Resurfacing

Coming up, back and to

As some of you already know, I’m a big fan of our local community pool. I spend a lot of time there with my kids every summer, and that’s where I’ve been most days over the last month. This year, I’ve been working on my pike dive.

As a kid, I was a diver for several years. Back then, resurfacing after the kind of dives you see the Olympians do—flips and twists, inward, reverse, off high platforms and springboards—was often painful and scary. I’d flop on my back or stomach and, coming up from the deep water, I knew my coach would would be unhappy, or tell me to do the dive again. My stinging red skin, the wind knocked out, the blood on the part of my head that hit the board, all the things I did wrong, I knew, would overtake me once I took my first breath and heaved myself out of the water. Resurfacing meant reality restarted. I wanted to stay underwater forever.

Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash

When I first tried a basic dive off the springboard at the community pool a few years ago, I couldn’t believe how rusty I was, but also how dizzy and anxious it made me. My body was no longer accustomed to hurtling through space, to bending and arching through the air, to taking the blow of the water, or to the water pressure several feet under the surface. My ears hurt, my toes cramped when I tried to point them. I was no longer graceful, lithe, and young.

But I’m getting better now, and I have a new relationship with the movements. When you dive, there are only a few moments that you get to feel, as I tell my kids, like you’re flying. On a springboard, the trick is to let yourself get carried up and away for a split second, to get some height, before shifting your weight down toward the water, preparing for entry. But now, for me, the most satisfying part isn’t the flying, or the skill I’m practicing—it’s when my body pierces the water and I go under, and then the moment that follows, when I come up.

While I was away from the newsletter, I thought about how for those of us on academic or school year calendars, the summer months are a bit like going under, holding our breath, hiding out, knowing we’ll be hit with the force of the world once we come up for air. The last few years, politically, have been like that, too.

There’s something intimate about those moments underwater when your body is only partially visible to the outside world. When you straighten your bathing suit, shove any loose parts back in, laugh a little to yourself, push air out in a cloud of bubbles, feel the water on your skin. After that, swimming to the side, resurfacing, takes time. You reacclimate to the world around you, remember that people are perceiving you and prepare, acknowledge that the world is bigger than it seems alone in the deep end.

Lately, I’ve noticed a change in myself— the world remains a scary and violent place, but when I resurface now, I’m eager to get back to it. The last few months have unknotted something in me. There’s the new feeling of political hope, but I also turned 39 a few weeks ago and personally, I’ve untangled so much over the last year.

Summer is ending for us—my kids go back to school next week and I’m desperate for a routine. I always struggle with transitioning out of these summer months, which aren’t slow, however I try, but are slower, more internal and private, more like those brief moments underwater. I think of all the ways I could have performed better—done more work, or less. I pulled a muscle this summer running and I’m learning to walk again. It’s rough pulling myself together and coming to.

But I’m resurfacing, paddling over to the ladder, taking it all in, and eager for what’s next.

---

Today is the last day to upgrade your subscription at the old rate, before prices jump up.

More details here:

Dispatch from a hot brat summer