23: Floating

I didn’t give myself time to think about it. I put one foot on the ladder, then the other, and in one swift movement I descended into the water.

Last year, I accidentally started a new birthday tradition. One to add to my tradition of drinking champagne on the day, or at the very least something bubbly. That one began because I was tired of keeping the bottle of nice champagne H had bought me in our bedroom closet for almost two years and wanted a reason to finally drink it. Because if one can’t have champagne on their birthday, then when is the proper time? That tradition was so fun, so delicious that it immediately felt like it should be something to repeat every year.

I didn’t know that last year I would be starting something I’d want to carry forward. My birthday is in October. It’s my favorite month of the year, and not solely because of the celebrations, though this is a lovely, added bonus; it’s my favorite time of the year because I love the way the weather shifts. I love the memory of those first, crisp days as a kid, when it feels like summer is packing up its beach towels and umbrellas and heading out, all sandy and sun-kissed, so fall can move in with its roll-neck sweaters and mornings of waking up in cold bedrooms because the window was left open all night. It’s the thought of new school supplies and fresh beginnings; new notebooks, fresh pens, a new year to look forward to, new chances. It’s keeping an eye out for the first leaves to change, then watching as the streets light up as if aglow - all the reds, oranges, and yellows dropping at my feet, leaving piles of leaves to rack up and jump in. It’s the return of the crispest apples.

But fall doesn’t happen like this in Southern California. If we’re lucky, this type of weather will begin to settle in around November, a week or two before Thanksgiving, and while everyone else moans about the rain and the grey, I welcome it. That’s why as an adult, I’ve occasionally, when I’ve been lucky enough or when another occasion called for it, snuck off somewhere that’s allowed me to experience peak fall like I did for all my birthdays growing up. There were the big, milestone birthdays spent in New York: sixteen and thirty come to mind. Other falls spent out east were followed by trips up the coast to New England and Vermont; and if we weren’t out in October, there was a good chance we were out in November or December, when all the coats and boots and layers got to have their spectacular outings, and I got to point out every tree that still had its amber leaves clinging to its branches. There was the birthday spent in Quebec, the birthday of two crème brûlées and a steak dinner. The one in Bruges with the best waffles and one of my favorite cups of tea. And then last year, the one spent in London.

I felt so lucky to be having a London birthday. I was happy to be there, to be doing my favorite things, to be meeting a new friend for a glass of wine, a friend I’d made at home and who’d months before moved an ocean away. I enjoyed putting on my new Paynter coats and my favorite Toast boots and going for long, winding walks. But I was also sad and not looking forward to turning a year older; a feeling which finally surfaced over my dinner at Granger & Co when all I wanted to do was cry over my glass of Cava, perhaps brought back to reality by tube strikes and transport issues and waiting for texts from home, which was a real shame because the morning had been so lovely. It’s the perfect representation of the dichotomy of this past year. My 35th year broke open everything. It straddled two difficult calendar years. Last year, in all, was a very hard year. Beat only by this year, which has been a real bitch.

Waking up on that birthday, I didn’t know what was to come. I didn’t know that two months later I would be submitting my applications for master’s programs in England because it was a thing I’d always wanted to do and I thought, let’s try for it. I knew surgery was on my horizon but not what it would look like or that it would happen at the worst possible time, only days after the fires broke out. I didn’t know that I’d finally, actually start writing the novel I’d been thinking about for years or how one hour of writing a week could lead to it being a real thing that’s now almost fifty pages long. I didn’t know what the months would bring: the tensions, the conversations, the hurt, the late nights, the moments when things felt normal again. I didn’t know that I would find myself navigating a separation from H, where once we were building something together, we were now figuring out who got this and who got that, twelve years of beautiful moments distilled down into this. I didn’t know that a year and almost two weeks later, I’d be moving into a new apartment, and would find myself wondering how I’d made it through or how that day had actually arrived and I’d somehow lived it.

If I knew what the next year held and what it would put me through, I might not’ve gotten out of bed that day. It would’ve seemed too daunting, too hard, too sad, too unbelievable. Hunger and a need for a cup of tea might’ve gotten me out of bed eventually, as it has on even the hardest of days - though on those days, it’s the hunger of a particular, schedule oriented cat who insists I get up - but I don’t know if I would’ve gone willingly. All I knew then was that I was going to put on an outfit that made me feel great, that we were going to walk from our ground floor room, across the lobby, to the Buttery for an amazing full English breakfast and a strong pot of Darjeeling tea, and that after breakfast, mom and I would take the Overground to Hampstead Heath, where we’d have an idyllic walk across the heath and would get lost only once, as is tradition, on our way to the Ladies’ Pond. Because the thing I wanted to do on my birthday was go cold water swimming.

