August 17, 2012

The Joy of ...

Not me.

Swimming.

It's been two years now since I got back in the water. I did it because I simply wanted to see how fast I could swim at age 50 after having taken 30 years off from competitive swimming. I thought I could very likely swim just one race and quit again. That might be it for me.

Don't let my crazy quest stop you from reading on. 

Luckily, this isn't a post about competitive swimming!

When I first got back in the pool my experience pretty much went like this:

"God am I out of shape.
I can hardly hoist my sorry ass out of the pool.
I hate this, I am so weak. 
My arms are sore.
I haven't done anything with them but pick up babies for 30 years."

"No, this is good, maybe my arms won't do that annoying jiggle anymore when I run to the mailbox."

So I kept swimming, adding on more lengths each week. 

Slowly I grew stronger.

Soon I started to get lost in the water, lost in thought, lost in the underwater oasis.

I was no longer aware of the pain, or how far I had gone.
I felt better. 
Swimming was stretching me out, and calming me down.

It became a new place to realign. To figure life out. 


But here is what I didn't realize until just recently:

Swimming is kind of like having a massage. The water is constantly touching us everywhere, caressing us, swirling around us. 

It feels so good. It chills us out.

No wonder why we can never get kids out of the pool!

Also not me :-)
No wonder why babies love water.

And why we all love baths.

No wonder why my 90 year old mom has recently worked her way up to swimming 24 lengths, and counting :-)

Swimming is my annex, but it is also, 

a bit of heaven.