Just Keep Swimming

I have COVID. Along with half of the people I know and millions of other people in this country and around the world, I have COVID right now. For me, this means holing up in my basement and isolating myself to protect my partner from getting sick. I’ve watched way too many hours of TV and played too many games of Words with Friends. Even without looking at the news, I feel depressed, angry, and irritated. 

When I woke up this morning, even before brushing my teeth I put on my sandals and walked down to the lake. I’ve been instructed to not over-exert myself, to lay low until this COVID is over. But I’m losing it. I’m not used to this level of sedentary and I needed to clear my head.

After a very short walk, I sat on a bench on the lake shore, in the sun with my writing notebook, and tried to write out my big feelings. As I sat, hoping no one would walk near my virus-infected body, I watched two swimmers chatting before taking off. They were geared up with caps and goggles and the safety balloons (one pink and one yellow) that swimmers wear so boaters can see them. I watched as the swimmers waded out into the lake and finally dove under to swim.

I watched them go and wondered how far they would swim. There were many buoys dotting the lake and I watched to see if they stopped at one of those. But they just kept swimming. They swam until I couldn’t see them anymore. I returned to my notebook to keep writing and then I closed my eyes and tilted my face to the sun, taking in the lightness that I so desperately need right now.

As often happens when one sense is closed, others become more alive. With my eyes closed, I could hear eagles in the distance, the cars behind me on the road, and people’s voices on the walking path. And then I heard something closer to me, “Chop chop chop chop….” I opened my eyes to see another swimmer, this one much closer, with an orange swimming balloon. 

“Just keep swimming,” I wrote in my notebook. Many years ago I’d seen that saying tattooed on the forearm of a friend. “It means, just keep going. It means don’t give up,” my friend told me. Today I saw this as a message to me, a reminder. This dark place would not take me down, but I would have to keep swimming if I wanted to stay afloat.

As a kid, I was a serious swimmer. I swam all year round. In the summer months, I went to swim camp and swam daily in Lake Michigan. One year I did a two-mile lake swim at Navy Pier, swimming a mile out to a huge barge and turning back to swim the mile back to shore. In the colder Chicago months, I swam 3 nights a week at the YMCA near my house. Swimming was a constant in my life. I was a capable, confident, enthusiastic swimmer.

I opted not to continue swimming competitively in college. I was tired of the role that had occupied so much of my life. I remember missing it. Sometimes I’d go to the pool after class to swim laps and look longingly at the swim team stretching on the side of the pool or laughing together in the dressing room. 

But though I gave up the competition, I still swam in lakes and oceans. One year when I was twenty-six I spent the weekend with a group of friends at Lake Chelan in Eastern Washington. Lake Chelan is the largest natural lake in Washington State and the deepest lake in the United States. It’s a big, cold, intimidating lake. 

One morning I decided to go out for a swim by myself. My friends were still asleep so I crept out to the dock and jumped in. I wasn’t planning to swim far but once I was in the water, I just started swimming. Stroke after stroke I moved my body through the cold, deep water. This feeling was so familiar. I had grown into my adulthood with these strokes. 

One of the things about swimming is the feeling of quiet that takes over when your head is below water. It’s calming and comforting. With the repetitive chop chop chop of my arms moving through the water I was in a trance-like meditation. After a long time swimming like that, straight out into the middle of the lake, I felt something vibrating under the water. I snapped out of my meditation and lifted my head.

Close to me, maybe 50 yards away, I saw a seaplane landing. I looked back to the house where my friends were sleeping and it looked tiny. I realized how far I’d gone and how vulnerable I was. “No one knows I’m out here,” I thought to myself. “If I drown in this insanely deep lake, no one will know what happened to me. They’ll never find me.”

I panicked. Suddenly all my years of swimming were not enough to keep me afloat. That seaplane could have landed on me. I could have died. I could still die by drowning. I had to swim back but I couldn’t put my face back down in the water. I was afraid of losing my way again, of finding myself lost in that trance that had led me here in the first place.

When I tried to swim freestyle in the way I had known my whole life, my lungs tightened and my heart rate soared. Even with my head above water, I couldn’t do it. So I lay on my back and looked at the sky. I paddled my hands to point me in the direction of the house on the shore and did a form of breaststroke on my back towards safety. I looked up at the clouds above me, remembering to stay calm and breathe. Every once in a while I turned over and tread water to make sure I was going in the right direction. 

It took a long time, but I made it back to the house. I toweled off and went into the house to join my friends for breakfast. I told them the story of how I’d gone so far that a seaplane landed beside me. I laughed it off. And they oohed and ahhed at how far I’d been able to swim. But inside I was screaming to myself, “you almost drowned.” Swimming has never been the same for me.

I still panic in open water. I can’t go too far out into the lake, even with other people. I wish I could. As I watched those swimmers this morning I felt a longing to be that brave again. I wanted to experience the peace and comfort that comes from putting my head under water and moving my arms in that familiar rhythm. I wanted to feel brave enough to swim aimlessly into the open water.

As I got up from my bench to walk back home I saw the pink and yellow balloon swimmers in the distance. They were coming back toward shore. I felt relieved that they were safe. They had gone so far and they were coming back again. 

What I remember most from that swim at Lake Chelan was the sense of fear and danger I’d felt in the open water. But I’d done what I needed to do. I’d just kept swimming. And I made it back to shore. Life feels heavy and dark and hard right now, like I’m trying to stay afloat in a massive, cold, deep lake. Those swimmers this morning reminded me that I can do this. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. Maybe it’s time to change that decades-old Lake Chelan story from, “I almost drowned” to “I just kept swimming.”