Monthly Archive for July, 2009

I bought goggles at the front desk.

Stay at home mothering has been something of a time-warp. All sorts of things happened while I was out — cell phones became miniature data command centers, cars come equipped with GPS … and goggles work.

I put them on and slide into the pool, amazed at how dry my eyes are, how clear the view is. My body — larger, softer than it was the last time I swam laps — still knows how to move in water. It gives me respect for the human organism. My elbow crests, brings out my hand which sweeps like an oar, feathers the surface, and then drops my fingertips in near my ears. A sweeping S past my thigh, and then my elbow crests again. My legs pump a scissors kick in perfect, unwavering counterpoint.

It isn’t just that my body can do this that amazes me: it’s that it has been six years since I swam laps, and my body is the one reminding my brain how it’s done.

In all the physical ways, swimming is an ideal sport for me. My small, un-athletic body has learned to move so efficiently in water that at the height of my abilities, I was as competent and fast a lifeguard as the men.

But mentally, it’s the worst. Two laps in, I am bored stiff. I have no capacity to zone out, I start to plan, and then I want a pen and paper or a cell phone and I get anxious about all the things that need to be done. A lap is no accomplishment at all — the clock hasn’t moved, and all I have done is go back and forth along the same scenery, catching glimpses of tile and signage and strangers’ bodies beside me.

In my periphery, the floor to ceiling water slide shooting out children evokes guilt. The kids would love it. Too bad they can’t use it because somehow, someone has forgotten to teach them to swim. I need to do that, and rent a rug cleaner and get the engine problem on the car sorted out … and find out, seriously, what the password is to the voicemail.

I am two laps in. I take inventory of my body. Is this how it felt before? Am I better? Are the aches normal? I have some kind of nerve damage in my right leg, down to my foot. It makes it hard to get any power on that side. I keep it moving; it’ll get better if I keep it moving.

In the past year, my body and I have been separated from each other. First, when I was sick, and they gave me drugs and stuck me with needles and then my face was paralyzed and I was trapped in a body that could no longer express emotion.

Then in pregnancy, which is always an invasion of sorts. A whole other person was making demands on my system, leaving me throwing up, suffering with migraines and exhaustion.

And then the birth. For us C-section girls the ultimate surrender: to an operating table and a surgical team that claims your body, piecemeal. The surgeon — your abdomen. The anesthesiologist — first your back, then your arm. Your lungs. There is always a point in the c-section — at least the two I have been conscious for — where I want out. I just want it all to stop right now. And it’s the worst feeling in the world because you aren’t going anywhere. You’re opened up, pinned, splayed, and someone is rummaging around in your organs.

Finally, all of my parts are back to me, and moving in water again. My saggy belly with its riverbed of stretch marks. My arms — oh, the arms! Swinging out of the water, white and flippery. I have entered the water because I hate my body.

I swim in shame, in desperation. I don’t want to be a fat dumpy housewife.

On my third lap, I try a flip turn. I learned them when I was ten, taught them to a million kids after that. I hold out my hand from the wall and think a second. Better to be too far than too close to it. My kids don’t need a wet whale of a concussed mother taken out by ambulance.

And … over. I duck my head, water whirls, and I am sure the sight is comical as I sling the lower half of myself over and twist. I straighten — miracle of miracles, I am pointed the right way — but my feet are nowhere near the wall. I was too far away at the start. I work to gather up speed and move on.

I can’t believe the goggles are still completely water-free.

I finish the lap. That slide in the corner really is impressive — it loops twice before dumping kids at the bottom.

Back at the wall — another pass at the flip turn. Over, twist … there is water up my nose and in my ears. I get my head above and tread in total frustration. The lifeguard is watching me.

My flip-turns now cause the aquatic staff to feel concerned for my safety.

The lifeguard doesn’t seem like she could be that much younger than me. I remember Ducky telling me it was always startling to look in the mirror and see an old lady looking back. She never thought of herself as in her nineties, and I have trouble already thinking of myself as an adult and those kids as, well … kids.

I had it coming, of course. When I was their age I thought it was entertaining to have someone drop preschoolers off the high dive into the water where I treaded below. I always caught them. They came at me hard — right on the head, sometimes — but they almost never went under, and if they did it was only for a second or two.

I watched the nervous mothers watching me and thought, “Why don’t you go get a cup of coffee or something?”

Those babies are now in their late teens, and wherever their mothers are, they’re laughing at me. Ren’s swimming lessons make me so nervous I can’t even sit on the benches, but have to be close to her, behind her, where she can’t see me but I can get in after her if I have to.

Another flip turn, and this time I have it. My feet land squarely on the wall, I push off under my wake and break the surface just behind it, a breath, an arm, and I’m moving.

I wish I were one of those women, cute, thin, eat what they want, pop out a baby, never look back.

And then I understand — the shame itself is purest arrogance. To want a perfect body is to want a million dollars, a self-cleaning mansion, a perfect job at which you never fail. Worse, the narcissism: who’s looking that closely at my body, anyway? What am I, a movie star? The body I’ve got — it’s done well for me. It has given me three children, it keeps going through exhaustion when I need it to, all the critical parts work and work well. I’ve enjoyed relative good health my whole life.

You’ll always want something.

As I age I find that most of my troubles are based in self pity– and that the root of that almost always is an absurd expectation.

Perhaps it is because I am too old, too tired, too concerned about other things. But somewhere along my twelfth lap it is no longer my body that seems preposterous.

Be skinny, be fat. Be happy. Be YOU.

I am breathless and sore at the end, so I sit in the hot tub, let my limbs float, breathe.

And then afterward? Before I towel off, go get the kids, get dinner and tubs rolling? — I totally go down the slide.