Now if only I could believe it

_{Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash}

The water was almost as warm as the air: 81 degrees. When I stepped into it my feet squelched into the soft sand at the edge of Walden Pond.

My hair was cinched tight in a bun on top of my head under the pale purple swim cap. My trusty buoy – bright yellow – bobbed along behind me as I waded out to my waist.

I looked back to check that my two trusty friends with their two trusty buoys were also behind me – they were – and we struck out swimming for the peninsula where the trees jut out into the water on the right side of the pond.

Early in the morning at Walden, the sun comes up behind the trees so when you stand on the tiny beach, you’re in the shade but you can see the sun glimmering on the water further out. The trees on the opposite bank are a lush green. Hawks fly in slow circles overhead and if you’re patient, you’ll see the loon.

Once we swam out a hundred meters or more, the shade from the trees fell away and the water below us was suddenly infused with light.

Swimming at Walden is my favorite weekday morning activity. There is something about it that leaves me feeling so fresh. Alive and hopeful for what the day will bring. I think it’s the endorphins combined with the beautiful view, the friends, and the feeling that we’re up before the rest of the world.

On this particular morning, last Friday, I was hoping to reach the opposite bank. I had no idea if I could make it. I’m terrible at estimating distances in the water. Sometimes I swim for what feels like a thousand strokes and then look up and the trees I’m aiming for look no closer than they did before.

I had reached this particular peninsula before, and the shore beyond it always twinkled at me from the distance. I didn’t know if I could reach it, but I swam slowly and steadily. I pressed on towards the trees, focusing on my breathing. Then on keeping my arm strokes even. Then relaxing my shoulders. Then back to breathing.

If you put in slow and steady work on something you’ll eventually get further than you ever thought you could.

I know this, but I recently needed swimming to remind me, as lately it has felt like everyone else is ahead somehow. No one seems to have that Life Under Construction aura that I seem to have. Raja and I just moved to a new apartment. We love the place, but it’s a work in progress. There are picture frames stacked against the walls, empty boxes piled by the front door waiting for recycling day, and blank spaces waiting for an armchair or futon to come and fill them up.

Meanwhile other people’s homes seem nicely set up. People are buying houses. Everyone is having babies. They seem to be doing fine: the people and the babies. Sometimes it seems they have all cracked the code of life and are now striding confidently ahead while I’m watching from the side of the road.

When I get sucked down into the comparison rabbit hole, I remind myself what Raja and I have done over the last few years. We got married. We spent awhile being stuck in two different countries during early COVID. We got reunited. We took care of his mom for awhile. We have had three international moves between us in the last four years. We applied for and got his green card. And then, after all that, we set up life for ourselves in the US.

In many ways our life doesn’t really resemble other people’s lives – I came to terms with that a while ago – so comparing doesn’t make sense. But I still do it.

One stroke, another stroke, breath, one stroke, another stroke, breath.

Two years after arriving in Boston, here we are in a beautiful new apartment with lovely friends and two good jobs. We have our favorite ice cream shop and our go-to grocery routine and furniture. We didn’t have any of that two years ago. Compared to those first few months after moving here, when we watched movies on the floor because we didn’t have a couch, we’ve come a long way.

Swimming feels very slow and steady. That’s why I like it. When I swim, I don’t analyze my pace like I do with running. And I feel good after a long swim. It’s a full body workout that doesn’t slam your knees into the pavement like my lifelong love of running does (but don’t worry, running: I will never abandon you).

I also like that swimming is something I taught myself thirteen years ago when I had a stress fracture and I couldn’t run for six months. I never learned how to swim well when I was a kid, and I never learned the front crawl. I could stay afloat, but that was about it. I’d had an “I can’t swim” complex going on ever since I failed all those summer camp swim tests and had to stay in the red-buoy zone of the lake, closest to shore, while my friends all got to be further out in the green-buoy zone.

Later, after I got the injury and couldn’t run, I wandered into the pool on my undergrad campus. I didn’t have the right gear and had no idea what I was doing. Those first few mornings, I just sputtered and gasped in the shallow end, trying to figure out the coordination, the breathing.

Other swimmers would take pity on me and lean over the rope between lanes to give me tips: try breathing out slowly through your nose.

It was embarrassing.

But I kept at it until I could swim laps and look like a normal person (I hoped). I like that swimming started out as a me thing, not a formal training thing.

When I reached the peninsula at Walden last Friday, I paused by the shore, treading water. The opposite bank was now tantalizingly close. I thought I could make it. Do you think we can make it? I shouted to my friend who was treading water nearby. He thought we could.

We went for it and it was even closer than expected. Just five minutes of swimming and we were there. I swam until the ground rose up to meet my fingertips and stood up to look back at the pond. From this angle, the sun was shining in our faces so we couldn’t even see the boathouse where we’d started.

Tiny fish glinted above the sand by our feet. Dotted all around the pond were the orange and yellow buoys of other swimmers, crisscrossing every which way like a crazy ant farm of industrious morning people.

I savored the moment of triumph: the opposite bank. A beam of pride warmed my chest: Here is a thing I did all by myself, stroke by stroke.

A year ago I wouldn’t have thought I could reach it. But I’d been inching my way towards it.

I remember how Raja and I felt daunted by Life Set Up when we moved to Boston two years ago, and how we slowly got it all done.

We feel daunted by Life Set Up now, having just moved into the new place, and again we’ll get it all done. There are a finite number of boxes left to unpack. One by one by one by one by one we’ll get there.

I wanted to just sit at the edge of the pond and bask in the sun, reveling in this beautiful moment. But I’m trying to take shorter breaks on long swims to practice for my upcoming triathlon, when I’ll have to swim continuously for 45 minutes.

Ready? I said to my friend.

Let’s go, he said, and we left behind the tiny fish and struck out once more for the opposite shore.

Is there a life lesson you need to keep learning over and over again?