A Swim in the Sea

 

“I’m gonna go swim in that sea today!”

Ian finishes chewing his bagel. “It’s really cold. Are you sure you wanna do that?”
I grin, taking a slug of coffee. “YES! When am I gonna get another chance to swim in the ocean?”

We’re in Santa Cruz, eating breakfast at the little table in our Airbnb off Seabright, the brightly colored walls of peach, lemon and rose surrounding us. A gentle breeze whispers through the open door to the cottage.

            “It’s a perfect day for it,” I continue. “I know the water is cold, but it’s September. It’s warm out! I will be okay.”
            Ian shakes his head. “I dunno….”

            “You don’t have to swim.”

            “Oh, don’t worry. It hadn’t even occurred to me.”
            We chuckle. I remember how he used to swim with me at Keller Cove in Pt. Richmond during the Pandemic. The water there had been SO cold. I had had a wetsuit, but Ian had braved the icy bay without one.

            I finish my coffee, take the plate and cup over to the sink to rinse off.

            “Let’s go before it gets too sunny!” I push.

            “Okay, okay, I’m coming….” he says, chewing the last bite of bagel before heading into the bedroom to collect the beach accoutrements: chairs, towels, umbrellas and fortitude!

 

            Sitting on the sand, slathering on sunscreen, I ponder the sea. It’s calm now, but there’s a swell. I’ll just have to time my entry between waves. I’m not worried about this.

            I am a little worried about the water temp, but I just know that I’ll love it once I’m in. And, I don’t have to swim long. I just want to get wet and fell the buoyancy of the sea.

            As I back into the water, I gasp. It is so goddamn cold! Ian’s on shore, watching me. “You sure you don’t want to join me?” I holler.

            “What?”
            He can’t hear me over the waves, so I just grin and continue to back in, slipping on my fins before diving under the first frigid wave.

            Exhilarating!

            I begin to kick and stroke out beyond the break. Turning on my back once I’m over the waves, stroking quickly to try to keep warm. But knowing that this will be impossible without my wetsuit. I’ll just have to swim a bit and then get out.

            But as I swim, grinning up at the blue blue sky, a flock of pelicans come swooping near me. I continue to stroke on my back when one swoops down near me. He seems to slow, checking me out. If I stretched my arm up just a little further, I could almost touch him.

            “Hello, Mr. Pelican!” I call out.

            He looks at me with his little beady eye. I look at him with mine. We have eye-to-eye interspecies communication for just a split second. I am him. He is me. It’s magical!

            Then he flaps his wings, enormous in their span, and head off to join his flock.

            I turn onto my stomach and start stroking the freestyle, heading back into shore.

 

            “Ian!” I hail him.

            “Carol!” he calls back, running toward me with a towel.

            “Guess what?”
            “What?”
            “I made a friend!”

            “You did?”
            “Yes, a Pelican Friend. We had interspecies communication for a moment.”

            He grins. “Cool!”

            “It was!”

But now I’m shivering. Have to get warm.

            Lying on the towels in the warm sand, the sun’s heat starts to thaw me out. I hear the gulls calling, the waves crashing, some kids screaming.

            It’s a day at the beach. And, I’m so glad I’m here.

           

Buckley

 

“Oh…this isn’t going to work….” Crestfallen, LS gazed down at the huge round bulge in her big black bag mounted on the side of the bike. I couldn’t really see what she was talking about. It just looked like her bike bag. But when she tried to walk the bike a tiny bit in the street, it wobbled.

            We were standing outside the Richmond Swim Center after a horrendously crowded swim. I actually had to circle swim (swimmers will know what I mean; non-swimmers don’t need to know what this is other than it is something heinously undesirable.) And, I had to share the lane with The Creep! Fortunately, the third swimmer was The Nice Man, which is why I chose the lane in the first place. I knew he’d know how to circle swim.

            Oh, this isn’t really important to the story other than to let you know I was exhausted and a bit cranky after navigating the crowded pool for an hour.

            Now as I watched LS try to shift the round weight around in her bike bag to keep herself from toppling over once she got on the bike, I wondered how I could help.

“I don’t think Z understood how getting the watermelon home on the bike was going to be a challenge.” LS sighed softly, shaking her head.

 How did she end up with a watermelon at the pool you might ask? Z, another swimmer, had brought it to the pool and given it to LS. Which was very nice. But, now transport home was a dilemma.

