Sometimes a moment is just a moment. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it is everything you can’t possibly say distilled down into a few minutes. The rush of a wave as you dive down into it and the water breaks over you usually lasts about eight seconds before it’s over and you come out the other side.
Three pairs of feet traipse through the dirt en route to a large pond nestled between the houses of the ultra-rich, bewildered by these lives far away from theirs and imagining the upkeep of so many rooms to clean and tidy. By some accounts, the weather is bad. Rainy and a little brisk, the path to and around the water is quickly turning to mud before their eyes, but nobody minds. By other accounts, the weather is perfect. The temperature keeps most others away on what otherwise might be a fairly crowded Saturday morning, all of the previous day’s precipitation and heat clearing the water of any harsh chill.
A few other stragglers join them, wanting a quick dip before continuing on into the meat of the day. They quietly nod and smile at each other; summer has struck a chord into the air and it rings and rings.
While most dichotomies are false and useless, when faced with the prospect of a potentially cold body of water, there really are only two options: one toe at a time or an immediate dunk. Asking somebody which category they fall into could be a Buzzfeed quiz all by itself. For the trio, there is of course one person in each camp and the third, who somehow manages both. They decide to swim across the pond and back, to make the trip worthwhile, but they take their time. Nobody suggests competition or scoring–that isn’t the point, the point is unfettered joy. There is a comfort in the way they float through the water together, it spreads outward and surely the other swimmers in the pond must be able to feel it.
When going out to a bar, it is much easier to see the group in the back laughing a bit too loud and feel annoyed (even resentful) at their presence. How dare they express their happiness so freely and in public! How dare they be happy when so much of the world is on fire, but more importantly, how could they express it around you! At some point, you get to be on the inside of the group, making at least one person wish they could join in. Inevitably, there are also moments when you are the disgruntled outsider. When the week has felt like two, when the dog forgets all of their training, when the frosty beer is serving as a balm to life’s problems instead of a testament to its treasures.
For the people in the pond, they are in on the joke and unashamed to admit it. Their giggly joy is secretive yet palpable.
Clichés talk of people in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Life gets chalked up to timing and fate, at the risk of robbing people of agency and choice. The truth, so far as the swimmers are concerned, is a mixture of both. From one perspective, every small moment in a person’s life puts them on a path constantly narrowing and widening, meeting new people in new places because they turned up at the party when no one else did. But then, those people saw something in each other they wanted to see more of, they fought to keep up a connection across shifting lives and circumstances.
And these orbits, they circle and circle and circle around most of the time, narrowly missing each other by mere beats. Unless. Until. The lines are re-routed, the space is rearranged. They find each other in the in-between and the pond is ready to absorb it all. One winter away and a swim leaves them washed clean. Alone and the pond reveals a penchant for drowning–together, it buoys a moment in time. Sometimes reality pauses just long enough, the time it takes a polaroid picture to snap and release from its case, before it continues on and drags everybody with it.
Halfway across the pond, swimming backwards and under the water, it gets quiet. Just the whoosh of water with each slow stroke. The kind of perfect moment that does not call attention to itself, but should. Akin to making a cup of coffee on a morning when there is nowhere to be, the crackle of a favourite record right before the sound cuts in, the slicing of a big tomato to put on toast and eat on the floor of the living room in a new apartment–nothing unpacked but pure sunlight pouring in through the window.
Sometimes when you’re really lucky, life gets to be like that. Looking like a drowned rat in a coffee shop because you’re fresh from a perfect swim and you don’t care. It’s almost too beautiful to mention, but it does deserve to be noticed.
Beautifully written. So vivid I felt like I was swimming across the pond too.