Swimming To Qualify

On Sunday, May 8th, Mother's Day, a beautiful Spring day at the Santa Clarita 50 meter outdoor swimming pool about 30 miles NW from Los Angeles, I qualified for the 1500 meters at the USMS National Championships in August in the time of 26:45. Probably not fast enough to win but what the heck my mother would have been proud of me.

I arrived at the pool an hour or so early. What few cars were in the parking lot belonged to City of SC employees, or volunteers from the community. There was one other swimmer just arrived, Rita, famous for not just national championship wins, but world record holder in several events. Rita is, I believe she told me yesterday, in our first-ever meeting, is 87 years young. Still locked out of the pool grounds, Rita, so gracious and unaffected, was kind of stuck with me. She handled it splenditly: she gave me a little nature talk about the birds we could either see or hear. She identified the Ravens before finally seeing one quite close. I thought it was a crow. Ah, but Rita pointed out the tail shape was that of a Raven. We talked about age. She said, with a motion, that everything was "falling." Her speech, alertness, quickness of thought, aliveness, were that of a woman half a century younger. Sure, she didn't walk quite erect, but I watched her swim the 1500 meters and her stroke was long, smooth, virtually the same speed for the entire race. She always wins of course. I watched, rapt, at the amount of bubbles surfacing from her underwater breathing out during her freestyle. Hers are 'young' lungs; earlier, when she spoke, even a long sentence was easy to navigate on one breath. Swimming: Rita's a walking, talking, glamorous, generous advertisement for the benefits of swimming. While waiting she happened to mention that her husband died, she gave the year, quickly, so I didn't quite catch it, but I  silently calculated it must have been about 25 years ago. 

Rita, obviously, knows secrets for living. I noticed how continuously she totally accepted me from the start. There wasn't a murmer of exchange of social information used in most new conversations, aimed to find out just how seriously one must take the other. Our dialog occurred in a classless culture. That's where I'd like to live fulltime, like in Heaven. She offered personal information demonstrating a predisposion to trust fellow humans, another Heavenly condition. She mentioned being in Greece recently, competing of course against swimmers from all over the world, the Master's Championships. She visited a 'dig' where she was intrigued to learn that in ancient Greece the roads were paved with marble. She was fascinated that archaeology continues apace, even in Greece. So, maybe, there's a tip: to stay young have many interests.

My 1500 meters went remarkably well, not even feeling tired from beginning to end. I think Rita got me into the right place: Calmly getting the job done.

Barry