Pool Sanctuary

Pool Sanctuary

I awoke this morning with a start. The phone off the hall in the bath woke me. I had been up at 4 A.M. and had gone back to bed. The sound was glaring.

Eleven o'clock is my buddy-swim time. At age 65 I am swimming for my health with another condo resident. It's too early to talk I said to myself. I can't move. I didn't want to talk at all, having called Minneapolis residents for the Presidential race just the night before.

Still, Janice, my swimming buddy, age 80.5, could be down at the condominium pool, hoping I'd join her. At 11:30 I made my way down the hall. No walker in the hallway, meant no Janice in the pool. 

I was sinning anyway. I'd made a strong pot of coffee in clear violation of the
NO FOOD OR DRINKS sign on the wall. I had my brew hidden under my towel. Rules were made...

I set everything down on one of the tables. The pool water barely moved...only a little--like a human breathing. I had entered my sanctuary, my pool sanctuary. Sometimes a boxelder bug makes it's way inside and decides to take a dip. But no little insect legs were skimming the top. I was alone. It was delicious. 

As I descended the stairs into the water, the feel of the water felt cool, cooler than normal. Janice wouldn't have liked it. To keep the vigil, I didn't turn the lights on.

I let my body make it's own ripples, loving the sound. The woods outside the windows is the backdrop I love. Now fewer leaves against a gray sky. 

Thinking of recent horrific events on the East coast, I think of the craziness of metropolitan living, our manic use of cell phones, our demand for services.

I think of the one poem of mine my son said he likes. Inspired by the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu I wrote:

Desiring everything

You have nothing;

Desiring nothing,

You have everything;

Ride the train and you lose the landscape;

Walk the path and become

Part of the flowers;

Swim fiercely

And the waves are choppy;

Float and the water 

Caresses your limbs;

Truth is the root

Of a very large tree:

Sit in it's branches

And embrace--the shade.

I say the words in water.

It's easier to pray when you're alone. So the Catholic litany begins, mostly the familiar Act of Contrition, then the St. Francis Prayer, but whatever comes. I pray for those fighting cancer, a friend I haven't heard of in a long time, my brother, my brother in-law and those grieving his passing. I don't want to leave anyone out, but invariably I do. I'm comforted, happy, when each name needing prayers comes to me. 

I do my backstroke praying from end to end. God swims with me, maybe Buddha, too. (Dear Thich Nhat Hanh says: If you ask Buddha to come, he comes right away.) Come Healing Buddha.

As Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda said: God is everything.