            “Maybe you can put the watermelon in the Fiat and I can keep it for you till tomorrow. You could bring your truck then.”

            “That’s not going to work I don’t think….” Her voice trailed off.

            “I would just give you a ride home but I really have to work this afternoon.”

            “Oh, no, that’s okay. I understand. I’ll figure something out.”

            But we both just continued to stand there staring at her bike bag, stymied by a watermelon.

                        Then, I thought to myself, what the hell. I have till 5 pm to get the work done. It’s only 12:30 or so now. I could help!

            “Let’s just put the watermelon in the Fiat and I’ll drive it to your house,” I offered.

            “Oh, no….really?”
            “Sure, it won’t take long. Besides it’s a good story! Wish I could put you in the Fiat too but you have your bike.”

            “Oh, that’s okay.”

            “Let’s put it on the floor behind the driver’s seat,” I suggested.

            I attempted to push the seat forward. But it was stuck. When was the last time I’d put anything in the back? I couldn’t even remember.

            “Ummm…. okay, I know, let’s just put it on the seat of the passenger side.”

            “Great!” LS lifted the huge heavy dark green fruit out of her bike bag and put it on the front seat next to me.

            “Okay, I’ll just meet you at your house,” I called out as she got on her bike and I pulled out into the street.

 

            Driving down Potrero toward LS’s house in El Cerrito the car alert alarm suddenly went off. You know the sound the car makes when there’s something wrong. I checked my rearview mirror. Had I left the trunk open? I saw no evidence of this. I looked down at my gauges. Was I in Drive? (The other day, I think because of my broken wrist, I hadn’t gotten the car into gear and it has started beeping at me.) But today, I’m in Drive. Was the car overheating? I glanced down at the heat gauges. Nope. All seemed fine.

            As the signal changed, the car stopped beeping. Okay, maybe just a false alarm. But I was nervous now.

            What was wrong with my car?

            Maybe there was an issue with the car and I shouldn’t be driving a watermelon to El Cerrito!

            As I crossed San Pablo, the alarm went off again.

            Damn!

            I drove up a block and pulled over.  What was wrong?

            I glanced over at the watermelon, calmly reposing in the passenger seat. And then it hit me! The watermelon was so heavy that it had set off the seatbelt alert.

            I needed to buckle it in!

            Laughing, I reached around my ‘passenger’ to grab the seatbelt, then pulled it over and snapped in on.

            “There you go! We’re safe now!” I announced. The watermelon looked snug all buckled in.

            I headed down Potrero and made the left on Liberty. The alarm was silent.

            I continued to laugh to myself the 3 or 4 blocks down Liberty till I pulled up in front of LS’s house. Got out of the car and glanced down the street. Here she was, coming up on her bike. Good timing!

            When she got to her house, she walked her bike into the back, as I was bursting to tell her the story of the watermelon setting off the seatbelt sensor alarm.

            She cracked up. Of course. It was a hilarious story. “We should name it!” she suggested.

            As I unbuckled the watermelon, she reached in to retrieve it. “How about Buckley?” I offered.

            “Perfect!” she said, asking me if I wanted to come in for a slice.

            But now I had to go. Work called. But Buckley was home. The Fiat wasn’t broken. And I had plenty of time to do my work.

          In the end,  it had all worked out. Whew! 

         

Stronger?

 

"What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” I think the platitude was meant to ally my complaining about the cold. She even agreed, saying how it was so cold out. Nodding, I joke that it was the middle of August for chrissakes!

As I try to keep my teeth from chattering, I laugh, trying to keep a sense of humor about it. But I am so goddamn cold! The Plunge Pool is always cold, and frankly, I don’t need it. My entire body is shivering. My fingers are little white frozen popsicles. My brain is cranky!

She heads out of the locker-room into the Cold Zone. I wish her luck.

And then think, is it true? That what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger?

Not that I think I’m going to die from swimming at the Plunge, but I am miserable.

Does that make me stronger?

I think not.

I think it just makes me more frail, less robust.

Like my broken wrist this summer. Okay, honestly, there was one point in the emergency room where they had given me some heavy-duty painkillers and then wheeled me to a dark room. On the way, all I saw in my brain were florescent bright images of lime, lemon, and orange coral.

I thought I was dying.

Of course, I wasn’t. Yet, did this belief that I thought I was leaving the planet, and then surviving it, make me stronger?

