Musings on chlorine
It's been awhile since I've posted about swimming and my workouts in the pool. In fact, part of the reason for that is I haven't been to a pool in ages. At least not one that involved caps and goggles, racing, workouts and not involving small children and playing. I wasn't really aware that maybe I was avoiding the pool because I missed it or that it would be too hard to go back, but then last week I went to my friend Jaylyn's swim meet. Jaylyn is 6 and she was all excited over her 25 butterfly and her 25 backstroke. Her mom, Kim, used to swim in high school and college and we were talking about how after Kim has Jackson (who's due in October) that we might try and swim masters at the program Jaylyn will be enrolled in in the fall. It was a very casual conversation and there certainly wasn't any sort of "Yes we will" or "No we won't" but it did make me realize how much I miss swimming.
I've been thinking about it all weekend. I can't seem to figure out exactly what it is that I miss about swimming. I left it in 2004 and never came back to it seriously and I don't know why. I don't have any answers for myself yet but I do know this. I miss swimming something awful. The smell of the chlorine, the shout of my teammates, the feel of the water, being in shape, even the 6:30 am practices and late nights. I guess it's because the pool was the one thing that, as far as I could remember, was all my own. Even though I was surrounded by teammates and coaches, it was all mine. I decided how hard I wanted to work and how much I wanted the payoff. I decided how far to push myself. In the end only I knew what it all meant. No one could ever understand what it really was to me. And in college, I was never that good. Not only did I swim for a DIII school but I wasn't even that good at that level. The team didn't need me for this championship or that one. I was never going to be the swimmer that made it to nationals. And I didn't care. Because it was all mine. The only person that ever even came close to knowing what swimming meant to me and who even came close to understanding how much I cared about it was my coach in college. But I was but one in a bunch of stars and bright lights, easily overlooked and easily forgotten. But I was there, and I guess that's what counts.
To this day some of my favorite memories of the Wash U pool are from when I was working there and would get there early. There was a skylight and so I'd leave the lights off. I'd put in a CD and dive in. I could swim however fast or slow I wanted, and however long. Considering at the time I'd just had shoulder surgery not 10 weeks before, there was no terribly fast or long. But I remember how still the water was and how the only sounds were my CD and my hands and feet in the water. I had never felt more at peace with the world. And I haven't since. Maybe I should look into getting back to a pool. Maybe it's time I had something all my own again.