Category: Swimming
Tuesday, Mar 26, 2013 | Big Thoughts, Politics, Running, Spirit, Swimming, Work |
the view from my keyboard
Life is unsteady. It doesn’t hold still.
That’s why I get up early and hold to a practice.
I will have to find a way to do this no matter what comes, no matter how busy and disrupted my days. I need to run. Or swing weights. Or cycle. Or push myself physically in some way. My joy and my productivity is directly connected to my body. I can’t think myself content, but I sure as hell can feel it.
My thought today as I ran on the indoor track was that I was running myself into submission. But wait, I thought, I’m running myself free, not into submission. Because even on the indoor track, I could feel wind in my hair, and my heart beating, and my breath coming deep and fast and sure. And then I realized that it was my mind that needed to submit to my body, so that my body could experience freedom. The further I run, the faster I run. This is probably backward to most people’s experience of running (or maybe it’s not!?). I think it’s because it takes time for my mind to empty and hush and stop doubting or worrying. And then comes focus and clarity of effort.
::
Do you remember the REM song, “Losing My Religion”? A tiny snippet from that song is stuck in my head.
“Life is bigger …”
I keep hearing it. I pay attention when a song lyric is stuck in my head, because it often tells me where I’m at. (Except for when it’s telling me that in spin class this morning the instructor played “Hangover” by Taio Cruz and, no, I don’t have a hangover, and if I did, I wouldn’t have been in spin class, Taio!)
Life is bigger. It fits where I’m at. It means, for me, this constant effort to make space for more. More emotion, more spirit, more connections, more newness, while also opening myself and my imagination to the possibilities of what I can learn and make and do. It can feel disorienting to ask others to give you the chance to try the things you want to try, and to step toward the things you want to do, but aren’t yet expert in. It’s like being asked to play a new position on the soccer field. It’s like learning how to swim as an adult. If you believe you can, you will trust your ability to build on everything you’ve experienced that’s brought you to this point, and you will simply and willingly do your best.
You won’t be the best goalie. And you won’t be the best swimmer. At least not immediately. But you’ll be on the field, or in the water, and that is the only way to learn.
Life is bigger.
::
Finally, this. I’m an inveterate writer of letters (not unlike Juliet, who writes to Ronald Reagan in one of my favourite stories in The Juliet Stories). Here is the letter I felt inspired to write and send today, to the editors of The Globe and Mail newspaper, who somehow managed not to highlight on the front page the most inspiring news story I’ve heard in a long time (note: they did print a story and photo several pages into the front page section.)
To the editors,
The Globe and Mail newspaper’s front page editors would like to show me that Tiger Woods, who cheated famously and serially on his former wife, and who is not a Canadian citizen at least to my knowledge, is back on top again. Oh, and that the Prime Minister of Canada met with what looks like a Fed Ex-ed panda yesterday.
Meanwhile, a group of young people from Northern Quebec completed an epic 1,500 km walk during which they hiked and snowshoed and camped through weather more extreme than most Canadians have ever experienced, ending their journey yesterday in Ottawa, at Parliament Hill, in hopes that their efforts might bring attention to the needs of their communities.
But, you know, I can totally see how Tiger Woods and pandas would make a better illustration to sum up yesterday’s news. Especially when Canadians are so bombarded with positive images and stories of native youth. And besides, such a photo on the front page of a national newspaper might remind us of our collective agreements and responsibilities toward all the people who live in Canada, including those who were here first, and put us off at breakfast, and make us feel guilty. And that would be sad for Globe and Mail readers.
Or maybe we would have felt inspired, who knows. Maybe you should try a whole lot harder, dig a whole lot deeper, and show us what really matters to Canadians.
Yours, Carrie Snyder
Waterloo, ON
Friday, Feb 15, 2013 | Kevin, Soccer, Swimming, Work, Writing |
dog love
Achievement yesterday: wrote all planned scenes in new book.
(Child: “Did you write THE END?” Me: “No, I don’t usually put that in.” Child: “You should!”)
Word total: 83,759.
I note this high water mark only to forget it.
Reality check today: back to the beginning, baby.
From here on in, word count is expected to reverse as I tighten, slash and burn, and sacrifice all of my favourite (aka: indulgent) sentences, paragraphs, and yes, even entire scenes.
Now it gets gritty.
When the kids arrived home from school yesterday, I said, “I finished my book!”
Cool. What’s for snack?
