening (on warmer days) taking lessons. I went for a free swim there. In the summer, I was at my pool or the Boys and Girls Club. When I got a bit older, the one place I was allowed to ride my pink schwinn since it was just down the street. I had my swatch watch to tell me when to come back and we used to trust kids a bit to live.
I remember eating a big bowl of Wheat Thins as I was getting home with my sun tea made by mom. The salt on the side of the cracker was large and the sun tea made more refreshing since better brewed in sun. I have lost all the salt out in my sweat off my playing in the pool for hours. Always made me so hungry.
I learned the final stroke in 4th grade when I joined the swim team. Swim practice was so hard. It always was. You basically are working out and holding your breath.
Seriously. I had slept so easily those days.
And I got my first job. Lifeguarding. I ended up teaching those kids who sat on the wall. Spent 5 summers teaching 3-year-olds to adults.
It never changed as I wanted to get in a pool, ocean, lake, or river. I am always jumping in.
So today in the county of Orange, I am so happy to announce just at 2 months out (from stroke), and I am swimming!
After floating, I started breast stroke, the up and down, and legs learned choreograph and then freestyle. I swim across this pool, breathing every 3rd breath.
Swimming has always brought in peace.
A peace I only feel in a relationship with water.
And I found out I still have it.
Swimming is also my happy place. I am so happy you have those beautiful waters to support you!