14 aug 2012

just like anything else, swimming has its rules. written rules -- don't run on the deck, no horseplay, no diving in the shallows. unwritten rules about how to share lanes and where to place your towel. completely unknowable rules like when they are going to allow a freaking swim meet to exclusively use the entire pool without notice.

i learned to swim at summercamp, where rules are different. i mean, you couldn't run on the docks, but it was a lake not a pool and rules are just different. when i was a freshman in high school, i was on varsity swimming, but that was more to do with my having a painfully angsty crush on the coach, who was also my literature teacher, than it was to do with swimming. who wasn't in love with their literature teacher, after all.

the thing is that now here i am all grown up, yet still not feeling particularly well-versed in pool rules. of course, i know the basics, but it's the unwrittens that will trip me up every time. i am concerned over the unwrittens of something as oft-completed as grocery shopping, so the unwrittens of a thing i rarely do can easily stop me going.

but, see, i really love to swim.

so i get my stuff together and take it to work with me. it is drive-yourself day in carpool, so i can go straight to swimming after work. no excuses. still, i nearly bag it and come home. at the last minute i exit the freeway and enter the recreation complex parking lot. OMG. the place is PACKED. i could leave now... but i park the car and reassess. i am a grownup, goddamit. i can do this thing!

i swear everyone is pointing and staring, and that i am A Person Doing It Wrong, but i persevere, get changed into my bathing attire, and enter the natatorium where there are six short-course lanes set up for recreational lap swimming. every lane already has a swimmer, so i check out who i might want to share with. old guy? maybe. standing-in-shallow-lane lady? possibly. butterfly dude? no freaking way. then, i spot her: Swims with Snorkel.

i kid you not. this grownass woman is wearing a snorkel and mask like the kind you get in the k-mart seasonal summer toy display. i wait for her to finish a lap and ask - okay to share? she's like, SURE! i go, circle or side-by-side? she says it doesn't matter to her, then proceeds to tell me the story of how last week a mean lady at the other rec center across town yelled at her for sharing the lane wrong. that's when i know for certain this is the lane for me. off we go, sharing our lane halfsies, me on one side, her on the other. she's like 300lbs so she's kinda encroaching on my halfsie, but hell, she is wearing a freaking snorkel so i just have to make way.

eventually, other lanes empty, and i claim one to myself, leaving Swims with Snorkel where i found her. there are few enough people here that i don't mind doing a few water ballet moves at each far-end turn, where even the lifeguard won't be watching me, but soon my feet are starting to cramp and it's time to go. i head to the locker room and its attendant anxiety -- imagining some 15-year-old is going to snicker at the way i put on my shorts under my towel, or that i will scare some 5-year-old with a flash of my pasty belly.

i do love to swim, though, and in the end it's worth the trouble. i love water, its buoyancy, how it sneaks into my ears. i love to go under and blow the air out my nose and feel bubbles zoom past my face in their desperate rush. i love the feel of water through my hair, swimming fully submerged. i love how people's feet look, and their arms, from underneath when they are churning away above. i love to swim on my front and my side and my back. i love to swim laps and i love to play around.

and when i am done swimming, i am tired but not so much worn out as... i don't know... relaxed? i am tired in that way that makes you feel not depleted, not made less, but instead made whole... if that even makes sense.