“Now I need to polish it. Then I’ll send it to my agent. She might want me to make some changes. I’ll make those changes. Then I’ll send it back to my agent. Maybe she’ll think it’s ready to go to the publisher. Maybe the publisher will like it. Or maybe they’ll want me to make some changes before offering me a contract. Then I’ll make more changes. Then maybe they’ll want me to sign a contract. Then I’ll start working with an editor. Then I’ll make a bunch more changes …” [note: children no longer listening]
Well. That kind of takes the fun out of celebrating a milestone, doesn’t it!
I should have poured myself a glass of wine instead.
But I had a lot of driving to do last night: older girl to swim practice followed by younger girl to soccer skills (sudden snow squall + commuter traffic = extra-long drive and extra-special driving swear words); home to shovel down supper; back to pick up swim girl, feed her en route, drop her at soccer practice; pick up younger girl and a friend, listen to amusing conversations between daughter and friend (“Watch out — my mom says bad words sometimes when she’s driving! Today she said, mm-hmm mm-hmmm!” [no translation, thankfully] “That’s okay. My mom and dad do that sometimes too.”); send Kevin out for final pickup while putting little kids to bed.
So I didn’t celebrate with a glass of wine.
Instead, after all was said and done, I left the dishes, and sipped a cup of tea, made with mint leaves harvested from our own backyard, and sat on the couch with Kevin and the dogs. It was Kevin’s Valentine’s wish for us. Isn’t he the best?
Today, I renew my commitment to this book.
The Girl Runner!
Long may she run. And may I have the grit, energy, and determination to bring her story into book-shaped form.
Monday, Feb 4, 2013 | Blogging, Book Review, Cooking, Kevin, Reading, Swimming, Writing |
shovelling with dogs, Monday morning, early
Slow start. Hi there, Monday. Why you be so Mondayish week after week?
::
I’m thinking of starting a regular lost-and-found feature. The latest on the list:
* one Playbook, lost and then miraculously found at the bottom of my sports bag where it had rested patiently since last Sunday’s soccer game, going to and from exercise studios
* one black Celtic hat and pair of pink mittens: CJ’s, last seen Friday, or maybe yesterday, who can remember? This lost hat & mitt combo represented this morning’s final crisis before leaving the house, late, to catch the bus.
::
It felt like a weekend of non-stop-ness. Maybe that’s why I’m having such a hard time getting going this morning. Even the fun parts were relentlessly timed. For example, coffee date with son. (These coffee dates/errand running, with each child getting a turn, have become regular Saturday morning events.) Thankfully he did not complain about having to eat his onion bagel with garlic & herb cream cheese in eight minutes flat.
The turn-around time was terribly tight: I was off to a swim meet in Brantford with the swim girl. There is something very similar about all of these pools, and the meets too. Noisy music; insanely tight seating (this time on deck); a dad seated directly behind you with a bullhorn of a voice hollering at his kid in the pool who clearly will never be able to hear or follow the directions being given; technical glitches with the scoreboards; expensive race sheets that you have to buy or you won’t know when your kid is racing; searching endlessly trying to locate your child’s cap, goggles, and suit amidst the multitudes of other similarly clad children; sitting for butt-numbing hours on end; child races, heart rate accelerates, sitting again; boggled by the limited supply of bathrooms in these facilities; wishing you’d brought a better snack; trying to read/work while keeping an eye on the race progression; chatting with neighbouring parents; waiting endlessly for swim kid to locate lost items at the end of the day (this meet it was a GIGANTIC copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales that took us half an hour to find in the littered stands, no exaggeration.)
Watching your kid swim two fantastic personal bests in races that amount to a total of just over 2 minutes. Seeing her take deep pleasure in the reward of her hard work. Marvelling at her race-intensity. Being proud. Figuring it’s all kind of worth it.
*
Also this weekend: babysitting exchange at our house. Eight kids plus two dogs overnight. Kevin was in charge of food, and he really outdid himself. Two casseroles of homemade mac-and-cheese, a graham cracker-chocolate-cookie-cake that had everyone rushing for seconds, and a triple batch of pancakes and sausages for breakfast. “I love having kids around to cook for,” he sighed with satisfaction, to which I said, “Wha???? Don’t we always have kids around to cook for?” Apparently cooking for other people’s kids is more fun than cooking for one’s own brood.
*
Add in two giggling girls awake at 5:50am, a swim practice, a sledding miscommunication, two soccer games (no subs and a tie for me, two goals and a win for her), a carshare car, and a Super Bowl supper, and we were done. We were toast. We were ready for bed early. And the alarm sounded early. And it was Monday. It is Monday.
Deadline to meet tomorrow. Must. Get. Writing. Not. Blogging.