Maybe. I know that if I hallucinate florescent coral reefs again that I’m not dying. That could be a help in the future if I go through this again.

Which I hope I don’t!

But another part of me is filled with fear and anxiety. I don’t want to go through another bone break. I am afraid of falling again. I walk with trepidation. I move my wrist with ginger care.

It’s not an attitude of strength.

Yet, are there other times where I thought I was going to die and then I reemerged stronger?

The ambulance ride to the Loretta Krankenhaus in Bavaria when I was sure the pain would kill me. It came out of nowhere. A lightning bolt of agony. A doctor came to my bed. Gave me a horse needle full of painkiller.

I survived.

Was I stronger? Perhaps. Years later I can look back on that experience and realize that I am a survivor. I have, at this point in my life, survived cancer and surgeries and other near misses. (Haven’t we all been driving on the freeway when a zooming car comes out of nowhere, cuts us off, and we have to hold our breath and hope they don’t crash?)

So, today, when Linda platitudes me, I have to smile and shrug. In a way, she’s right. After all, I’m still here.

But still. I think the Plunge could turn up the heat! Just a little. For Chrissakes, it is the middle of August!

 

The Struggle Bus

 

“How was your swim lesson?” We’re in the Kennedy High Pool locker room. The two women are bustling to remove their colorful suits: one bright pink with soft rose flowers, the other a vivid Prussian blue solid. I’d seen them in the pool earlier, their radiant suits standing out from everyone else’s black and navy ones. One had her hair piled up like a mountain inside a large black cap --a towering spectacle. The other had her matching fuchsia cap—only a small round hill atop her head.

            They climbed into the pool gingerly, squealing even though they were both at least 50 years old.

            Now we’re getting dressed next to each other in the mayhem that is Saturday morning post swim lesson: screaming children, frazzled moms, laps swimmers trying to get the hell out of there.

            “It was great,” one of the women answered me now, as she pulled on her yellow and orange striped sundress.

            “It looked like you all were having fun,” I respond.

            One of them gave me a look, then laughed. “Oh, we were on the Struggle Bus!” she exclaimed, laughing, her friend nodding.

            The Struggle Bus! I thought to myself. Wow! That is saying a lot about their experience.  It is not lost on me that here I am, a white woman, talking to two Black women, and the connection to Rosa Parks and the struggle for Civil Rights. Is this where the term comes from I wonder?

 But when I think about it, swimming can also be struggle, though of course not comparable to the henious kinds of bigotry and discrimination Black people went through and continue to go through in the US.

But if you're learning to swim as an adult, it’s not a natural thing to be doing; donning a swimsuit and cap and goggles, learning specific motions to move your body through the water. I see how hard it is for many of these learners. How their arms fall flat on the surface of the water, no airplane angle with elbow up whatsoever. And the kicking with its massive splashing starting at the knee instead of the moving from the hip and using your core.

            It is a struggle!

I forget this since the water is my home. I feel so natural in the water, moving through it easily and gratefully. My lightness and ease in the water is what I live for. But I’ve been swimming all my life.

            “Did you swim competitively?” a big tank of a man asked me the next day.

            “Yes.”

            “Me too. When did you learn how to swim?”
            “Oh, I don’t know. I was really little, 4, 5 or 6?”
            “Yeah, me too. Learned down at The Plunge in fact.”

            “I learned at the Sunset Hills Club in La Puente.” I don’t know if this is really true, but it sounds good.
            So when these two women ‘struggle’ to swim, I have so much admiration for them. It takes a lot of courage to learn something new as an adult, particularly something like swimming. There is an understandable fear involved. I mean, you could drown! Not at the Richmond Swim Center, but out in the ocean or the bay.

            Not that anyone goes swimming in the SF Bay except for crazy open water dolphin swimmers that have some sort of nonhuman layer of fat to keep them warm!

            Yet, it’s important to know how to swim, cuz you never know. It’s like all those things that we need to know how to do as an adult: swim, ride a bike, drive a car.

            The women are dressed now, gathering up their swim bags and heading for the door.

            “See you next week,” I call after them.

            “Yes, you will!” they both call back to me in unison.

            I’m sure they’ll be on the Struggle Bus for a few weeks, but I bet the end of the summer, they’ll be off that bus and boarded on another—the I Love to Swim Bus will be waiting for them to climb aboard and float away.

