Swim, Step, Row.

Some day I'll eat, pray and love, but for now, I have the Y.

The bathing cap of champions. And also of me.

Swim.

I stand in front of the locker room mirror, holding my bathing cap. Red was the only color they had, and I hope it won’t make me look as conspicuous as I feel. I dawdle at the sink for as long as I can.

The bathing cap stretches tightly over my head with a snap, and for the first time in my life, I fully understand why men hate condoms.  

I take a deep breath and open the door. Chlorine fills my nostrils and immediately, I’m back at Oak Crest Swim Club, paddling next to my father, who does laps religiously. I’m an okay swimmer, but as I get older, I get worse. Nevertheless, I love this smell.

The pool’s lanes would be like a highway’s, except that, in addition to the fast and slow ones, there’s what looks like a fun lane. It’s filled with older people holding neon-colored noodles. I step in, willing myself not to shriek at the coldness.

I smile at a lovely-looking woman in her 80’s, whose bathing cap is covered in flowers, and she smiles back. Her lipstick matches her cap.

Why is it not mandatory for everyone to wear caps like this?

“You look so pretty,” I say and her smile gets wider.

She says I do too, but she’s just being polite. My tight red cap isn’t doing me any favors and I’m barefaced and scared-looking. I share that I’ve joined the Y to learn to swim.

“Or, re-learn, actually,” I add. She looks interested, so I continue. “I have trouble with the part where you turn your head to the side. I always keep my head up for too long and then the whole rhythm gets messed up…”

I’m going into too much detail, but she’s kind. She smiles sweetly. She is, indeed, very pretty.

“Do you go in the other lanes and do laps?” I ask.

“No, I just hop around in this lane,” she says. “We all do.”

She waves at another flower-capped woman.

“It feels good to get wet and it’s nice to just….play!” She laughs.

How I want to grab a noodle and stand around with these playful pretty ladies, but I’ve promised myself I’ll do at least one lap. She joins her friend as I duck under the rope.

The slow lane is fairly empty. I push off from the side, enjoying the boost. I take two strokes, hearing my father instructing me. My hands are cupped and I kick beneath the water - not a splash out of me. I turn my head to the left, my mouth above water. I open and close it. But not quickly enough. Water gets into my mouth and nose, and as I sputter, I revert to a frantic doggy paddle. I force myself to try again.

This attempt too, results in a sputter.

I repeat my sad performance a few more times, with increasingly less success.

As I tread water, I notice the lifeguard standing and yelling, and I wonder what the commotion is.

“You ok?” he shouts, and I realize that the commotion is me.

A few concerned swimmers look over.

I wave, way too merrily. “Yes! I’m just swimming!” I shout, then, unnecessarily add, “This is how I do it!” I’m about halfway down the lane and fully out of steam.

I try again the next day and the next.

Sputter. Paddle. Rinse. Repeat.

Clearly, things are not going swimmingly.

A week later, I get an instructor.

Stan, who’s worked at the Y forever, emphasizes key words in a way that I find condescending. But what I really hate is the way he starts sentences and leaves the last word off, for me to fill in. The last word is never obvious to me.

“So, when we swim, we breathe so we can…” he says, gesturing toward me.

“So we can… swim?” I say.

He sighs, not hiding his annoyance. He doesn’t tell me what the last word was supposed to be, and peevishly, I think he doesn’t know either.

He paces as he instructs, and I think it’s unfair that he gets to stand outside the pool while I have to stand in it. He pantomimes a swimming stroke and I do it with him.

“So again. It’s one, two, breathe,” he says.

“One, two, breathe,” I say, as I row first one arm, then the other in the air. I cup my hands, hoping Stan is impressed. When we get to the word “breathe” I turn my head to the left and open my mouth.

I’m good at it as long as I’m standing in the shallow end and don’t have my head in the water.

“Fix it,” Stan says, in the annoyed tone he reserves for every single thing he says to me. I think about what word I may be called upon to fill in.

