Swimming

I woke up this morning to the sounds of a very rollicking summer thunderstorm. Lovely, really. But because I have, shall we say "fluffy?" hair, my thoughts turned to whether this rain was going to continue through the morning. So I looked up the weather for today. And then I saw the weather for tomorrow. The last saturday in August. Highs in the 80s (which in South Carolina is positively fall-like).

And I started bawling. Correction. I am still bawling. As I am typing this.

Where did this summer go? How is it possible that it's the end of August, and I've only taken my little boy swimming twice? I feel guilty and a little cheated. But I have only myself to blame. (Yep. Still bawling.)

It's not that we haven't had a lovely summer full of fun things. We have. It's just that swimming is my summertime thing. I look forward to it every year like a little kid. And then every year, as the summer is ending, I invariably feel that I haven't gotten to swim enough. This year, more than ever. We don't live near a pool, and for all of my love of swimming, I'm a little phobic about the beach. But if I made time to do it, we could easily drive to my mom's house about 45 minutes away and swim in her neighborhood pool. I just haven't made time.

Why?

I talk about my kind of crazy life on this blog, and I think I make it sound kind of romantic and glamorously over-scheduled. And that's not disingenuous. I think that my life is pretty darned cool. I have a fantastic husband and an amazing child, not to mention a loving and wonderful extended family. I get up in the morning and go to work as a lawyer, giving my voice to people who would otherwise have none. The work is hard—it's time consuming and emotionally draining. But I care about my clients, and I love (I mean love) my coworkers. After my son goes to bed I get to design fabric and draw and write stories and read books. And, starting this week, two nights a week, I get to go to my law school alma mater and teach a new group of students what I have learned; I have dreamed of this opportunity for years, and so far it's just as good as I'd hoped.

But at the end of a week full of all of these good things, here I am sitting at my computer at 6:30 in the morning boo-hooing about what I haven't done. Because as much as I try to trick myself into believing otherwise, it's simply not possible for a person of even moderate imagination and passion to do and experience and accomplish every notion worth pursuing. Eventually, trade-offs have to be made. This summer, I have traded sun-drenched afternoons of swimming and wrinkled fingers for a combination of other indulgences and more pressing responsibilities.

I use this blog to tell stories, to share my creative process and product, to say "look at me!" But I also use it as a touchstone. A place where I come to reacquaint myself with...myself. As E.M Forster said, "How can I know what I think till I see what I say?"

So what do I think? I think that I probably need to slow down. But I don't really know how. I don't know if I even want to. Right now I think I'm just treading water. I know that what I don't want is to look back five years from now and realize that I had my priorities all wrong. Maybe what I really need is a sunny afternoon floating on my back to figure it out.

Comments

[jam]

So glad that you acted on your last line, but that instead of just floating on your back you and MW had a glorious afternoon in a huge pool with only two others, a dad with his 4-year-old daughter grabbing a last-day-of-summer swim, too. And what a delight to see MW's progress! He'll surely be a fish next summer.