Always Swimming

Maybe it's the angle of the springtime sun, or the sound of bird song seemingly, suddenly, re-emerging outside my window that triggers a visceral remembering of being 9 or 10 years old and waking up knowing that it's Easter.

Attending Catholic school meant that we were mostly in church during Holy Week, which is the week before Easter. Our spring break fell, then, the week after Easter. Perhaps that's why my body feels a sense of relief even now at this time of year, finally gaining the capacity for a deep breath before diving back in.

And diving back in seems to be a constant once we become adults. We are always swimming.

We often get to choose our waters: pond, lake, ocean, puddle. Sometimes we don't get the choice, sometimes the waters find us, follow us like thunderstorms on a road without shelter, tornados in the field or the forest.

A friend of mine reminded me years ago that there's no "only" in our lives. "It's only business, only parenting, only grocery shopping, only a bump in the road..." There are no interruptions to our lives. What we do or what's done to us, whom we love, where we work, mistakes we make, this is all life. It's the water in which we swim, the beach on which we rest, the people who swim alongside to get from one shore to another. This is the substance of it. And for whatever reason, this time of year reminds me of that.

So today as I sit on my couch, checking email, drinking coffee, hearing birdsong, and feeling sunlight on my face, I will take this moment to just breathe, to rest limbs that have been in motion for what feels like forever, and then to reconcile to the reality that there is more swimming ahead.

But it's okay. I like swimming.