Community in Swimming
I started swimming properly when Kaitaia's long-awaited indoor pool finally opened. Before that there was the old "summer pool" – euphemistically described as "solar heated" which, in Kaitaia, kind of worked. My kids loved it. I... didn't, really.
Although there were dedicated lane-swimming times, they were exclusively in the mornings, and voluntarily jumping into cold water first thing on a crisp summer day did not sound like my idea of fun. Besides, I wasn't really a lane swimmer. I'd happily spend time in the water – it's always been difficult to keep me out of it – but my "swimming" consisted of a few leisurely lengths of breaststroke or the occasional backstroke before going back to relaxing. I never thought of myself as someone who swam laps. I bobbed about in the water, but I didn't swim. Still, the idea of having a year-round place where I could get into the water appealed to me, even if I only imagined doing a handful of casual lengths.
Once I learned (or perhaps re-learned) freestyle and tentatively started swimming laps, though, I was hooked.
It was frustrating. There were times I genuinely wondered if I'd ever get it. Yet that frustration became part of the appeal. Why couldn't I do something that looked so simple? (The more I've learned since, the more I've realised that swimming only looks simple when it's done well. It's an incredibly technical sport, even recreationally, but that's a post for another day.)
I settled into the habit of swimming after work, about 90 minutes before the pool closed. It was the sweet spot. Lessons had finished, lanes were available, and most of the kids splashing around had gone home. The pool was rarely empty, and that suited me perfectly. I had enough space to practise, fail, or simply zone out—whichever seemed more appropriate that day.
When we moved here, I tried to keep the same routine. It didn't work.
The pool closes an hour earlier than it did in Kaitaia, which doesn't sound like much, but it changes everything. Lessons and squads run later, there are more people trying to use the lanes, and we live much further from town. Driving home between work and swimming costs me about an hour and considerably more fuel than I really want to spend.
So, mostly out of desperation, I became a morning swimmer.
This is mildly ridiculous, because I am about as far from a morning person as it's possible to be. Getting out of bed is hard. Getting out of bed into a cold, dark winter morning—well before sunrise—is harder.
Yet something funny has happened.
I've started to know the rhythms of the pool.
I recognise the regulars now, and I catch myself looking for them. I know which lanes are likely to be available on different mornings. I know when the squads train, and I've quietly rearranged my schedule to avoid them where I can. I know who swims at roughly my pace, and who I'd rather share a lane with if I have to. I've watched new people begin turning up regularly and gradually find their own routines too.
Truthfully, I don't know many of their names. That's probably more about me than them—I'm introverted, socially awkward, and rarely the one to start a conversation. Instead, most of the regulars I've silently given descriptive nicknames in my head (which I sincerely hope they never discover).
Weirdly, though, I think I've found my place.
I'm not the fastest swimmer, and I'm certainly not the slowest. I'm not the best person in the pool, but I don't need to be. I do my thing. Everyone else does theirs. Occasionally we exchange a smile or a quick "morning," and that's enough.
It's a bit like parallel play.
I'd be perfectly happy swimming in an empty pool, yet there's something comforting about swimming alongside people I recognise, even if I don't know their names and we never exchange a word. It's its own quiet kind of camaraderie.
We're all there for our own reasons. We're all trying to be a little better than we were yesterday, whatever that looks like. And sometimes it's simply nice to realise that, although you're swimming your own race, you're not doing it alone.