Day 22 ~ Swimming

For the past ten years, our community has had the pool heater turned off for the season in November. I was disappointed by the announcement that this year they'll do it today, October 12. But I managed to swim before that. It was a double blessing because there is not much exercise I can do these days, with a broken toe. I learned how to swim the year my dad finished making our swimming pool. He did it himself, except for bringing an excavator first and a concrete mixer, a few weeks later, to lay the cement around the steel frame between the double brick wall he had built. He installed all the plumbing as well. As a last step, he engraved its completion date on a side wall, some time in July 1979. We tested it and then emptied it and put the blue paint on. From then on, we would fill it with fresh water every June and let it go green at the end of September. I loved having access to it in the summer. I spent more time diving than swimming. I liked holding my breath while going under the water from one end to the other. At age eighteen I took lessons every weekday of the month of July, swimming one kilometer a day in an Olympic swimming pool. During my pregnancy, I got in the habit of lap swimming for fifteen minutes almost daily during the summer. In recent years, if it is warm enough to get in the water, I swim forty laps, which takes me twelve minutes (it's a small pool). Last month I noticed that my son's new instructor was great correcting technique, so lo and behold, I took a private lesson from him. For being just one lesson, I learned a few things that I can correct. And a few others that remind me that aging makes learning harder.