Why I swim
Part 4 - sometimes I don't swim
I’m not that miserable. But sometimes I just forget that having fun is, well, …..fun. So I have been concentrating on trying to make that happen a little more often. Getting away from the grouchy old man that is sometimes my go to state.
There is always shit to do but maybe these things should just be put to one side now and again. Locked up for a while. Ignored.
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Ta ra.
Sometimes I forget I’m living.
I wake up in the dark, light the fire, go outside, work on the house, put the kettle on, warm cold hands on the flue, look for slippers, clean up the cat sick, wake the children, tell them it’ll be warm soon, breakfast, school, it gets light.
We get in the car, drop the children off, go to work, strain my eyes, snack, screen, sore back, meeting, car, home, dark, tea, children to bed, screen, bed.
I stopped swimming.
It’s not that I didn’t want to go. I passed lochs on the way to work wondering if I could catch a minute dip. Wind would be howling and always - somewhere to be in a hurry. At weekends the task of fininshing our house shackled me. Cuddling my amazing wife and being around two young, larger than life children definitely helped.
Spring arrived, as it always does, and after a cold April - the heat of May. Trees and wildflowers come into leaf and bloom a month early, along with insects making maiden voyages, small clouds next to thickets of trees. I don’t know what this means for the birds who will arrive later. Will their food source still be here? There are days when the air is thick with beetles. They use my head as a crashmat as I eat my lunch. The midge come too and, it seems, a plague of ticks, crawling up anything or anyone who brushes past.
Everything a little out of kilter.
I feel the stress of it. Even the cuckoo down in the woods sounds different. A crecendo of sound to a cuck-cuckoo. It is so loud and absurd when it flies over the yurt at 3:00am that both my wife and I laugh out loud.
It takes my daughter to get me out of this slump. “Can we go to the river now?”. It’s seven in the morning. We’ve not had breakfast. She has just woken up and it’s the first thing she has thought of. I really don’t feel like going to the river today. There is a lot of house stuff to do and I’m tired from the week. “Maybe later” I say. The same question gets repeated through the day. She really wants to swim in the river. The day gets hotter and, by five, fresh water to cleanse the sweat seems like a better idea.
It’s not a secret spot we go to but no-one is ever there, except for the well dressed young couple who visited once on the other side of the river and tried, unsuccessfully to hide their mostly naked bodies away. If you can see us - we can see you. The small sandy beach is empty when we come through the trees. Normally hidden, a whole world of river reveals itself to us. Cat, my partner isn’t sure whether she will swim. Shes’s exhausted. My daughter is standing on a rock further down the river and then, with a sudden shriek, jumps in, pops up and does a funny, fast-forward, head-up breastroke to the other side. She climbs up the rocks to the jump. After a minute she stands on the edge and peers down. “Just don’t think about it” I call over. She holds her hands tight to her sides and jumps, a perfect pencil into the deep water. She repeats the fast forward breastroke back across, a huge smile across her wet face. “I don’t like the feeling of falling” are her only words before she jumps back in, crosses the river and does it all over again.
I look around. Really, no-one ever comes here. Fuck it. I remove all my clothes, step to the edge and dive in. Jesus that’s good. The water is cool not cold. I like cold water but there is no effort involved swimming in cool water. No warm up time after or rushing to get clothes on with hands becoming increasingly useless and feet increasingly painful. Just….easy. I swim across the river and follow the rough scramble up to the jump. I stand on the edge and look down. I turn around and call to Cat. She looks over as I spread my arms, thrust my chest out and try to breathe in as much of this freedom as possible. I can feel her eyes rolling. I jump.
Soon we are all in the river, dogs, children, partners. It is slightly unreal that this world exists, hidden from view, so different. We are all joyful and the midge bites serve only to remind us that this place is real. We walk back through the woods and I enjoy the feeling of river water heavy in my eyebrows. My crocs are in my hands as we walk back up the grass track. I feel grounded. And watered.
And happy. This place owns us.
Fun has been moved to the front burner.
Thanks Jamie. With help from anchorman.
Best one yet.