Running In Place

From Wikipedia:

In physics, buoyancy is an upward force on an object immersed in a fluid (i.e. a liquid or a gas), enabling it to float or at least to appear lighter. Buoyancy is important for many vehicles such as boats, ships, balloons, and airships.

And me!!

You guys! Not only am I buoyant, I can swim! And…I think I might love it!!!

What’s really interesting about this is that, for nearly all of my life, I have labored under my own belief that I was afraid of water. I’m not sure where it originated but I think it was a mishmash of experiences and perceptions - including a frightening experience in swim class as a kid, recurring drowning dreams that lasted from childhood into my early 20’s, and maybe even a little residual effect from too many youthful viewings of Jaws. In any case, the operative words here are kid…childhood…and youthful. The past being interpreted as the present.

It’s not that I’ve never gotten wet, but the rare times I would tiptoe into a pool - or especially a lake - I would feel the strange creeping panic start to well up and soon enough I was exiting the water in the slow overly controlled manner of someone who is fighting a major freak-out. This has been different. I’m not sure if it’s a new resolve, the cool instructor, or the fact that the YWCA pool is a 7-foot at its deepest, teeny tiny pool in which it takes 88 laps to equal a mile. Since there’s only 3 of us in the class, the instrutor can move us each at our own pace. This week was my second class and she had me swimming lengths. After class I told her about my tri-aspirations and she said that she would work with me on form and mostly have me do laps during class rather than keep me treading water with the others < --ahem, pun. See I’m in a way-beginners class because I thought I couldn’t swim, but it turns out there was a sad little mermaid in me all along. With big soulful blue eyes. And a narrow little waist.

So. In a couple of weeks I will be returning to Hospice (to make a short story shorter, I figured out that, despite everything, it’s where my heart is) and my schedule will be such that I can do some AM laps at least a few times a week. How hard does that rock! I can’t contemplate how it will be someday when I get into some gigantor pool or *shiver* open water, but for now I can try my best to rule the kiddy pool at the Y.