The Hate and the Love of Swimming

The summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I joined a neighborhood league swim team with my friend Laurie. The coach was evil. We had to compete in all the events, regardless of our, say, slow, incompetent, ziggy zaggy backstroke. I hated our coach as much as I hated my Algebra II teacher. Why couldn't I just specialize in the Australian crawl, an elegant, four-stroke-breathe, four-stroke-breathe I'd learned from my Mamaw?

Swimming in a sea of rock and roll.

I remember three things about being on this team. I remember the chlorine-stinky-green tint to my then very blonde hair. I remember being the dork who lost my team's impressive lead in a relay when I swam my clumsy, awkward butterfly. And I remember failing to show up for the NBA Playoffs of Summer Swim League because Laurie and I had tickets to a Day on the Green music festival. Journey! Eddie Money! Bryan Adams! NIGHT RANGER! A teenage girl has priorities, you see.

I loved Steve Perry. I mean LOVED.

After that, I avoided swimming pools for 30 years, making my forays into water the lake, river, and ocean variety. I developed a preference for boats and skis and boards, fins and tanks and snorkels, over actually swimming.

And then, last fall, in chronic pain from my neck to my feet, I visited an arthritis specialist for a thorough exam. Diagnosis: osteoarthritis and fibromyalgia. Reduce the high impact exercises I was doing five times a week down to once. Medication was offered. Me: "I don't want to go that route." Doctor: "I respect that. You'll find relief from regular massages, eating lots of leafy green vegetables, and soaking in Epsom salts. For exercise, try some gentle yoga. Oh. You've got to keep up your cardio. How about swimming?"

Swimming? Are you kidding me? Sure, I'll do yoga and stretch out on a massage table listening to new age ocean sounds. I'll sit in the bathtub sipping a kale smoothie. But I'll call myself an arthritic, fibromyalgic wussy girl and quit cardio altogether before I'll get in a chlorine-stinking swimming pool again.

When a smart friend suggested that I quit identifying myself as my syndromes, and I remembered that I'm an insane lunatic stressed out freakazoid if I don't get regular cardio, I joined a gym and reluctantly took up swimming. At first, I could manage six heart-thumping lengths, gasping for breath at the end of each one like I'd just run up the side of Kilimanjaro. Wait - haven't I been doing aerobic exercise vigilantly for the last five years? It sure didn't feel like it.

Sanctuary.

Now I swim 24 to 30 (and even, one time, 50) lengths with gusto. My hair, the white blonde having evolved into that odd array of 17 shades, hides the green. I enjoy the chlorine smell left on my skin for hours afterwards - it reminds me of how I feel when I'm swimming. Graceful. Elegant. Swimming is a meditation. There's the counting and the quiet, no sound except the drumbeat rhythm of my kicking feet, the bubbling of my exhalations, the welcome intake of breath.

I am not arthritic and fibromyalgic. I am a swimmer. I am an athlete. I am glad Coach made us learn all the strokes 30 years ago. While there will never be a butterfly in my routine, I do swim all the others. I can even backstroke in a straight line by staying present, in tune with my surroundings.

Don't Stop It

I’ve wondered for a long time why I feel so genetically programmed to persist in taking on physical challenges with each passing decade.

My original personal trainer.

My father is entirely to blame.

He took my training wheels off before I was ready. I failed swim class and was made to re-take lessons until I passed. Then learn to water-ski - slalom - by age 9. In the garage, with a punching bag, he taught me how to box. Not to be a fighter, but to “hit once, make it count, and run like hell.”

As a teen, I had to ride my ten-speed to the tops of mountains with him. (His mantra: “Don’t stop till you get to the top.”) He took me down double diamond runs at Squaw Valley and Heavenly, my skis attacking moguls in awkward, ungraceful bounces marked by tears and gnashing of teeth.

Game for a single ski. Not really.

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that once I graduated high school I’d rebel like a normal person? Oppose my father’s oppressive ways – lead a sedentary life, become a pear-shaped computer programmer or the slacker star of a Richard Linklater film? 

But no: the avid, near rabid quest to mountain bike, snowboard, surf, and sail offshore marked my 20s and 30s like permanent tattoos. When the going got tough, I'd catch myself inadvertently singing, Don't stop till you get to the top to the beat of Michael Jackson's Don't Stop Till You Get Enough.

My early 40s involved an uphill battle to complete a marathon. As I neared the finish line, a 75-year-old man sprinted past me. Then a woman with prosthetic legs flew by. I won’t tell you my finish time, but the volunteers were disassembling barriers as I hobbled along muttering my father's hymn.

(Side note about the 40s: You finally have the stamina and attention span to do tackle endurance activities while your body screams, "Why didn't you do this when you were 20?")

My late 40s are lately consumed with motorcycling, which I never thought could ever be as difficult as single track mountain biking. Now I know. I have a lot to learn. And it's harder than I thought it would be. On the other hand, it's just another mountain to climb. Dad's voice is in there saying, Don’t stop till you get to the top. The man is 80, still lifting weights and running - half of his three-mile route uphill. Don’t stop till you get to the top. 

I can’t actually see this mythical land of finales he's been referring to my whole life. All I know is that stopping before I get there won't ever be an option.

Take It Off, Take It All Off

Belly fat? What's that?

Here's something I haven't done in more than 40 years: stripped off my clothes and run through the sprinkler in my backyard.

And why not? When I was about 3, I loved to go out in my one-piece bathing suit, where I'd turn on a hose to fill a bucket, get a drop or two of water on my suit, and then strip it off like it was on fire. I can't remember much about my third year of life, but I do recall how great it felt to pull that swimsuit off and scamper freely, all alone.

The other day it was 90 degrees and as I rode my motorcycle home from work, I got stuck for an agonizing three minutes at a stoplight. (A couple of weeks ago, foregoing the leather, I  purchased a textile jacket I believed to be perfect for summer riding. It might be - for summer riding in northern Alaska.)

At home I ripped the jacket off in the driveway, removing my helmet as I stomped into the house, gasping. I let the dog out and hopped after him, one-legged, as I tugged off first one boot, then the other. Removing my socks only made the rest of me jealous of my feet. So blue jeans, t-shirt, even bra soaked from that stint at the stoplight all fell to the grass like leaves from a tree in the breeze.

Yet something was missing... Ah, yes. The water feature. So I stretched out the hose, attached the sprinkler, aimed it at the neediest of plants, and then pranced, nymphlike, through the spray.

Returning to my roots?

It occurred to me later that it takes a certain amount of comfort with one's body to be naked outside. Most of us lose that around age 3 or 4.  I've been to a couple of nude beaches and clothing optional hot springs where I marveled at the exceptions to this rule. The people with the least perfect bodies appeared to be the most comfortable. How did they gain this acceptance of themselves when the bulk of us feels awkward wrapped in a towel in the locker room at Gold's Gym?

Even living alone, I haven't spent much time unclothed. If I did, it was after a shower, standing in the mirror looking for flaws. But on this day in my backyard I felt extraordinary. Maybe it's because I've traded in the filthy obsession with the outer me to concentrate on healthy eating, cardiovascular health, and balance. Since I've quit worrying about how my body looks, it's like it has a mind of its own, and it doesn't need anyone else around to make it feel good about itself.

Robert Frost once wrote, "Good fences make good neighbors." Since the house next door has been vacant a year, and the only way to see into my backyard is through its second story window, I hereby paraphrase the poet laureate to claim: "No neighbors and a good fence make awesome nakedness."