Monday, Jan 21, 2013 | Baking, Kids, Parenting, Running, Soccer, Swimming, Weekend |
Day two of swim meet. Day two of early rising, despite it being the weekend. Day two of coffee cup, snow melting off boots in over-heated environment, crammed-together hard bench seating, trying to read for poetry book club (The Book of Marvels, by Lorna Crozier).
Day two of trying to get her attention, and waiting for her races.
Last race of day two. 50m freestyle. Lane 6.
She doesn’t love the sprints. She thinks she’s more a natural endurance swimmer. She’s behind at the turn.
But she powers home to win the heat in her best time yet: personal bests in every race this weekend. Swimming is all about personal bests. It’s set up like a race, yet according to my girl you can’t really see the other swimmers around you, and have little sense of where you are positioned. It’s not like running on a track where tactics come into play, along with strength and speed. You’re basically just going as hard as you can in your own lane. It’s a very individual sport.
I can’t say I’m a convert, exactly, after these past two days. It’s a lot of waiting for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. I can’t appreciate the technical abilities of the swimmers, having none of those abilities myself, and being unfamiliar with the sport. And I don’t really enjoy the rush of adrenalin that I get when I’m watching her race — it’s very intense, almost embarrassing. I care too much! I am seriously shaking immediately after her races. Do other parents respond like that?
cinnamon raisin bread
I came home and baked four loaves of regular bread, and four loaves of cinnamon raisin bread. We ate a loaf of fresh bread for supper last night with split pea soup. I baked the cinnamon raisin bread after supper — heavenly smells in the house, and everyone was excited to wake up and eat it for breakfast this morning.
*
I also played an indoor soccer game yesterday. But I did not go for a long run. I’m realizing that my weekends are very squeezed as it is … and maybe I’m just too tired by the weekend to add in that extra element. I try to make room for so many different activities, but there are limits, and I’d rather go with the flow and enjoy and appreciate all of the things I’m getting to do, rather than getting down on myself for those additional wish-list activities I just can’t seem to shoehorn in.
Saturday, Jan 19, 2013 | Kids, Swimming |
First race, 100 metre breast. Takes 9 seconds off her best time.
Second race. Girl in green approaches 25 m turn in the 100 m free.
Girl in green opens lead at 75 m turn in the 100 m free.
Girl in green cruising to win her heat in the 100 m free. Takes 20 seconds off her best time. Mother too excited to hold camera steady.
“I just wish I could swim every night for two hours.” {which she did over the Christmas holidays during her club’s training camp}
Wednesday, Jan 9, 2013 | Book Review, Reading, Swimming, Writing |
“Artistic discipline and athletic discipline are kissing cousins, they require the same thing, an unspecial practice: tedious and pitch-black invisible, private as guts, but always sacred.”
– from “Practice” in Swimming Studies, by Leanne Shapton
I loved this book. I bought it for my new Kobo, which my two eldest got me for Christmas — their own idea, their own money, their own surprise. I hope to use it to buy more of the books that I might not quite make the leap for in the bookstore. But I’ve now learned that it might inspire me to buy certain books twice, because having read Swimming Studies as an ebook, I long for the actual physical artifact of this particular book, so that I can share it, and so that I can leaf through its pages.
I was sad to reach the end of Swimming Studies. It is a memoir written in a style that I found both affecting and aesthetically serene. Shapton shares a series of moments, linked by their connection to her own life, and to swimming. She resists the impulse to analyze (I admire this, being compulsively analytical myself). She draws scenes that are coloured with very specific detail, that open the possibility of a story the way clues do. It gave me the sensation of looking at old photographs, and wondering about the people captured there. It gave me the sensation of disturbing a private scene, almost, and not fully grasping the significance of everything going on.
I find myself wondering over certain small scenes, like one early on: Why did the women behind the counter at the coffee shop rebuff her mother’s friendliness, in the early dark of morning, and why did her mother keep trying to be friendly? Or even just resonating with a familiar sound I have never paid attention to: the clanging of a frozen rope against a flag pole.
I like that the book seemed to belong to no established genre, nor to care. It didn’t need to fit easily into a category. I did not find myself becoming impatient with some parts that I imagine others might find indulgent: the minute descriptions of pools she remembers swimming in, or her collection of swim suits. I kind of just loved the whole thing.
I can’t imagine growing up with an athletic discipline and routine underpinning my daily life. But I know all about artistic discipline. I find it fascinating to glimpse the mind and experience of someone who has lived both. And I wonder if I could find some lesson, some inspiration here, some ease with the small; the ordinary transformed by attention; the possibility for forward motion within a scene that looks set and still. If ever I were to write a book based on my blog, I think this is where I would begin.
