We dip in, we dip out
The blankets roll in, the watery blankets roll out
Seaweed curls brown along the moving edge of life, while our bodies curl in against the chill to fend off what can’t be won
No one wins here, no one loses here
All are welcome, nothing is lost, just relocated, cast adrift, untethered, unmoored
Things we don’t really need can float away here, to distant shores—not things, but thoughts—the ones that would otherwise sink us, capsize us or weight us down like ballast
Those we can let go—
Yet some treasures, some thoughts are meant to return—the tide ebbs and flows, the currents and winds shift but nothing is strong enough to take them away—
A few months ago I lost a pair of goggles at the landing.
Three weeks later or maybe it was a month I suppose the goggles came back—they were greener than when I had first lost them. Brown specs coated the lenses and a fine film of bright green filled the nooks and crannies.
They hadn’t traveled far, maybe only a few yards from where I’d lost them, hooked around a neighboring barnacle-encrusted rock, but they were decidedly changed. For good.
They had spent time alone in the deep, with clam bubbles and crab legs skittering about—maybe they took a ride on a seal’s head or maybe a rare starfish tried to pry them apart or maybe a small child put them on for a spell—only to drop them to watch them sink and settle among the broken clam shells.
Surely the goggles got cold too.
Surely they wondered what they were doing there, what their purpose was, what the point of sitting alone among the rocks was, how they ended up there, if and when they’d ever be found, if and when they’d ever swim again.
Like those goggles I too got lost, coated in a layer of green—spring melancholy and fleeting glimpses of sunshine, dark water and restless energy mixed with a waning resolve to swim or write—listless, distracted, ambivalent even—about many things, even swimming.
Ambivalence about swimming caught me off guard—unsettled me—combined with my stubborn resolve to skin swim and my mind screaming at me to not get in the cold water every time I contemplated getting in.
But I did get in—a few times —and spotted a brilliant pink anemone one day, and yesterday I flew in on the incoming tide into Fletcher Bay so fast I felt I was flying—and three swims ago started leaving my wetsuit at home—and yesterday experienced the after drop so unique to cold water swimming that it left me chilled to my core for a solid two hours post swim, bundled in layers, slurping soup.
But I felt alive. And my husband made me delicious ramen.
And the forecast today says it’s going to be 80 on Wednesday, and I am finding my way again after feeling a bit lost —
And my goggles came home.
I have all I need.
I can’t stop now.
Mary Swims 