I’ve been wanting to make this for a long time—a spiral of mostly moon snail shells and fragments, curling outwards and inwards upon our dining room table.
I finished lining them up, one by one, around 10pm tonight, and by 10:05pm surrendered to my inner water sprite, whipped on my red swimsuit and bathrobe, and after alerting my family I headed for the landing.
I had plucked the whole and broken shells from the salty waterways and beaches around the island, during swims and walks over the course of the past nine months.
As the months wore on my collection grew as did my fascination with their shapes, and my desire to find more. Over time I discovered that the search was itself a sort of meditation, the broken fragments a sort of physical manifestation of the partial thoughts and chaotic feelings and fragmented sadness that took me by surprise this past year. I piled the shells on window sills, and in our little fountain outside the front door, and on our coffee table and by our bed. Little altars to the Salish Sea and swimming and the Earth and constant visual reminders to myself to remember the water. Remember the seals and the clams and oysters and herons and sand dollars, remember the orcas and rock crabs and muscles and jellyfish and flounders. Remember they are there all the time. Swimming and crawling and drifting and bubbling and leaping and living one breath at a time just as we are. They too, want to survive. Must work to survive. Need the waters to be clean to survive.
Like open water swimming, collecting the shells became a concrete way for me to attach to the moment before me, and in searching for shells —or moving through water—my feelings of connection to the earth deepened this past year.
As time passed on, I grew more adept at spotting the moon snail fragments on the beach. Each time I found one felt like a gift, a new chance to make a wish, hold in my hand something solid that I could understand.
I had spent much of the day telling myself that a polar plunge or swim on the first day of 2021 wasn’t mandatory, I didn’t need to swim. But at 10pm after carefully arranging and sorting my collection of treasures from 2020, in the company of a few lively sand fleas, the pull to feel the cold water overpowered common sense.
My husband humored me when I told him I needed to go to the water tonight, in the dark and wind, alone. He smiled and reminded me to bring my headlamp—and suggested I not lose it like the last one.
“Ok, thanks! I’ll try,” I said.
“Be careful and have fun,” he replied with a grin.
The words “why not?” bounced through my head as I drove through our quiet neighborhood. What better way to invite the new year in and shed the old than a late night plunge?
As I drove to the landing, I felt giddy with a sense of freedom and confident in my ability to handle myself in the water—even at night, even in winter—alone.
My dip was just that, and tightly clutching my key with my swim light shining in my hand, I tiptoed over the rough rocks to the low tide mark and stepped in.
The wind felt warm, and the waves cold and I reached up to the sky and then dove under. After two more quick dives under, and a short paddle I was back on the beach, my head squeezed by a sudden brain freeze.
The wind warmed me quickly, though my toes were less than pleased. I sat on the beach wrapped tightly in my fuzzy robe, while the waves crashed onshore, and all felt right for a moment.
I had done what I needed to do. And the water made room for me. Again.
Mary Swims 
✨🎊💐🎉💐🎊✨