On swimming.

Me. Many moons ago.

I mainly try to keep things moving forward, to stay distracted, to keep busy. Even then though, even while I am out exercising my dog, or sitting on Kelly's boat reveling in the sun, even then, unexpected moments of stillness creep in and nostalgia washes over me with the force of a tsunami. Last month, the Ithaca area experienced some unseasonably warm October temperatures and Chrissy and I brought Izzy to the lake. We went to a part of the lake in Lansing that my friend Kim and I previously referred to as Stinky Beach. To be clear, the section of the beach did not actually stink, but as a rare chunk of waterfront land that was neither part of a public park nor privately owned, it was gloriously unregulated and occasionally somewhat trashy. It was not uncommon to find empty cans of beer or discarded cigarette butts lying among the stones, and on sunny afternoons one may have encountered unleashed dogs and their rowdy human counterparts, loud kids and an occasional sunbathing smoker. That Stinky Beach lacked pristine characteristics never bothered me, I went there to swim; and for that, it was perfect in its imperfection. 

Fast forward a few years and apparently someone out there disagreed. Chrissy and I turned off the main road and onto a potholed, gravelly road that ran parallel to the train tracks, and as we approached the non-designated parking spot where I used to park, I noticed that Stinky Beach had been transformed. It resembled an actual state park. I had a moment of panic, was Stinky Beach too classy for a dog that drops her wet, dirt-covered ball in strangers laps? Would we interrupt the serenity that was the newly reformed Stinky Beach? I decided the answer was no, so we parked, let Izzy out of the car, and sent her out into the lake in quest of her orange ball. As her dog paws ferociously paddled towards the floating ball, leaving a gentle wake behind her, I had a moment. The lake was the most beautiful I had ever seen it. The water was clear enough to see the nuanced colors of stones at the bottom of the lake, and the water was as still as a pane of glass, perfect for skipping stones, paddle boarding, playing fetch with the dog or – most obviously – swimming.

Swimming is something I did because I could no longer run. And consequently it was something I always secretly resented. Until I started open water swimming. Open water swimming in the lake gave me a sense of freedom I had not felt since before 1997 when my body began forsaking me.

Back in Baltimore, during my earliest days of learning to swim for reasons other than survival, I would painstakingly splash gracelessly from one end of the YMCA's pool to the other. In between laps I would catch my breath and attempt to glean tips from the Catonsville swim team, who practiced in the three lanes to my left. I listened to their coach and watched their arms under the water. I figured out that the key to surviving more than 50 yards at a time was to exhale when my face was in the water, and to keep my fingers tightly together. My legs – supposedly the least important part of your body when swimming freestyle – fatigued quickly. After about 500 yards of swimming, they would slowly start to sink and I quickly resembled a fish without fins. In my quest to find a solution to my bottom half's lack of buoyancy, I tried sticking kickboards between my legs. Although I liked the shark-like image of the blue kickboard sticking vertically out of the water, this solution proved cumbersome during turns. Mercifully, the coach of the swim team, acknowledging my plight, offered me a buoy that was actually designed to suspend one's legs, and required much less finagling. The downside? I no longer resembled a shark. The upside? It actually stayed between my legs and I learned how to flip turn.

Slowly but surely my endurance improved and my previously toned runner's legs were exchanged for broadening shoulders and powerful arms. I could never swim fast, but eventually I could swim far. Most significantly, despite the fact that I was only begrudgingly a swimmer, swimming started to yield the same results that running had in my previous life. On days where my predominating thoughts centered on fear and loathing of MS or teaching -related conundrums, after an hour and a half in the pool I discovered that I could (usually) swim myself happy.

I still remember the school policewoman at City College high school asking me where I was going one spring afternoon after school. I told her I was heading to the gym for my daily swim and she looked at me with pure amazement, "You swim every day? I never learned to swim and I always wished I could, I feel like swimming is the closest a person can come to flying." I told her I had never thought about it that way (which I hadn't), and told her it was never too late to learn. Then I drove to the pool, and completely forgot about what she said.

Until I started open water swimming. In my younger years (read: pre-MS), swimming in the lake with something I did solely for temperature regulation on hot days. The weeds, the jagged stones and the occasional fish all creeped me out, and the frigid temperatures of the water in Cayuga Lake deterred me from ever venturing in for more than a few minutes at a time. Post-MS, once I tried it, once I tried swimming in the lake on summer afternoons, my entire perspective on swimming changed. The cold water fueled my body like 80° pool water never could, the rocks no longer bothered me because I could not walk anyway and the weeds were a nuisance that I learned to embrace.

In the lake I felt weightless in the water. Swimming above the weeds, I started to imagine that I was flying. That the weeds were trees beneath me. My arms would pull me through the water, elbow up first, forearm extending, fingertips in the water, arm following, pushing the water behind, gliding forward, repeat on the other, breathe. The water felt like satin against my skin. There was silence except for the rippling of the water.

There is nothing in my post-MS life that ever rivaled swimming in Cayuga Lake. It was something I never would have attempted had I not lost my ability to run. As such, swimming was a gift. And it brought unexpected peace to a body of unexpected tumult. 

I stopped swimming even before I lost my arms. It became impossible for me to change into my bathing suit independently, especially after a long day of teaching. A gym outing that had previously taken two hours started to take almost 3, and after climbing out of the pool and flopping onto a towel in my wheelchair, I would not have the energy to wheel to the locker room, stand, shower, get changed and drive home. So I froze my gym membership and tried to embrace the extra time in the afternoon between school and dinner. I took my dog on long walks using my scooter. I spent more time at my kitchen table editing lesson plans. I ate delicious dinners with my roommate. I had time to meet friends for dinner during the week. All of those things were enjoyable in their own right, but none of them melted my stress away. None of them quelled the fear and loathing of MS or re-centered me after a frustrating day in the classroom. None of them was a proper buffer between a stressful day and a peaceful night like an hour and a half in the water.

I have learned to deal with stress in different ways now. Occasionally by writing, but mostly by coiling everything together into tight little knots that take up residence in my trapezius muscles. A coping mechanism that I most assuredly need to work on. But every once in a while, my dreams rescue me from myself, and I can fly. I always have MS in my dreams, and there is always a stressful situation that I need to deal with in a more efficient manner than my legs will allow: I need to catch a connecting flight in a busy airport, there are bad guys chasing me, or sometimes I need to reach someone who needs my help and there are crowds of people in my way. In all of these circumstances, the common denominator is that I can escape the stress by flying. But never do I have wings, or do I flap my arms in the air. Instead I jump into the air, do a few dolphin kicks and start swimming to safety. I leave the danger and the people beneath me stroke by stroke and I feel the same freedom that I felt years ago in Cayuga Lake.