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.