Ode to Swimming: Everything is Beautiful in the Lap Lane

by Melissa Uhl Draut

Lap Swim by Melissa Uhl Draut

Swimming makes me feel alive in ways that don’t happen on land. Swimming is a habit for me, like brushing my teeth. Three or four times a week I swim or I just don’t feel right.  It’s sensual, renewing, and meditative.

I’ve been asked if I swam competitively; I did not. I learned to swim since my dad was a state champion swimmer. My mother never learned to swim because of the polio scare in her youth, but she made sure we did. I started swimming laps during college when I lived on the University of Louisville’s campus one semester. My sorority sister suggested we try the campus natatorium for exercise before dinner.

I was not athletic as a child. I was the last one picked for playground teams and a bench sitter for “B” teams. I was on the debate team in high school. My high school health teacher Sister Dorothy assigned a book on aerobic exercise (a new concept coming on the scene in 1973) and required a one-mile timed run at end of the semester. That singular mile was torturous – my body covered in sweat, my feet pounding the pavement, lungs gasping for air.  Running made me feel exhausted, not exhilarated like some runners claim.

Looking back, I’m grateful my sorority sister urged me to try swimming with her. I liked to swim, and, stroke by stroke, I got better. I’m sure those first attempts at lap swimming were tortuously slow.  What I do remember is I was glad to be in the pool and felt good afterwards despite the initial learning curve.

When I started working after college, Ken (boyfriend then, husband now) and I joined the pool and gym at Breckenridge Inn. Lap swimming was part of our relationship.  I started a routine of lap swimming after work and on the weekends. When I worked downtown in the 1980s, I joined a fitness center with a pool in the basement.  I swam a couple days a week at lunch time and always felt refreshed when heading back to work.  I will admit getting my 1980s big hair style wet and fixed to go back to work was a pain, but worth it. I would blow dry my bangs and the side “wings”, letting the rest airdry on my walk back to the office.  After we moved into our home in 1987, we joined the Jewish Community Center for their pools and have stayed members ever since. The big difference was having an outdoor lap pool available in the summer.  The JCC became a great escape without needing to leave town.

Swimming outdoors, more so than indoors, allows me to appreciate all my senses. A background serenade comes from birds chirping, kids squealing, and whistles blowing. The tingly cool water welcomes me as I dive under to touch the bottom and sprout back up into the summer air. The sunlight creates a dark silhouette of my head, neck, body, and arms in a breaststroke dance on the pool. My mouth and nose pull in and push out air intensifying all the smells – suntan lotion, chlorine, fresh cut grass, and snack bar fryer exhaust that mingle and move with the wind. The ever-present chlorine is part of both taste and smell. The pool floor also abounds in souvenirs from land. I spot dirt, bugs, concrete chips, paper, a barrette, and Band-Aids. One morning when I was one of the few swimming, I saw a big dead mouse at the end of the lane. I alerted Johnny, the aquatics manager who was lifeguarding and continued my swim. Luckily, Johnny was smart enough not to tell me it was a rat when he scooped it out.  A real pool rat.

My favorite stroke is backstroke. I can look up at the blue sky and make shapes out of puffy clouds with my imagination. As beautiful as it is to see the light show at the bottom of the pool from freestyle and breaststroke, the open sky is hard to beat – birds on a wire, a double winged airplane.  A line of green triangle flags flap in the wind and signal to me that the wall is a couple strokes ahead.  A wire of green and yellow plastic rings divides the lanes and keeps me in place. With backstroke, I feel strong like a log rolling from side to side, one with the water. I feel balanced in a way I never feel on land.

After an outdoor swim, I typically relax in a chair on the pool deck as the water glistens with sunlight. I take in the sound of lap swimmers – swish-swish as they make their strokes. The water is tones of teal, turquoise, silver, and emerald contrasting with the black lane lines wiggling to the surface. I delight in the parade of human bodies– babies, kids, seniors, big, small, round, bony in skimpy suits to total cover ups. The human body in many forms is on display, ligaments and muscles demonstrating our strength and abilities.

The pool prompts memories. Our son Sam was born in 1993 and became acquainted with swimming at the JCC baby and family pools. I recall a moment that I knew at the time was precious. I savored it then, and it’s one of my favorite moments to recall from the memory banks of motherhood.  It was an August afternoon with a bright blue sky. I’m standing with three-year-old Sam in the family pool holding his slippery body as he attempts to swim and play. He still needed me enough to stay close while exploring deeper water.  It was glorious. Those were halcyon days raising my child at the family pool. We met all kinds of families and people we didn’t typically interact with – all of us partaking in the summer ritual of pleasure at the pool.

When I was newly unemployed from the newspaper business and figuring out how I would work from home (a budding concept in 2007), I started swimming again at lunch time to get out of the house, clear my head, and interact with real people. Swimming at lunch helped me feel refreshed and energized for the afternoon. And I ended up making friends – swim friends who stood by me on land through good days and bad. When I was diagnosed in April 2014 with a sarcoma tumor in my right glute, my swim friends made sure I was okay. As soon as my incision healed, my two Jewish mothers helped me get back in the pool though I could barely walk. Laura held me on one side and Lynn on the other arm. Getting back in that pool was a baptism to be new again. I was going to be okay because I could still float – the gravity of land was scary, but the water felt safe. My physical therapist switched me to water therapy and that was how I learned to walk again – by walking in water. Nowadays, I brag that I swim better than I walk.

In and under the water, there’s a quiet escape for thinking. During my working years, my best ideas and problem-solving strategies came to me in the pool. Underwater, I think, meditate, or hum. I would tease my clients that I should charge for the time spent in the water solving their problems. Problems are clarified, emotions soothed, perspective gained.

Being in the water offers muffled sounds from outside to the water world underneath. The alarm beeps on my Ironman watch timer, the swish sounds made by kicks, the slaps from strokes into the water. Lifeguard whistles and shouts. The bounce and the spring of the diving board – reverberation followed by a belly whopper splash.

Swimming makes all my senses come alive. I feel beautiful when I swim no matter what I might look like. Swimming is a sensual act. I love when I swim with my husband, especially at this age, I feel like we revert to our younger years – we’re smoother in the pool, a playful touch is more fun in water than on land, we can be frisky without worrying about gravity. I hope we are an inspiration to our young lifeguards.

Sometimes I mimic Broadway’s Chorus Line song, “Everything is Beautiful at the Ballet” and sing with a slight word change “everything is beautiful in the lap lane.” And it is.