Just Keep Swimming

Staying afloat, one lap at a time

Summer and I have a complicated relationship.

I’ve always been a person who experiences seasonal depression in reverse. As the weather starts to warm, a sadness sets over me; a frustration over the hot, humid days to come. This has mostly been true as an adult, when I’ve had to endure summers in the city. Sure, there are baseball games and concerts and frosé festivals (all of which I’ve enjoyed), but there are also constant crowds, smelly sidewalks, and endless, exhausting schedules. Nothing brings me less joy than navigating midtown Manhattan foot traffic in 90+ degree heat, trying not to run into the tourists walking four-people-across or the melting piles of trash.

Summer growing up, however, was a different story. It meant time for sitting on the deck early in the morning at my parents’ house upstate and watching all kinds of birds—cardinals, bluejays, wrens, and robins—fly through the trees. It meant time for $2 soft serve ice cream cones at Boices Dairy after early dinners. Most importantly, it meant time for swimming.

My uncle, a former lifeguard, taught me the basics of swimming when I was very little, then I took formal lessons at the local YMCA around the age of four. It was a mixed bag. I learned early that I loved the feeling of gliding my body through the water, of being able to lose any sense of weight and presence and stress in a way I could do nowhere else. But I had no desire to increase my speed or compete with others. Frankly, those things don’t interest me if applied to much of anything in life. I wanted swimming to be for me, and for nobody else.

My mom kept a large, inflatable pool up in the summers at our house, a blue puffy monstrosity, until we moved when I was eight. At our new home, she installed a proper, above ground pool. Every summer after that I could be found there, from 11 in the morning until 5 at night, only taking breaks to reapply sunscreen or enjoy a popsicle.

Each day was beautiful and relaxing and perfect. They set the bar for how I’ll evaluate summers in perpetuity. No hot weather excursion in the city has ever come close.

These long periods in the pool were spent occasionally with friends, but largely on my own. Being an only child made it hard to play traditional games like Marco Polo or super soaker tag. Whenever my mom had the chance to come out, I’d enact pretend cooking shows using a boogie board for a kitchen countertop and various sand pails and shovels for bowls and spoons (unlike swimming, culinary interests have not carried with me into adulthood), or sometimes I’d pull her around on a raft while making up stories. Mostly, though, I needed to entertain myself. And plain old swimming actually did the trick. It still does.

What I lack in speed-interest with swimming I make up for in endurance. I like to swim for an hour straight, more if the day calls for it. Laps back and forth, back and forth, straight across the diameter of the circular pool. Each session takes on a slightly different tone depending on where my head is in the moment.

I’ve been known to cue up a playlist of songs, anything from oldies to pop punk hits to on occasion something new. One summer I—embarrassingly—got very into podcasts. This year audiobooks are a frequent hit on my listening list. Other times I leave the headphones off and end up talking to myself. Not in a “Rachel’s gone crazy” way but in more of a “Rachel’s working on a story” sense. I rehearse dialog that I imagine characters having, trying to see if it sounds good. During a recent afternoon dip I imagined an entire spin-off of Friends featuring the children of the main characters now living in the famed purple-painted apartment. On particularly bad or stressful days, I might use the hour to get in a good cry.

Whatever the parallel activity, a few key things about my swims remain the same. Kicking my legs and moving my arms, I release tension and frustration to make room for more peace. I let things go. And I’m always left feeling afterward like I’m better able to breathe.

You might read this and think the experience I’m describing could be true of any form of exercise. Runners most especially can talk about movement highs endlessly. I don’t disagree. Treadmill struts and Pilates routines have done their fair share for my mental health, most especially in the winters, but they have never given me the thing that I have always found with swimming from the time I was a child: the ability to put aside my judgments against my body, to essentially forget that it even exists.

It’s ironic that it takes putting my body into a bathing suit—arguably one of the most vulnerable, anxiety-inducing garments for women—in order for me to stop hating it. But in the water, something becomes equalizing. Anyone can float, can move, can appreciate the world without the perspective of their weight. Everyone can just…be. I don’t know any other place where that happens quite so powerfully.

Swimming to me is integral to summers, and to my writing, and to being a whole person. They all feed off of each other. Even if one occasionally stresses me out, I cannot live my life fully without it. They keep me going in the way the grind never will. I don’t want to forget that.

So, if you’ll excuse me now, I have a train upstate to catch. This weekend is looking like perfect, sunny pool weather.

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Rachel’s Weekly Recs:

• You don’t host a reading series called Wine & Pine without a little imbibing. I love orange wine always, but it’s particularly appropriate as temperatures warm. Orange wine is made from a white wine grape going through a red grape fermentation process, so skin contact. I’d try La Foradada de Frisach or Grüner Veltliner "Hollotrio", Bauer to start.

• I’m reading Mia Mercado’s She’s Nice Though at the moment, and equal parts crying and laughing. Why is it we still expect women (especially women of color) to perform niceness as a way to gain acceptance? Mia has the humor balm to soothe you as she works on figuring out the answers. Purchase from The Raven Book Store in Lawrence, KS for a thoughtful summer read.

• Few things have improved summer for me more than period-friendly swimwear from Knix. Their leakproof suits help you have a fun day at the beach without worry. Definitely worth the investment. Plus, they come in super-fun colors and prints!