Knowing When to Plunge In

            For two weeks each February we stay at a welcoming Pacific Ocean cove on the island of Maui.  There the ocean is a half-moon of swimmable salt water between two lava cliffs slapped with waves that toss dramatic sprays of foam into the blue skies.  Idyllic for me who likes to swim laps from one cliff to the other, daring proximity to the rocks where I can see below rainbowed fish and an occasional turtle twirling its great weight through waves to feed on algae.  

            Once the hot Hawaiian sun urges me to swim, I walk on to the fine sands of a beach that shortens every year with the rising of ocean tides.  I stand there for the water to come to me, to tickle my warm toes with cooling fingers of surf.  I pause, pull on my goggles and measure my way until I must decide if the next incoming wave will wipe me out or welcome me into the bay.  Experience is the great teacher.  I know this beach, its sudden drop-off denying no second thought for footing or floating.  Cautious immersion until the drop-off begins, an incoming wave big enough to coach me out, small enough where I can dive into it, I plunge followed by long freestyle strokes and a rhythmic rocking side -to-side so I can keep the shoreline in sight.  Having a rather right-angled stroke, my history includes too many unconscious swims to frightening depths before looking up at last to discover I have swum well past yelling-for-help if needed.

            Such a process, you’d think immersion challenged more than return to shore.  Wrong.  Getting out requires all the wits of an oceanographer intimate with swells and calms.  Sensing my swim is done, I don’t merely head to shore, but navigate what the tides have done while I delighted in my cross-bay laps.  Did low tide shift to high?  If so, on return, I could be swooshed onto the sands and slapped against the restraining wall built to protect the condominiums.  

If the calm sea I entered switches to hillocks of swells, one big wave could roll me on to the beach like tumbleweed in a grassland.  Every crevice of my body will fill with sand as the water discards me, sometimes changing its mind and sucking me back, as if enjoying the torture tossing me over again. Simply one foot of rushing wave requires some leg muscles as I race out of the surging surf.  But experience does teach.  Now before getting back out of the water I alternately turn my gaze forward and backward like a driver at a busy intersection.  How close am I to where the drop-off rises?  What wave is coming from behind?  How far until it reaches me?  It is usually best to let it lift me in its arms and carry me toward secure footing.,  Not quite there?  Well, give in to it, slide out with it, and wait for the next wave to ride.  Feet securely planted on sand?  Then run like hell before the receding surf grumbles back to sea without me.   I head for the fresh-water shower where the grassy lawn meets the sand, shower off, return to my beach towel and face-down drowse off to the fragrance of new-mown grass and my own sun-washed body.  My heart beats with good health.

            Most of our fellow tourists at our resort are retired as we are.  Few of them swim in the ocean.  Occasionally they will bob in a social group at low tide, but usually they congregate in the small, warm, kidney-shaped pool.  They cheer me on for my courage or foolishness.  They are safer for sure.  But they have not seen the rainbowed fish, nor been surprised by underwater encounters with giant sea turtles.  When they emerge from the pool, are their hearts beating?

            Swimming for me is also meditative.   When I was teaching, swimming mornings before school, I revised lesson plans for the day.  Since retirement, I swim through struggles. and today  I am writing to swim through my thoughts, the reason I write any of these blogs.  It is human to replay painful experiences to learn, to decide if there is a next time when things could go better.  In spite of my husband’s admonition to avoid discussing politics, race or religion, I recently ventured into a discussion of my experiences growing up in the segregated South.  My small discussion group was inter-racial and much younger than I.   Should I have stayed in the little kidney-shaped pool with the other senior citizens?  The conversation did not proceed amicably.  This is a tense time in our nation as we deal with centuries of racism and division.  My 77 years of a life shaped by segregation and privilege may not be of interest to the 20-year-olds who want to build a more just life without the elders.  I keep replaying words said and left unsaid.  When I fled the angry waves and sought the comfort of my beach towel, I had not reached a resolution to the conversation I was replaying in my head. So much for swimming meditatively to resolution.

            At this moment , I am 10,000 feet in the air flying back to Seattle after our vacation.  Next year, will I swim in the ocean again?  I might get pulled out too far by a changed tide, or dragged ashore by a rogue wave, yet I might get to swim with a turtle again, a stunning, fellow-creature even older than I am.