Fix it…now?

But no. This isn’t a word-drill. And Stan is not happy that I don’t seem to know what “it” is. He pantomimes pulling something over his ears and I realize my bathing cap has ridden up. Again.

“It’s because I put conditioner on my hair before I put my cap on,” I say. “To protect it from the chlorine.”

Stan doesn’t have much hair and doesn’t want to talk about mine. I’m pretty sure Stan hates me. Which is fine because I hate him. But not as much as I love the way his posturing makes me laugh. Plus, I want to learn to swim.

With a sigh, I pull my cap down.

We do more stroking and breathing. I feel my cap riding up again, but Stan and I are mid-stroke and I dare not break the rhythm. I feel it slipping higher on my head and then, higher still, and then. Oh God. It pops into the air, like a manhole cover with too much pressure from below.

“Holy moly!” I say, laughing.

A certain someone doesn’t find this funny, which makes me laugh harder.

Stan folds his arms and shakes his head as I go after my cap, which is floating a couple of feet away. As I lunge for it, I lose my footing and my head goes under water.

“No putting your head in without a cap!” Stan shouts, sighing at my inability to grasp even this concept.

“I didn’t mean to!” I shout back and our eyes lock.

“Obviously,” I add, glaring as meanly as he does. A rivulet of conditioner drips down my forehead and I swipe at it, refusing to lose the staring contest.

I put my cap on, sarcastically pulling it extra hard, so it forces my eyebrows down to just above my eyes. Stubbornly, I refuse to adjust it, or my attitude.

To both our pain, I continue my lessons. After two months, I’ve improved enough to do a full lap without stopping. And, to our mutual relief, this enables me to say goodbye to Stan.

I force myself to the pool three times a week. I have no idea what people are talking about when they say swimming is peaceful. But I continue, waiting for the moment when it all clicks in, as my friends promise it will.

They’re liars.

I taper off to twice, then once a week, then finally, admit that the only thing I like about swimming are those flowered caps in the fun lane.

Step.

Work has become intense, and without my Stan sessions, I have little reason to get to the gym. But I miss going. My mind is wound too tightly and my stomach muscles aren’t wound tightly enough.

I’d go after work, but I’m not just a creative director; I’m also a mother. So I race home to relieve our caregiver. Thelma, one of the sweetest women I’ve ever known, has fed and bathed Ava and Ben, so that when I arrive, they’re shiny-clean, with comb marks still fresh in their wet hair. Sometimes the three of them are singing The Itsy Bitsy Spider and, with a pang, it hits me that I’m paying someone to live the best part of my life.

I put A&B to bed and finish emails as Philip makes dinner. After we eat, I spend another hour going over decks, and flop into bed, but don’t sleep well.

I need exercise.

So I exchange my red bathing cap for a tank top and yoga pants and set my alarm for 5:45. I get to the gym by 6, and home, by 7:15, in time to make breakfast and pack lunches. Sometimes I pack with one hand while pecking out emails with the other.

Once breakfast is finished, Thelma arrives and helps the kids get ready for school while I shower. I stand at the door in a robe, kissing their sweet faces as Philip marches them off.

It’s exhausting, and far from a perfect routine, but my morning workouts, and the dusty pink just-risen sun that congratulates me afterward, are pure replenishment.

This is my gym uniform, but without the skateboard. Or the tattoo. Or the perfect BMI.

Not only that - I’m part of a gang. The other two members are best buddies, in their late 70’s. One is short and sturdy-looking, and clearly, the mayor of early morning. Everyone gives Dave a clap on the shoulder as they pass him.

Dave’s buddy is taller, quieter, and infinitely amused by him. Dave always uses the second elliptical in. Friend of Dave likes the one that faces it, and I go to Dave’s left. Like kids in a lunchroom, we take the same places every morning. They talk. I put my earbuds in.

