A Little Mermaid Returns to the Water

I was really looking forward to swimming in the ocean this week.  Years ago, when I was knee-high to a sand crab, my family would take me out the the New Jersey shore.  It was there where I learned that sunburn, scraped knees, and getting tossed by waves were just a part of life.

I spent so much time on the New Jersey shore, it became just a typical part of my life.  Beach badges, clam strips, char-broiled burgers, horseshoe crabs, netting in the bay, and fishing were what we did.

In times when we couldn’t make it to the beach, we made it to a different type of water. On week days, when the older folk had to work, we young-ins ended up in the municipal pool, spending time filling our sinuses full of water, swimming for distance, and getting crushes on cute life guards.  It seemed like a good way of life.

So Cold it Hurts my Feet

In school I had learned enough geography to get me by.  Some that I leaned surprised me.  One point, the realization that some people of the world, even in the USA were “landlocked” really amazed me.  Learning this was sort of like learning that some of my friends, from when I later moved to Florida, had never seen snow.  The thought that someone never had seen, or for that matter, never got to swim in the ocean seemed amazing to me.

When I later moved across the country to Oregon, I finally saw something I really wanted to see: the Pacific Ocean.  I had seen the Atlantic Ocean from almost each state on the east coast from Florida to Maine. I was curious if the Pacific would be different, and when I saw it I thought it definitively was.  One glaring difference, at least from the Oregon standpoint was how cold it was.   The Pacific wasn’t the only the water out West that was cold, the rivers and lakes seemed just as arctic. Actually, most bodies of water that are not chlorinated in Oregon run pretty darn cold.  I remember one day, craving a dip in my early days in Oregon and getting brave enough to place my feet in the snow-melted waters of a stream; the cold temperature of the water began to make them ache.

Quite a Few Years

I have gotten a chance here and there to catch a dip in the ocean since I had moved to Oregon, but usually it is for a limited amount of time.  When I finally got to schedule my trip to the East Coast a couple weeks ago, and I thought about how I would be spending a good week near the beach, the mermaid in me smiled.  It had been a while since I could just go out at a whim and dive into the crashing waves of the ocean taking as much time as I wanted.

It was nice.

Forgetting How to Hold Your Breath

Swimming has been relaxing to me.  I was very young when I learned that relaxation was the key to staying underwater longer than anyone.  I got pretty good at it.  I remember one summer I had worked toward staying under for longer than a minute.  Although I don’t remember reaching the goal specifically, I’m sure I got closer than I ever did.  I loved swimming underwater.   I was so comfortable in the water that I knew that about an hour or so after I got out of the water a rush of water was finally going to come racing from my sinuses to the dismay of most people who witnessed the process.  I would just shrug as the surprise stream of water would quickly run from my nose. It had to come out sometime.

As I slowly entered the water the first time this week, and tried my first attempts at holding my breath with the next two generations of mermaids, I was shocked at just how much not-used-to-it I had become.  The typical upside down position, hanging down from the pool wall with our legs up over the side and our backs down against the pool wall, embarrassingly took me all of five times to accomplish.  Once a master of this upside down breath holding position, I felt the shock of how the first attempts were amazingly unfamiliar.  Although I was first to come up for air at most of my initial attempts, I felt my swimming legs and my early learned practice of relaxing come back to me.

It would take more than a week for my lungs to get back to the shape they once were in, but it only took a day to get my swimming legs back.   I even skinned my knee body surfing the second day out, just like old times. 

(I feel great just after a week of a couple of hours of swimming a day in.  I can’t imagine what I would feel like after a month.)

I’ll Miss Swimming

Before I left, I thought I was really going love spending a bunch of time in the water.  I was right.   When I first walked up to the ocean this week, it was like seeing a good friend.  I’ll miss swimming.

Hmmm… maybe this brings a few more goals to mind…