FLOATING

 

On my swim back from the pylons, an orange capped swimmer zooms past me, his strokes powerful and strong. He doesn’t glance my way, but keeps on churning through the water, kicking up white waves with his feet; he’s like a small motorboat, zipping through the glassy bay.

            I continue to swim back toward the beach; Keller is calm today—no wind, no waves, no kayaks. I spot Ian up ahead, his bright tennis ball yellow-green buoy, Roger, floating behind him. He really has swum out far today, I marvel. As I come up alongside him, I ask him if he saw supper swimmer Orange Capped Man. “Oh, yeah,” Ian says.  “Can’t miss him.”

            I nod, “Yeah, he’s speedy! You ready to swim back to the beach?”
            “Sure, let’s go.”

            I dive back under the water, my head creating a smooth entry for me under the surface. Ian follows albeit at a slower pace. As I turn around to gauge his distance from me, I spy Orange Cap Man churning back toward us already. Wow! He’s swum out and back to the Pylons fast!

            I’ve known some super speedy guy swimmers. Women too. But there’s something about the male stroke, and how that excess of testosterone creates booming energy in the water. Orange Cap Man is definitely full of this male swimmer energy. And as Ian and I barely make it back to shore before he does, I marvel at him.

            “You are so speedy!” I call out, expecting the usual swimmer camaraderie that I’ve found to be so common here at Keller.

            He ignores me.

            No matter, I think. He probably can’t hear me. Or he’s just exhausted after that speedy swim. Undaunted, I holler at him again: “You are SUPER SPEEDY!!!”

            He stops mid-ear water shake out, stares at me for a moment, trying to figure out who I am? What I’m saying? Finally, he replies: “We’re all just floating out there.”

            Huh? What the hell does he mean by that? I mean, he was certainly doing more than floating when he was churning through the water at a gazillion miles an hour. And, when I was out there swimming, sure I was ‘floating’ but I was also working hard to get out to the pylons and back. Though granted, coming back is more floaty. The tides and current and wind are all helping and it sometimes seems like if I were to just ‘float’ it’d be like a swimming conveyor belt carrying me back to the beach. You know, like those walking escalators they have at Oakland airport between terminals?  If you want to, you can just stand there and it’ll carry you the block or so to the other terminal. But if you walk along with its movement, you go super-fast.

            The swim back from the pylons can sometimes feel like this---so maybe this is what he means by “We’re all just floating out there”?

            But to me, floating is less effort, less work, more relaxing, and ethereal.  Like when I was a kid and had my blow-up white swan and I’d climb on her and float around the pool. Or when we would play ‘Dead Bug’ and I and my sisters and dad would all just float around the pool, clutching our beach balls beneath us and letting the gentle breeze push us around the pool.

            Or a balloon floats up into the air after being let go. It climbs up and up and up, red or pink or green in the sky. Some child has let it go during a birthday party. The balloon heads up into the sky; it’s a wistful and sad sight, I think, to see it head up into space that way. Its string dangling down, yearning for the child’s hand that had held it only moments before.

            Or Hillary Swank, on her way to Mars, she and her crew float around inside the spaceship Atlas, the lack of gravity giving them this surreal ability to just float about. They chat as they float,  opening drawers full of space food and plopping it in the space microwave.

            I always feel like I have too much gravity in my life. It’s a heaviness that we all have to contend with. On land, when I walk, it’s an effort; I can trip or stumble or tire. But, in the water, its buoyancy is a euphoric antidote to all this weight. For a time, I am floating, but not. I am also swimming hard to get from one end of the shore to the other, or one end of the pool to the other.

            I am NOT floating.

            So, why did Orange Cap Man say this? Was he just alluding to the lack of wind and waves today? That our swims were less arduous and more floaty than usual? Or was he just being dismissive of my observation? He was just floating---his swim back and forth to the pylons in 25 minutes for the mile-- was just a warm-up to the 26-mile marathon he was gonna run in an hour, or the 75-mile bike ride he was scheduled to ride later that day.

            Who knows?

            But it was a strange thing to say….

            “I thought I saw a fish out there!” a fellow swimmer exclaims to her friend as she dries off. I hear her excitement as I lie under my towel now, trying to get warm.

            “Really?” her friend’s tone dubious.

            “But it wasn’t,” Excited One giggles. “It was just a eucalyptus leaf floating around out there.”

            The both chuckle now, packing up their bags and heading to the showers.

            And I think yes, a eucalyptus leaf is floating but not a fish. A fish, even if it looks like it’s floating, is always moving, searching, swimming. And the group of coots I spied at the end of my swim. They look like they’re floating, but this appearance was deceiving. I tried to catch them, but they swam away from me, their strong quick little paddle feet carrying them out to sea so easily.

   

      

           Floating.

            It’s not something I do when I’m swimming in the bay or the pool. Yes, I’m on top of the water’s surface, floating along, but I’m working hard, continually stroking and kicking.

I’d never get anywhere if I just floated!