Water Bubble

 

Rushing into the locker room at Kennedy High pool, I’m breathless and late. Thankfully, there is only one woman here today. Roxanne, in her wheelchair, trying to pull a large floral blouse over her head.

            “Hi, how ya doin’?” I ask.

            “Oh, I’m fine. Fine.”

            “How’s the water?”

            She grins, radiantly. “It’s wonderful. I come here and all of me just aches….”

I think how she must have some pretty severe pain to be wheelchair bound. Plus, she’s well over 300 lbs., I’m guessing. Carrying around all the weight must be painful.

            “I know what you mean,” I agree, though any of my aches must be nonexistent compared to hers. Yet who knows? Today, my knee hurts to walk. I’m looking forward to getting in the water to take the weight off it.

            “I get in the water though,” Roxanne continues, “and all those aches just go away. I was talkin’ to some other ladies here and they were saying the same thing.”

            “Yes,” I’m slamming the locker shut now after undressing and cramming my clothes into it. I glance up at the clock. 11:05. The pool closes in 55 minutes and I need to get out there if I’m going to get my swim in. Yet, there’s something about Roxanne today that slows me, pulls me toward her.

            “I need me a water bubble!” she announces, giggling. “I need to have that water around me everywhere I go. I need a water bubble for my life!”

            Delighted, I share her laughter. “A water bubble? Wow! What a great image! I wonder why I haven’t thought of that before.”

            She shrugs. “If I could just keep that water bubble around me all day then I wouldn’t be feeling no aches and pains, you know?”

            “Yes!” I agree. “The water takes them all away.”

            “Exactly!” she exclaims.

            I picture her motoring around the locker room in her wheelchair, the water bubble encasing her in round healing energy. How would this work, I wonder? Would we be able to breathe inside the water bubble or would we have to have a hole for our heads? Maybe we could wear a snorkel inside the water bubble and breathe out that way.

            And the bubble itself. How would it stay round and formed? How could we get it to not burst and flood wherever we are? That would be a mess if you walked into your house in your water bubble and then once you got inside, it burst, flooding the living room with huge gushing waves. Like pregnant women with their water breaking. Though a water bubble would be by its very nature bigger than a pregnant woman’s water.

            I so want a water bubble for my life! I would feel so much better all the time. Just floating inside the bubble would be so magical.

            But for now, I need to get into the pool before it closes. Roxanne has steered her wheelchair into the shower to collect her suit and shampoo. Our conversation done as we each go about our respective business.

            Yet, as I march out of the locker room down the long hallway to the Natatorium, I can help but feel my water bubble starting to form before I’m even on deck.
            My knee stops hurting. I’m feeling less rushed, stressed. The water bubble is working! 

            I wonder if Roxanne’s water bubble is working now too, taking away all of her pain.

            I think the water bubble must be working for her, too, as I float over to the pool, sit down on the deck and slip my fins onto my little watery feet.

   

           

The Conditioner Thief

 

The swim today was hard. I had no energy, but I plowed on. Post swim, I’m very tired, but the shower helped. It always does.  

    Now, I’ve just come out of the bathroom stall after taking my shower. I always leave my suit hanging on the hooks and my shampoo and conditioner bottles on the floor while I’m in the bathroom.

            But today, when I bend down to scoop the bottles off the floor, I notice that the conditioner bottle is ‘squeezed’ in the middle. What? I would never leave it like this. Did someone use some of my conditioner while I was peeing?

            Oh, yes! Of course, Conditioner Woman would! She’s in the shower now and she’s the only one left in the locker room.  

            It hasn’t happened in a while, but there was a period where she’d come into the communal shower and ask me if she could ‘borrow’ a little of my conditioner. At first, I just said, “I don’t have much to spare, so maybe someone else has some.” And she’d go on to the next unsuspecting soapy naked woman in the shower. “Hello? Would you mind if I use a little of your conditioner?”

            Sometimes, a generous patron, such as Alice, would laugh and hand over her big bottle of conditioner: “SURE! Help yourself. I’ve got plenty to spare.”

            But other times, Conditioner Woman had no luck with procuring some product.

            She’d repeat this with me every week: “Hi, do you have a little conditioner that I could borrow?”

            And I got to the point where I’d just glare at her through my soapy face and hiss, “NO!”

            So, today, when I found my conditioner bottle ‘used’ I knew who the culprit was: Conditioner Woman. She had actually waited for me to go to the bathroom and then had stolen some of my conditioner while I was gone!