One day, as I trudge along while watching Morning Joe, I feel a little smack on my arm. Dave.

“I just wondered, have you ever been on a conference call?” he asks.

I scoff, because conference calls are practically my life. This is before the pandemic, and we have no idea that Zoom will change everything.

“Yeah, I do them all the time at work,” I say.

“Well. Let me tell you,” he says, “I was on one yesterday, and it was a doozy.”

Dave is retired, but sometimes gets called in as a consultant. I’ve heard him explain technology to his friend before, and now it’s my turn.

“Everybody sits with the phone in the middle of the table, and we’re talking to this other group,” he says.

“Yeah, I know how that works,” I answer, trying to sneak a look at the TV.

“And then!” he continues, “Everybody’s talking. You know, bla, bla, bla. And all of a sudden, one guy, on the other end, goes, ‘yeah, I got this rash on my back and I think it’s spreading down to my butt!’” Dave is laughing so hard he can hardly get the word “butt” out.

I have to laugh too.

“He was doing the call from home and he thought he was on mute!” Dave explains. “See, there’s a button you can push so nobody can hear you, and he thought he did. The poor guy was telling his wife to look at his butt, and then he stops, and he goes, ‘hey, can you guys hear me?’”

He’s stopped stepping altogether because he’s laughing so hard.

Dave’s friend appears. As he mounts his elliptical, I hear, “Hey, ya gotta hear this - I was on a conference call yesterday - a real doozy…”

Dave tells stories the next day and the one after that, and while it amuses me, I miss my solitude. I could go to a different elliptical, but that seems rude. So I mix a few new things into my routine.

Which is how I remember that I love to…

Row.

I’m actually pretty good at rowing, since I used to take classes at a place called Row House, where we “rowed as one” and I had to keep up with some very strong 25-year-olds. It almost killed me.

Rowing on my own is lovely. I do it for 10 minutes at a time, usually, when Dave tells a new person about the doozy.

With my earbuds in, and music up loud, I feel like I’m watching, a movie that I’m in.

Proud Mary is eight minutes long and inspires me to challenge myself (because, like Tina, I never, ever, do nothing nice and easy. Or so I like to think.) I love putting the resistance up all the way, and grunting as I pull the handles back, as fast as I can.

At the end, as I cool down, I play The Ballad of Easy Rider, which is anthemic and moving, and I love it. The rowing machines face the indoor track and I study the runners and walkers.

There’s a frail woman who walks very slowly, sometimes taking the arm of the aide who accompanies her. And a rather obese man who keeps his eyes straight ahead as he puts one foot in front of the other and never fails to show up. There’s another guy who boxes while he jogs and I think he looks famous. There are fast runners and slow joggers, and moms with kids, going round and round as I go back and forth.

Occasionally, I skip a day to walk Ava and Ben to school, and feel teary as they march off, holding their lunch boxes like little executives.

Those days are precious. But rare.

Usually I’m at the Y.

Rowing fast, then slow. Silently cheering for the elderly woman, admiring the man who doesn’t miss a day, wondering who the boxer is.

And always, focusing on the moms. The ones who jog around the track with their kids, the ones who walk, as their kids run like banshees.

And the ones who come alone, grabbing what time they can before running home to pour Cheerios into bowls and pack lunches.

They walk. They run. They do their imperfect best.

My people.

I glance behind me. Dave high-fives a regular.

I smile, a little happily and a little sadly.

At all I’ve gained, and all I’ve missed, by coming here.

To this place that has (with the obvious exception of Stan) accepted me as I am.

This place that has revived me. Healed me. Made me happy.

As I row, I feel joy, but a little guilt creeps in.

I should be walking my kids to school.

Or keeping up with the morning’s emails.

Or doing any of the hundreds of “should’s” that crowd my brain.

But I shake them away.

This time is necessary. And cherished. And dare I say it, sacred.

Because it’s something no other hour of the day is.

Utterly and completely mine.