Not drowning

It is just after 9:00am, and I am suited, my bright orange swim cap, goggles, and a towel in a bag looped over my shoulder. I am wearing a loose home-made sundress in a shot linen of grass green and butter yellow. It has become my go-to on swim days. I’m able to slip it over my head in one smooth motion—even while wet—and gravity does the rest.

I slip my phone into my pocket, knowing that the chance of it getting stolen off the deserted Davis Point dock while I’m in the water is close to zero, and it feels like a luxury. It is late June on Maine’s midcoast. Most of the area’s summer residents are still home in Manhattan or Philadelphia or Boston, laboring over the summer packing lists, readying to decamp in time for the July 4th weekend.

Back in Portland, my strip of neighborhood beach fills up by noon and a I’m in the practice of walking down with just the bare necessities, placing them on the granite jetty with the other swimmers’. Here I bask in the knowledge that I could bring a full picnic, complete with monogrammed napkins and dinner china, and it would go unmolested. When did I become such a city girl? Never mind that. A better question is, when did I become such a BEACH girl?

I grew up in California—inland, but still close enough to the coast that surfing was a popular weekend past-time among my friends. A neighbor would take a carload of her son’s rowdy friends “over the hill” to Santa Cruz every Saturday until the first of them got their license. Her son was in the bro and beach bunny clique,  but we were the same age and grew up together so she always made a point of inviting me. I went once. It was too cold and too rough, and I found I wasn’t interested after that. Instead, I spent my weekends at the heated neighborhood pool where I could stay dawn ‘til dusk and never trade my swim team practice suit for anything as pointless as a bikini, or as cumbersome as a wetsuit.

Now, at the age of 54, I am obsessed with the daily tide chart and Maine’s beach monitoring website.  I live a five minute walk from Portland’s only public beach.  I am contemplating getting a wetsuit so that I might keep swimming late into the fall. The irony is not lost on me.

This morning, on the midcoast, a quick online check of the nearest NOAA buoy informs me that the water is 57°. It will be warmer in Hatchett Cove, but not far off as it’s still fairly early in the morning.  A month ago I would not have dreamed of getting into water below 70°, much less swim laps in it. Today I challenge myself to get in and swimming in under 3 minutes.

It’s a five minute walk through the town cemetery to the dock. It’s sunny, but cool. There are a couple of cars parked above the gangway, and a fleet of fiberglass dinghies tied to float. When I step onto the landing, I see that there is a woman heading into the cove on a paddleboard, and a rowboat making it’s way out of the harbor and around the head of Davis Point and toward the little dock. I don’t waste anytime—within minutes I’ve disrobed, shoved my hair in my cap, snapped on my goggles and am lowering myself into the water by way of the float ladder.

I swim for 20 minutes. My goal is a solid 30, and I think I could do it now, but would prefer to have someone keeping an eye on me. When I first started open water swimming 4 weeks ago, I was surprised to recognize cold water immersion warning signs before I even hit the 5 minute mark. That was an eye-opener.

Today, I make a point of stopping and saying hello to both the paddleboarder and the rower. I feel we are fellow travelers for the short time we are in the cove and somehow responsible for each other. I pretend they feel the same.

They are both gone or out of sight by the time I finish my swim. I pull my dress over my head, shake the water from my ears, and make my way back up the hill through the cemetery. My body is humming and I am here for it. Each sense feels sharper—the trees are greener, the birds are more melodic, I feel the textured linen graze my legs, and I am fantasizing about the cold seltzer I will drink when back at the house and how it will tickle it’s way down my throat and rinse away the taste of the sea.

Four weeks ago I was drowning a bit. The winter had been long and cold. My work stress which usually lessens dramatically after Mother’s Day, had only increased. And I had sustained a couple of injuries that suddenly prevented me from my daily 4-mile stress-reducing run.

It was Steve who suggested the swimming, and after poo-pooing several indoor pool swimming options (my last sustained indoor swimming practice left me with a stubborn foot fungus that took months to eradicate), I thought, “why not the ocean?”

No one is more surprised than me at how quickly I’ve taken to the sea. And I’m happy to report that these days, I’m not drowning; I’m swimming.