            I just couldn’t believe it.

            To make it even more awkward, she’s a librarian at the Richmond Public Libraries and I’d talked to her colleague at the Main Branch about doing a reading of my forthcoming novel, Adam and Leonora, this summer. I’d mentioned this to Conditioner Woman a few weeks ago, asking her if she knew her colleague, Alicia Rodriguez, at the Main Branch.

            “Oh, yes, she’s really nice. Let me know what happens with your reading.”

            All perfectly normal and professional and friendly.

            But now, do I have to let her steal my conditioner without saying anything in order to get a reading at the local library?

            This seems a bit far-fetched!

            Today when she came out of the shower, she didn’t make eye contact me. Conditioner Theft Guilt?

            Or simply in a hurry.

            I thought, for a moment, of asking her if I could borrow some conditioner from her. But then thought better of it. I know my pointed humor would probably be lost on her. But it might make her squirm!

            Or could a Conditioner Thief feel remorse? I mean, what’s the big deal anyway? It’s only conditioner, right?

            Right. But it’s the history of this incident that is intriguing to me. I mean, what the hell is her deal? Does she forget it? Does she not have the money for it? Does she just like to steal? For the thrill of it? What if I had come out of the bathroom stall right at the moment she was taking it or putting it back? What would she have done? What would I have done?

            “Hey! PUT THAT DOWN! That’s my conditioner! You can’t have it!”

            Are we 5 years old?

            In any case, I’m not leaving my conditioner on the floor anymore when I go to the bathroom. I’m taking it with me into the stall.

            Does this seem a bit extreme?

            No. I have to protect my conditioner. After all it is expensive. And I don’t want it to disappear without my consent.

            Or as Kenny Rogers sang, “I have to keep track of the condition of my conditioner.”

            Esp when thieving librarians are on the prowl!

Kenny Rogers & The First Edition: Condition

BEAUTY

 

“For me, it’s all about Beauty. About being one with the water….”

LS’s voice drifts off, lost in thought? 

Our small after swim group had been talking about the various approaches to swimming: the zone, the techinique, the beauty?

Of course, this makes sense that LS would  say Beauty. She is, after all, an artist. And artists, at least the ones I know, are all about Beauty. Yet, how does Beauty translate to swimming?

            I think she puts it well—to be one with the water. Of course, this isn’t an uncommon claim. I think it’s the reason I swim---to be one with the water. To be the water. To feel its warm embrace. To float in its gravity free environ.

            Yet is this Beauty?

            I’m more about ‘cute’ than Beauty. In fact, this morning, as I was getting ready to head out to the pool, I was in the locker room, frantically tucking my too long hair in my bright pink cap when a little girl, maybe 4 or 5, and her mom emerged from one of the bathroom stalls.

            I didn’t really pay attention to them, just noticed them from the corner of my eye. But as I was about to put my mask on, the mom smiled over at me and said: “She said for me to tell you that she thinks you’re so cute.”

            OMG! Make my day little girl!

            I turned to her, grinning, and returned the compliment: “You’re so cute too!”
            She gave me a big bright smile and you know what? Here was beauty! The smile of a child that lights up a locker room. And, I was the cause of it!

            They headed out as I headed into the Natatorium, the noisy chaos of swim lessons echoing through the hallway. But I was floating. Even before I got in the pool.

            I couldn’t remember the last time someone had told me I was ‘cute’ except for Ian, of course, and he better!

            It used to be something that I took for granted. Being cute. I had cute hair. A cute nose. Cute feet.

            But beauty?

            I never thought of myself as a ‘beauty.’ There were women that I’ve known who are beautiful: DL, GP, my mom and sisters.

            And of course, when LS had mentioned the ‘beauty’ of swimming later, I don’t think she meant that it was a visual beauty---though, for me, this is part of it. The way the light hits the water as I stroke through it; the way the clouds float through the skylight as I swim backstroke.

            No, beauty in swimming is really that feeling of not being a separate being from the water, but to be the water.

            And sometimes, when I’m swimming (not all the time), I do feel this way. That I’m not separate from the water. My movement through it is easy and graceful and beautiful.

            But today, I’m happy with being ‘so cute’!

            Cuz, frankly, cute can beautiful too, esp when you're five years old and the world is a big beautiful so cute adventure!