Part 14 (1/2)

I swim laps three, sometimes four times a week now At the Clackamas Aquatic Center nearto home I have ever had

At the pool, the people ih occasionally one will show up and ame will come alive in my body - I can't help it I'll race them until they leave We usually don't speak - just nod at each other when it's over, as if we've shared soular people in the pool Beautiful worandrand you how it is that wos and bodies underwater, and feel a strange kinshi+p with a e You know you can sh

Twice innext to an albino I felt lucky soht water

At the pool nearShe swims her laps with a prosthetic that has a flipper at the end Very high-tech Her workouts, I've noticed, are for I like to swim near her

Sometimes kids and teens take up a lane -no doubt they are on swim teams - I can tell by their spectacular strokes and the kinds of swiles they wear They are in the sweet Effortlessly

Old men people the lap lanes too, s off of their backs in pale speckled folds Their legs seem too thin to carry thee boxer trunks Sometimes with very thin fabric But they wrestle the water anyhow, in all shapes and sizes, all for Once I stoppedat ?” The other one said, ”And how” Then they clapped It cracked oodbye, or keep up the good work

Middle-aged women like me show up too - most of them do not have the stroke quality of someone who has competed - but I am filled onder at them anyway They put their bodies in the water to swi to shed pounds Oralone in water - no kids hanging on you, no husband to tend to, no one and nothing to answer to When the pool is full I've noticed I' the first they will ask if they can share a lane Theyto lap the more important that draws them to my lane I think - I hope it is that the water is safe

Gay s will be hairless or they'll be wearing earrings and, well, the only other ay I soe i the the men they are - men who showed me love and coh we are strangers

Occasionally a swiet the same question ”Did you compete?” I nod and dip back under quickly It's not a conversation I want to have any longer, and they often askI don't want to join Masters Swi I want just to be in water

In the voiceless blue In the weightless wet

a La Recherche du Temps Perdu SOMETIMES I THINK THINGS OUT IN THE TIME IT TOOKit takes to walk fro it takes to brush my teeth It's what swis badly When I look back, things are underwater, and when I pick the the them to land I wonder whatwhen they scratch at it Usually I think of Proust, who tried to write a sentence about ia

In psychology, anism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve infors, and travels the waters of the nervous syste to nuke a frozen Lean Cuisine

According to recent neuroscience studies, the act of reers nearly the same activities in the brain and its circuitry as the actual experience They found this truth in rats and le fro what you re else The e it Each tie, it shi+fts The more you describe aa story that fits your life, resolves the past, creates a fiction you can live with It's riters do Once you open yourto neuroscience

The safest memories are locked in the brains of people who can't remember Their memories remain the closest replica of actual events Underwater Forever

Whenthe 100-ged him to shore, I'd won the 200-meter butterfly By the time an ambulance cath of tith of time for his heart to fail For memory to leave Hypoxia

The rest of his life, of what he did to us, there was nothing left Of who or what his daughter were or beca Of es In a loop Like fil plaza in Trinidad, and the steel drum music and et air and white sand and dark skinned wo

My father lost his hter the swiot cancer and died So in 2001 there he was, all alone in a house he barely recognized, facing the prospect of the State taking ownershi+p of hi home for the rest of his life

Have you ever visited nursing homes in Gainesville, Florida? I have Let ust to your throat like sorabbed it They s around in wheelchairs or ”walking” down halls look befuddled Like hunched over zo rooht and ruel in their mouths But what makes them particularly hideous in a Floridian sense is the heat The huht The mold on the walls here and there cockroaches So toward death in their beds are restrained

Whoever I am, I am not a woman who could leave sorief I carried about ed in me like a baseball I'd shole Inside ht I would dreauely like I had been crying But soed itself between me and my new life A word Father

The man I'd pulled from the sea and breathed life into

The man without memory

And so I saved his life a second tiated coet ether Briefly they were detained at the airport security arch becauseripped theh as left of his wife

When Andy brought hter, a torirl And a woman, a mother, a writer whose life had just been born

Andy and I found an assisted living facility about 20 minutes away from our sanctuary in the Bull Run Wilderness The rooeons His aparth which you could see fir trees and ive him that didn't hurt

My father lived a quiet life there for two years until he died In thehe would watch TV In the afternoon too Sometimes he would just stare out theat trees and smile This man who took the place of the father I'd known before eet and docile and kind Even his eyes were kind Sometimes, I'd let him see Miles I never saw the happiness that spread across his face like it did when he ith Miles I h I rarely let him hold my son, when he did, he looked like a miracle had happened A boy

A few tiht him out to our house in the trees He uess He spoke of the way the light cascaded down the hand crafted wood stairs quite eloquently The forest took his breath away He said, ”I love it here so much I wish I could die here” I think he o It was not sos when I'd drive him to do errands or to lunch - I'd say, ”Daddy, do you re an architect?”

”I was an architect? No No, I don't think so Was I?”

Or I'd say, do you re happy Like the tireatest architectural achieves on the white sand beaches Or living at Stinson Beach Fruit trees in our yard The ocean on the breeze Or els Choir Or classical music Or baseball To all of these he'd sli Mostly he'd stay quiet and look out theof the car Once he looked over atand said, ”Marilou?” His sister's name

”No Daddy,” I'd say, ”I'h

Aht with hi pad and a very fine assortment of pencils and pens - was my first published book I found it in his roo with this thing?” The cover orn

”Oh, I've read that book many times”

”Really Do you knorote it?”

”You,” he said, looking up atmine

”Yeah, daddy Me Have you read all the stories?”

”I think so I can't remember”

”That's OK It doesn't ”

I looked at him hard Souy was in there somewhere Some people will knohat Ithan he should In those moments I almostI alent men I have ever met My father was an artist My father loved art, and nature, and the life of theabout the story ”The Chronology of Water” I'd written In it, there is a father who abuses his children and then loses his hter pulls him out of the sea A swiood story”

”Thank you,” I said, knowing not to say h”

I smiled and looked down and crossed h You knoon a prize for that story I got to go to New York”

”Isn't that so,” he said, and whistled, and looked out at the trees

That's the only thing we ever said to each other about anything that had happened

A father A daughter