The Swimmers

by Julie Otsuka

“Up there,” she says, “I’m just another little old lady. But down here, at the pool, I’m myself.”

down below, at the pool, we are only one of three things: fast-lane people, medium-lane people or the slow.

the shock of the water—there is nothing like it on land. The cool clear liquid flowing over every inch of your skin. The temporary reprieve from gravity. The miracle of your own buoyancy as you glide, unhindered, across the glossy blue surface of the pool. It’s just like flying. The pure pleasure of being in motion.

And if you swim for long enough you no longer know where your own body ends and the water begins and there is no boundary between you and the world. It’s nirvana.

And what we lack in horizon and sky we make up for in tranquility, for one of the best things about the pool is the brief respite it offers us from the noisy world above:

The minute you put your head down into the water, all that noise is gone. All you can hear is the soothing sound of your own breathing, the rhythmic rise and fall of your strokes, the muffled splash of your neighbor flutter-kicking away in the next lane and, every once in a while, an ethereal snatch of song drifting, dreamy and fog-like, through the thick chlorinated air: why it’s Alice, singing “Dancing on the Ceiling,” as she pulls on her white flowered cap. The world is lyrical because a miracle…But most of the time it’s just you and your own thoughts as you glide through the cool, clear water.

others of us, however, feel strangely relieved. The terrible thing we have been waiting for has finally happened. A weight has been lifted. A shadow has passed. The uncertainty is over. This is it. The end. No more fun for us. And now we can move on.

She remembers that she is forgetting. She remembers less and less every day.

Try to make their lives easier, if you can. They are being paid the lowest possible wage to love you.

And with each memory shed you will feel lighter and lighter. Soon you will be totally empty, a void, and, for the first time in your life, you will be free. You will have attained that state of being aspired to by mindful meditators across the planet—you will be existing utterly and completely “in the now.”

the last complete sentence she ever utters is “It’s a good thing there’s birds.”

You have not heard the sound of her voice, now, in almost two years. Suddenly, she reaches out and grasps your arm. Her grip is strong but gentle. Her hand is unexpectedly warm. Your mother, you realize, is holding you. And for the first time in weeks you feel calm. Don’t stop. You stay like that, she with her hand on your arm, you on the sofa beside her, not moving, barely breathing, for several minutes, until it is time to wheel her into the Dining Room for lunch. The best five minutes of your life.