Healing Waters

Musings on H2O

As I was writing this morning, the question came to mind: When was the last time I was swimming?

And what do I mean by swimming? Just being in the water, swimming laps, in a pool, in a hot spring, any of these.

When was the last time? I cannot remember. How can something that used to be so important be something that I cannot remember the last time? I have not been swimming partly because I do not want to look at myself in a suit. Iceland was the last time I was in a swimsuit and in a hot spring I now recall.

Water has always been an important element to me. I swam competitively in high school, I grew up pretending to be a fish and a mermaid. My first real job was lifeguarding.

Photo by David Becker on Unsplash

Early Days

When I was young I was in the swimmming pool all the time. I had a pool at my house and at my Oma’s house. I was a fish. It was a common conversation to talk about me swimming competitively on the high school team.

I went to swim lessons at the YMCA in the summer and earned my cards when I moved up levels. I still have them laminated somewhere in the boxes we all keep of momentos.

I have many memories of counting to three in German and jumping into my Oma’s arms. She loved to make whirlpools by running around the perimeter and letting the vortex form in the middle.

It struck me as odd a while ago that the conversation ended in high school. There was never any aspirations of me swimming in college or beyond. I am not sure my family had the capacity to think beyond high school.

High School

Who came up with the bagels and bananas menu? It was the standard breakfast carry in for the replenishment after morning practice. I knew the potassium in the fruit battled against leg cramps. There’s nothing like a charlie horse during a kick set to mix tears with chorine. There was a certain magic with the B and B breakfast besides its alliteration. I looked it up once but had forgotten.

Memories come back of the cake pan pool. Pools that were too cold, too hot, ones where you couldn’t see to flip turn. Ones that were a workout just to pull yourself out. The pool where the starting blocks were not bolted down properly and wobbled. A teammate had to hold onto it while you were starting. I would take my children to swim in that pool years later.

Then there was Suzioki’s Brownie recipe that was promised in a will. She was my lifeguard instructor and friend of the swim team. She married the cross country coach which I learned as an adult. Her brownies were coveted and not shared if you got one. The favorites got them. They meant something. The last time I had them they made me sick. I gorged myself after months of no sweets on the way back from state. A moment I rewarded myself with food gone wrong. I don’t regret one bite.

Love was a theme of the two swim teams. When I was a senior there were seven couples between the girls and guys team. This meant there were timers were always available during a home meet because they were always there watching.

At a team dinner, all the breadsticks were eaten first. The spaghetti parties were always at an upperclassman’s house. These parties in the basement where I learned to play full contact spoons.

At the Indy natatorium where I was at state, I watched our relay come in 17th. You had to come in at least 16th to swim the second day. My back was ripped from all the workouts. I was still never thin enough. Looking back at pictures, most of them I am in large sweatshirt.

The same pool I swam practice in was where I was a peer tutor for a boy with Down Syndrome. I coaxed him to jump off the diving board because it was one of his goals.

My senior year between morning and afternoon practice, lifeguard class and being a peer tutor I was in the pool 75% of my day.

Steam from the water on morning practice is replaced with the steam that rises from the lake I live on. It doesn’t always bring back the memory of high school. The swim team was one of the first times community was strong for me.

Healing

Water has healing powers for me. I used to come home and shower the day off especially when I lived in Hobart. I hated that shower too. It was the one that my former stepson twisted the handle off and water exploded against the back wall . It never was consistently hot. I hate a cool shower. It needs to be so hot it is scalding my body,

In Tulum, I encountered cenotes. There are not enough words to capture how magical this space felt.There were three of us who bonded at that cenote. It is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been there. Isn’t that the goal of a writer I suppose.

Drink of Health

I drink a lot of water, especially since I fast. Coffee and water are my only real options.

I love sparkle water. My husband abhors it so I never have to worry about him drinking it!

I dream of ice water, but do not know the context. I wrote the words down from the middle of the night or at least at 4:30. I often wonder when the threshold of morning trandforms from the middle of the night.

The best ice water is in Iceland. You can just drink it from the stream, and the tap, and anywhere else. It has healing powers, I am convinced.

When I was a kid no one worried about how much water I was drinking. There were no water bottles on the desks. We drank from the water fountain after a bathroom break and gym and we stood in line and counted for 3 seconds and that was all you got. Sometimes it was cold and sometimes it was not.

I capture many lines about water in my notebooks:

The waves of ocean peak and crest and infuse the air with salty humidity when Chris and I were in Crescent City.

A non-arid climate with H20 for drinking and soaking.

The splash of the water park pours from buckets and faucets.

There is fuzzy water in bottles that sparkle.

Water from the tap comes with a trickle to saturate your body and drench the skin of the lips.

Some floors get squishy from being waterlogged. The dousing of wood. Life is never diluted with water.

Drink my tears and saliva to baptize the day.

Wash and steep my thoughts for an ale that is neither sea nor lake but essential.