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.