The side view of the Ladies’ Pond, captured sneakily, as photos aren’t strictly allowed.

I stood on the deck waiting to enter the water. I wore the new long-sleeved suit I’d bought specifically for the occasion, precisely to prevent the moment when the cold water hits the small of the back and makes it almost impossible to take that next step down the ladder. There was a group Irish women in front of me. Two friends were already in, treading water, one smartly wore a hat which made me wish I’d brought one with me, as the other two debated who would go in first, arms crossed over their chests to keep away the chill air. To buy themselves some more time, they kindly let me go ahead of them. I didn’t give myself time to think about it. I put one foot on the ladder, then the other, and in one swift movement I descended into the water.

It’s almost like this jolt of electricity hits the body. The water is cold, so cold. It has a way of sharpening the senses. It catches the breath and reminders you to breathe. It’s a crazy thing to do, I fully acknowledge this, and yet, every time I go cold swimming, there is something about the experience of being in the water that keeps me coming back. I can only focus on the moment I’m in. I think about how I move each part of my body through the water. I focus on doing one lap and then another. I watched the other women at the pond, some solo, some with a friend or partner, as we all swam in circles around each other. Bits of conversations would float across the water. Newcomers would stand on the deck and we’d watch as they joined us. Many wore bikinis, many more yelled as their backs and then necks hit the water. It’s such a grounding, cathartic experience, and there’s something so special about sharing it with other people that I don’t know but who have chosen to do this crazy thing also.

I don’t know how long I swam. Ten minutes, maybe. It could’ve been longer. There’s no marker of time when I’m in the water other than the way my fingers and toes feel from the cold or the way the light changes overhead or by watching the other people who are there, the ones that were in the water before me or got in around a similar time, and seeing if they’re still here, if they’re still doing laps. I stood on the deck after I got out and waited for the shower on the other side of the building to open up. It was a fruitless activity as the water was frightfully cold for a shower, so I quickly wrapped it up and went to change. The Irish ladies were out too, bundling themselves in their jumpers and coats. It started to rain. I put my layers back on, laced up my boots, and then off we set in search of some lunch. We passed the booth where we’d entered and paid, where the woman attending shouted out an exuberant “happy birthday” when she’d found out it was today and this was how I’d chosen to spend it.

The idea was that we’d travel down to Marylebone for a fancy lunch at Chiltern Firehouse - a place I’d heard about but had never been and now won’t for quite some time, as months later they suffered a devastating fire that’s left it closed until further notice - but given that it was almost two o’clock and their service was winding down, the rain, and the fact that we were on the other side of London, we looked up and found ourselves standing across the street from the most inviting pub and so we ducked inside. There was one table left, next to the door, and so we sat down and had one of my favorite meals of the whole trip.

This is how the tradition started, not that I knew that when I set off to swim in the pond. Throughout the year, in the moments when I was stressed or overwhelmed or felt adrift or felt any multitude of feelings, I would often think back to the pond, of that feeling of floating in the water. I would long for this feeling, to be able to leave my racing thoughts on the deck and to let the water hold me, to move me, to just be there in that moment. There were a few moments when I achieved this feeling during my weekly lap swims at my local YMCA but I wasn’t usually successful at entering the meditative state I craved, my swirling thoughts always caught up to me in the lap lane. I thought about floating in the water a lot. I texted a girlfriend in the spring and told her about the image I kept imagining, and she told me how much she longed for that too. And so, when I knew that I would be spending this year’s birthday near the sea, I wanted to have a moment of being in the water.

I spent the actual day traveling, very far, to reach Italy and then went a bit further still up the winding coastline of the Amalfi Coast to reach the town of Positano. We - my mom, sister, and I - were all a bit motion sick upon arriving and so we needed a moment to settle back into our surroundings and our bodies before we could even think about exploring; my dad, on the other hand, was totally fine from the hairpin turns we made one after the other. It made me wish I had that unshakeable constitution and didn’t have to give myself a pep talk in the car, to tell myself I could get past the next set of turns, and the ones after that. Taking dramamine before our descent the next day made a world of difference. After we felt normal again, we walked down the many, many steps to the sea. We had lunch with a view of the beach. I had a Sicilian lemon pasta and a glass of rosé. And then we set off looking for a place to change. There was the moment I considered lying and saying that yes, we were guests to get into the spacious, private resort bathroom, and then there was the moment when we found the actual public bathroom and paid the €1.20 to enter. I slipped on the same long-sleeved suit, put my jeans and shirt back over top, and walked down to the beach.

