Gone Swimming

Dear Daughter,

I appreciate your concern for my health.

Consider this. Now that I am experiencing what I call ‘lovely joy,’ it makes sense to care for my body. Fortunately, I never really mistreated my body, not my joints in particular, or my body generally with an unhealthy diet.

The body likes exercise and swimming is good for low-impact aerobics and full-body conditioning, but of course, this fails to take into account that, like dancing, it is a different form of fun.

I heard you remind me of the perennial need for anyone, and an older man, to exercise caution, and I appreciate the love.

The good thing about being a nurse is that I know better, and being successfully older means I have nothing to prove to anyone. I can start an exercise program and listen to what I have told others about exercise over forty years, and know to listen to my body during my fun and forty-eight hours after. I know different strokes of different intensities. I know that treading water is full body exercise. I can sense my heart rate, take my pulse, sense the degree of labor of respiration. I monitored vital signs for a living. Safety first.

It is worth noting that after the first day of only six Olympic laps, I was curious how my body would react. Within twenty-four hours, ‘I had pains where I did not know I had places!’ Now into the second week, on my fourth day in the pool, I did eleven laps, two of which were on my back just kicking for good leg exercise. And now with goggles, the positioning of my head tilted halfway up from looking directly down at the bottom, allows for better breathing and a more efficient rhythm. I try for relaxed, good form. I am alone in the pool, there is no sense of competition. There is also no sense of fear.

I cannot say that I feel one way or another about more life in this aging body. I direct most of my energies into seeing all the great aspects of being alive and being aware, and being grateful. So, thank you, and be assured that, if I am allowed a preference, I would prefer another day of this path.

I only recently accepted that the endless supply of human suffering and the paradoxical coexistence of love and joy were just part of being human and I could have both flow through my heart without harm. Apparently, the tricky part is not the satisfaction derived from preference but, rather, the attachment to preferences. The nature of the constant change in the flow of the cosmos is that it offers no handholds. Whole world views are created to deny the fact that all aspects of the universe, the handholds, are subject to the observational limits of relativity and of the human mind. These obscure realizations are the fascinations of age, and come while making friends with mortality.

More important, and much more simply stated: I love you. I hope I will get to love you more.

Father