For my swimming sister Colleen
It is not the cold that scares me, my screams are piercing though, it is the power.
I need to make peace with the ocean, its potential for harm. I have previously run into the water on southern sands, naked, an offering of myself and my body with thousands of others, including my daring youngest child, here’s proof. Fabulous craic (fun), heaps of screaming (me), and a resolve to be more embracing of the water, the seaweed and the sand.
My story is one of immigration yet an fharraige mhór (the ocean) scares me so I stay aware mostly, despite my equal respect for its power. The need I speak of is about understanding the importance of the world’s oceans as the conduit for people to risk everything to move from one place to another. Water never stops moving, when it does it dies.
So in small steps today I went to the local heated pool, thinking of my sister Colleen who has swum the oceans water for many years and has recently been forced to hang up her towel, temporarily we hope. She asked me many times to come swimming, my excuses transparent. So today I went without her push – I’m ready when I’m ready. I must have been thinking about it for a while as my new bathers were at least 12 months old without an outing!
And what did I learn?
- take a bigger towel, or two
- get a bathing cap
- embrace the water as it embraced me
- go with your sister when she asks
- go with your daughter when she asks you
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