The Last Lap

Underwater, shot with Olympus 75SW

This morning I swam the last few laps of  2700 yards remembering  the years that I had been in this pool, and the significance of moving away (not far, just far enough to be a real change), savoring those bitter-sweet moments.

The first time I swam here was the summer I took junior life saving at age 12, coincidentally this was when I was first learning to use the darkroom. But my lifeguarding career came to  an abrupt end when we had the final test of “saving” the instructor. I swam towards him and the next I knew I was choking on his precise splash he shot at my gaping mouth. Yep, I was out of the running in about 30 seconds.

We moved back here over five years ago, to the Menlo Park-Palo Alto area where I grew up. Being a dedicated swimmer I hunted down a pool that I could get in my regular laps. I happened by my old high school and noticed a Masters program going on and chatted with the coach who invited me to come by and check it out. I did, and found it to be just my cup of tea: only a few adults swimming with lots of open lanes and plenty of personal attention from the coach.

Up to that point, I thought of myself as a fairly decent swimmer. But I had no idea that he would, in a friendly but persistent way over the next few years, tear down my outdated strokes and cause me to rebuild the new-millennium versions of them. Learning each of the four basic strokes this way was a challenge but on the other side was new found ease and joy in gliding through the water, rather then fighting it. Dang if I sometimes didn’t feel like I was surfing through the water.

Near the end of today’s swim, I realized I was in one of those moments: Knowing that this would likely be the last time I’d cruise the lanes of this pool, but more widely, remembering all the events in this area since we moved back. The passing of my folks, with the void that leaves, no matter how old you are; the various events that have shaped my life and career as a photographer over these last years. Yes, it was a moment to pause, and look at where you’ve come and where you’re going, like a photograph.

One of joys of water sports is being completely immersed in a totally different element than we’re walking/worrying/working/driving in moment by moment by moment. This helps me to refocus and see newly and step out the cyber-world that most of us deal with all the time, and simply deal with moving through the fluid world.

Sometimes we just need to get out of all the mechanized, computerized, and hyper-speed moments and literally go with the flow…