The beach was full of families and lovers and friends lounging on towels, engaged in their conversations, some eating picnics and others cones of gelato, some drying off from the water in the afternoon sun, others overlooking the shrieks and laughter of the swimmers to watch the boats crossing back and forth on the horizon. I stood on the pebbled beach, stripped down to my suit, and navigated the uneven surface until my feet hit the water. It was cold - not as cold as the pond - but once I was submerged, I began to warm up. I walked until I could just touch the bottom and then pushed off into the greater depths. The Mediterranean was clear; I could roughly see the shape of the sea floor. The waves were calm, small, manageable, compared to what I’m used to with the Pacific. I swam a few short laps but mostly I floated. I turned my face up to the sky and let the sun warm it. I spent time watching the people on the beach, then the people in the water with me, then the boats further off.

I was doing it. I was in it. I’d made the image in my head, the one I’d kept coming back to all year, a reality. I was floating in the sea. I felt so much anxiety wash away in that moment. I felt so present and at peace. I felt like myself being there because that’s the thing about cold swimming, you really can’t be anywhere else except in your body, in the water, in the present. That’s part of why I love it. It calmed my mind and I left the water feeling grounded again and so appreciative to have found myself in Italy, on this holiday, on this beach. I went back in one more time - after a brief stint of sitting on the stones, helping my sister look for sea glass and in turn, finding a perfect stone that I stuck in my sleeve to hold onto later - and allowed myself to be rocked by the water for a little bit longer. But then the motion sickness returned and it was time to call it a day and return to the shore to dry off.

I sat on the towel and watched the sea. I watched influencers direct their boyfriends on how best to take the photo of them walking out of the water, without ever having been in the water. There was the incredibly fit woman in her bikini, splashing water on her abs and biceps, to give them a sheen, tousling her hair just so, avoiding actually getting in the sea. I looked at the stones. I found pieces of sea glass, making a pile on my towel to take home with me, storing the glass and stones in a film canister. I considered changing on the beach. It was Italy, I’m sure no one would mind, there were people doing it around me - in their suits one minute and back in their shorts and shirts the next - but I couldn’t figure out how to get out of my still damp suit modestly. So I stayed on the towel a bit longer until I could put my jeans back on.

Then we had gelato. Strawberry in a delectable cone. It was maybe the best gelato I’ve ever eaten.

A week later, I stood on a weathered path on an Umbrian hillside. Villa Pia - my home for that week and the location of the writing retreat I was attending - sat behind me in its muted pinks and beiges. I stood and looked at this hillside full of autumnal browns, greens, and reds, amazed that somehow I had to fly home. I couldn’t just stay here? I had to leave this place with its excellent eighteen dish lunches and writing sessions next to the fire in the kitchen? I was walking to the pool because I couldn’t allow myself to leave this magical place without having at least one cold swim. I’d waited until the middle of the week, until the cold I’d picked up in Florence had subsided, thanks in large part to the magnificent regiment of Italian cold medicine I’d been taking and the copious amounts of the most incredible fresh vegetables and endless cups of tea.

This was my first swim. I went in the afternoon, after lunch and my tutorial, so I had the place to myself. It was glorious; a bit colder than the sea. I feel like each time I enter the water for a dip, I have to laugh at myself at the absurdity of swimming in the cold, of somehow, only ever seeming to do this in the fall, of swimming the rest of the year inside, in chlorinated pools. But what a tonic for the mind and what a location for it. I wasn’t alone in this either; I had so many conversations with the other women at the retreat about cold swimming, about how so many of us do it and love it and crave it, about when we were thinking of walking down the pathway to the pool, and then how we’d inevitably all gather after for a cup of tea next to the fire. One of the women, Diana, told me she swims off the coast of Scotland. Now, I’d like to give that a try.

The Umbrian hillside as I stood halfway between the villa and the pool.

I’d been told that many of the women just change poolside. And so, after my swim, I gave a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure I was indeed alone, and then I struggled out of my suit and climbed into my slightly warmer plaid shirt and jeans and jelly sandals. The countryside didn’t seem to mind.

I’d return for two more swims before I left, in the mornings, with the mist, but those times, I’d quickly walk back to my room in my suit and attempt again to navigate the much too small shower with the weird step in the middle and the curtain that did little to keep the water inside the stall. My suit would still be damp the next day and as I shrugged it on, it gave me that first jolt of cold that would wake me up and spur me on to walk down the pathway to the pool and climb the ladder into the water.