September 18, 2021

When I stepped into the cold water a few days ago, in pouring rain, under a sky of grey, I wasn’t thinking about seals.

I was thinking about my fully vaccinated husband home sick with Covid.

I was thinking about the exhaustion we experienced —piles of fear and fatigue and relief, the dizzying domino effect and required contact tracing to alert anyone and everyone we were around this past week that Covid made it inside our house. And more calls and texts to reassure concerned family and friends that our youngest and I were negative, and my husband had mild symptoms and we were sure we would all be okay.

I was thinking about how to let it all go for a moment and how the sea might help me center myself again and recharge a weary mind. No mask required, no social distancing needed, just my vaccinated self in a blue suit, goggles, cap and swim buoy.

As I packed up to go to the landing, my husband suggested that now I could write about “swimming through Covid”. We’ve all been swimming through Covid for what seems like forever, but this week it got personal in a real way. And even though it’s a mild case, and he can isolate at our house it was very unnerving.

In my effort to make light of the heaviness we all felt, as we turned the recently vacated bedroom into an isolation chamber for Josh, I joked that our eldest moved out so my husband could move in.

We are making it work, with a vacuum sealed bedroom and trips up and down our tiny hallway several times a day, leaving trays outside the door for “Inmate 204”. It was our youngest sons’ idea, pulling humor out of a not-humorous-at-all situation. Ten days living as if we are in different cities, having “virtual dinners” with each other as we sit mere steps away from each other behind hermetically sealed doors.

At most, a nuisance, but still lonely. Over and over again the “what could have been”and the “what might have been” thoughts lapped the shores of our minds, as we pushed away those crashing thoughts of what might have been if it happened last year when there no vaccines yet available, and we knew so much less.

And now, in this moment we count our blessings, knowing that we are so very, very lucky to be vaccinated while so many people around the world do not have access to this first line of defense.

My afternoon chores complete, I drove to the landing through a steady rain and arrived to rivers of muddy water running down and down into the sea. The small beach was vacant, as only a fool would go out in such weather. Yeah, I know.

As my body curled over like a piece of kelp, slippery and head heavy beside the car, I clumsily gathered my float and cap and goggles, needlessly but instinctually trying to keep the rain off me, even though I was minutes away from full body submersion.

It has been so very long since we had real rain here, any rain, that even I, a lifelong resident of this place was struggling to remember the feel of rain—what to do with it, what to let in, what to let roll off.

My mind wandered to how rainy weather can completely alter a place, blend every vibrant color to one shade of grey, turn light to shadow, and rip the bright light away and bury me in dark moods in the winter under a weight unlike any other.

But on this day I felt tired but secretly thrilled to throw myself out in it, draw it in drop by fresh drop and then add the salty sea.

I was born in late summer, south of here in sunny California. I love the warmth of summer, the bright skies. I still don’t like the darkness. As I braced against the rain and watched large drops fall upon the grey water, I felt the weight of winter suspended before me, but I also felt the circle. Every drop from the sky was coming down into rivers, over roots, landing heavily on green leaves tinged with red, sinking into parched soil, touching everything and mixing on its journey to the sea. I was standing in the circle.

I was like the rain, dripping down hill. I too, was headed for the sea. Unstoppable. Someday I too will evaporate and float up to the sky, turn to cloud and rain down and down into the sea.

I feel my summer energy slowly seeping out of me, as the days grow shorter and the grey sets in. I find myself frantically building a list inside my head of all the tricks I have to cope with winter. I’ll sew and knit and bake cookies and make soup and build fires and play guitar and light candles and swim in the Salish Sea like my life depends on it. I’ll eat more and bundle up in wooly layers after my swims, pull out my selkie suit in the coming weeks and be grateful for the invention of neoprene.

When I reached the landing I hurriedly tossed my fuzzy maroon bathrobe aside, ditched my slippers and tried to duck around the rain drops trying to stay dry seconds before I submerged my entire body. Rain habits die hard. I laughed at myself and immediately felt a lightness ease in.

As I clipped on my orange float and waded in deeper, inch by inch into the clear water, all I could think about was the absence of summer’s warmth upon the water. I wasn’t sure I could rally for this, and who was I to think I was so tough? And what was I trying to prove to myself or anyone skin swimming on the coldest day since last March?

I had no answers, but knew as I stood in the shallows that I couldn’t go back. The cold felt good.

I steeled myself, waste-deep, staring out across the shimmering wet plain of raindrops on water, circles overlapping circles. Tiny single droplets leapt straight up out of each radiating circle perfectly skyward, there and gone, a million voices none repeated.

I let in the mystery and let in the rain and remembered again why I was here. Something here was waiting for me, and I didn’t know what gift I would find, but I knew this was where I belonged, even as my skin grew pimpled and my hands recoiled against the chill.

My eyes scanned the water, watching the endless circles and then I saw him. A seal. His dark head appeared in a blink. Less than 20 feet away, a lone seal cruised lazily past, studying me across the meadow of rain drop flowers. Our gazes locked, and he drifted by gingerly, watching me.

My mind went blank. I stared back and a smile bloomed across my face as I forgot everything. The sensation of cold and the blur of the past week vanished. All I could think about was the seal. He had come for me.

Unlike me he was in no hurry, not ducking raindrops or even remotely fazed by the water from above or below. He was one with his element. How I longed to be of the water so completely like this seal.

And at the sight of this one beautiful creature, a single sleek black body in a sea of grey, I felt release.

Suddenly he dove below, sinking silently into his liquid green world. I felt drawn in. Summoned.

I stood watching for him to resurface. Moments later he reappeared, took one look my way, then I took his picture and he was gone. I tucked my phone away, adjusted my goggles, sucked in my breathe and went looking for him.

As I crossed into his world, my eyes were met by the sight of bright white clam shells and dark rocks. Flecks of summer seaweed, pulled apart by the choppy waves scattered around my churning arms and maple leaves dappled the surface. I dove deeper and looked skyward, trying to see the world through his eyes.

The endless underwater world is almost entirely out of my reach, but still I felt elated to just skirt the edges of the sea, imagine for just a moment that I could swim like a seal.

Every single time I swim in the sea something washes away and something in me grows stronger. By the time I finished my swim in the pouring rain, alone, quiet, with chilled skin and my warm heart beating hard and fast, I felt bigger. Closer to myself.

And at the same time I felt a wonderful smallness, in a good way. The sea has a way of bringing equilibrium to me unlike anything else.

And for this, I am glad. And I know my husband will be okay.

What more could I want?