I have had a house guest for the past ten days. This is not the best situation for me. I am a solitary type and when there are others around, even my husband or child, for more than a bit I become slightly frantic. Claustrophobia grips me and my temper is short, my speech terse and unloving. In this small house anyone but a hobbit would find themselves shrinking into a corner at the press of bodies in the kitchen, the trail of shoes at the foot of the stairs, the untidy aspect of every single room.
The Swimmer
I am a swimmer. I swim. It is what I do and it has become who I am, in a way. It started fourteen years ago when my friend Lisa finally convinced me that swimming would help me overcome chronic back pain. She was right, of course, but it took me about five years to hear her wisdom. Now, if I’m a swimmer, Lisa is a mermaid. Her arms are strong, her stroke is so beautiful, so sure she could well cross the Channel with one of those arms tied behind her back. During college she swam in the early hours, often the only person in the huge, silent pool. When she visited me in East Hampton, she marched down to the bay, goggles in hand and I watched her cut back and forth, far out, perfectly parallel to the shoreline. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a school of fish following her she was so at home in the water. She still swims in those dawn hours. I know that because my emails are returned at five or six a.m. as she packs up for the pool.
Keeping Faith
I spent a bare 24 hours in deepest, darkest Wiltshire last week. It isn’t that deep, a couple of hours outside London and it isn’t that dark, the sun duked it out with the rain the whole time we were there. And let’s be honest, 24 hours is hardly a trip, it’s a ‘tripette’ as my friend Fiona would say. In fact, she did say it as we piled into the car with my husband.
Joy Rising, Sorry Oprah
I have a friend, one of those real ones that your kid brings over to you on the playground or in front of the school and says, “Here, this is so and so’s Mum, you’ll love her.” There are other real ones, like the girl you met Freshman year in college who is so different from you and yet so alike that you can’t stop listening to her stories and you start using the same soap she does because you want to smell just like her. But more about her, another time.