Author: Judy Hanawalt (Page 10 of 23)

It used to rain in the Bay Area.

When I was a student at Cal, a raincoat, umbrella and waterproof boots were necessities for making the trek to class. There would be whole weeks, months even, of daily rain–at least in my memory. Huddling in coffee shops with steamed-up windows, I would sip hot lattes and do homework after draping my dripping raincoat over a chair and slipping out of my soggy boots. 

If it was winter, it was raining. I could count on it.

Rain is scarce these days; we live with a drought. Some winters are better than others, but the overall condition is dry. I call it the New Dry California. Lawns are disappearing, replaced by low-water native plants and succulents. Cloudless, sunny days go on and on, lovely but parched. We go about our business and recreation, no need for foul weather gear, no rain delays, no rain checks, but we feel a little guilty for enjoying it. The reality of drought clouds the days. How we long for literal clouds!

The lightest drizzle has us rejoicing. Rain! At last! We pull out parkas and umbrellas, hoping to coax the drops to fall harder and faster. Children don little-worn boots and bright yellow hooded raincoats when the pavement is barely dotted with raindrops. It’s a dress-up game for them, like Halloween. Raindrips.

There’s little complaint when it does rain. We welcome the interruption. A soggy football game? A cocktail party pushed indoors? Dinner inside instead of on the patio? Hair flattened and flipping in the wrong places because I don’t carry an umbrella anymore? No problem. “We need the moisture,” we all say hopefully to each other. “I hope it keeps coming.”

The weather can’t be counted on. That’s why it’s such a good topic of conversation. It’s endlessly surprising and unpredictable. The sunrise and sunset, the phases of the moon and tides–these can be counted on. We get into a weather pattern and we think it will last forever. I would never have imagined a Berkeley winter could be so sunny and fair from my steamed-up coffee shop of the ’80’s.

I had six little weather systems enter my life over the course of 11 years–my kids. I ordered my life around their patterns. The sun rose and set with them. They were the tides that determined my days. Patterns of weekdays and weekends, school terms and summertime, homework and playtime determined where I went and what I did. It was predictable. Reliable.

I started to notice the climate shifting a bit when the first one left for college, but the daily weather stayed steady, even as the next one and the next one cleared out. I did see it coming, but it’s hard to imagine what the drought will feel like before it actually arrives.

I started noticing it first at 3:30 on school days. That was the time I had to come back on full-time duty–driving, feeding, helping with projects or homework, getting the day tucked in and wrapped up in preparation for the next day. Gradually, the line softened and the afternoon began crossing into evening without a hitch; no one needed anything. They had their own transportation, schedules and lives. It became obvious on weekends and in the summer, too, with no great influx of people and activity. The new normal weather in at home is calm.

I do not lament this climate change like I do the drought in California; this is a good thing. This is life moving along in a positive direction, children growing up and into themselves. It is cause for celebration.

It changes how we live, though. Clean laundry, home-cooked meals and cookies in the freezer (that’s where I like to keep them because I hate stale cookies) are as unpredictable as the next cloudburst. My husband and I are learning to enjoy the lack of storms and rain-delays, and are talking about taking up new hobbies and dreaming of long, romantic trips we may take, just the two of us. This is a break in the weather that we can take advantage of, knowing that the dry spell may not last long.

Like the weather, when and where we will be together can be unpredictable. We are learning to be intentional about keeping in contact (Storm tracking? Rain dances?) to support, encourage, and occasionally,  bail out our kids. There are holidays, vacations and visits when we are together; planned occasions outside of the everyday. That’s the part I can control (Irrigation? Am I taking the analogy too far?).

In the middle of my routine the other day, I got a text. “What are you up to tomorrow?” A text like that from a child is the first drops of a little weather coming in. “Wanna hang out?”

I welcome the interruption. I love it when my kids come home, ask for a favorite meal, need to do laundry or just want to hang out. I need to see them, hold them, make sure they know how much they are loved, how much we like them, how much we love to be with them.  I’ll drop everything to spend time with them.

My babies are never far from my thoughts. I’m always ready for the next shift in the wind, always hoping they will blow in and stay for a while.

When I swim, the stroke I do most easily and most frequently is the side stroke. I never see anyone else doing this stroke, and my kids were not taught it in swimming lessons, so I thought it was outdated, a stroke no one does anymore. Curious, I typed the name into my search bar to see what information I could find.

I found YouTube videos on how to do it, and watched to see if I remember it correctly, with a scissor kick and alternating arm reaches. Yes, it was demonstrated there just as I remembered it. In one of the videos, the instructor classified the side stroke as a resting stroke, or a rescue stroke. Mildly offended, I stopped that video and continued to look for more positive information about my favorite mode of propulsion in the water.

As I thought about it, mulling over my arguments for why this stroke is much more than a “resting stroke,” I had to admit that it makes perfect sense. Of course it would be my favorite. I am more tortoise than hare, more Type B than Type A, more take a  break than break my neck.

This is not a secret, but it’s still a little hard to admit in such a straightforward way. It’s like saying your favorite subject in school is recess. The side stroke is the “let’s have coffee” stroke, while the butterfly or the freestyle strokes say, “let’s get down to business!”

I took another look at my search results today, and a little further down the page I saw an article entitled “Combat Side Stroke.”  It’s missing from the local pools, but the side stroke lives on. This is the stroke the Navy Seals use. It has a low profile in the water, it’s efficient, and a person can swim long distances using this stroke. A side-stroker can carry weapons or equipment,  or even tow a person along.  Like the faster strokes, it requires a strong core.

I sat up a little straighter. This isn’t just an easy, lazy stroke. This can be a powerful stroke. This stroke could save the day.

I don’t have much need for toting heavy supplies in the water, but I like the side stroke because with this stroke–unlike some other strokes that I’m not as good at–I can breathe.  I can see where I’m going. I don’t snort water or bump my head on the pool wall.  When one side is tired, I can flip over and continue on at a steady pace. It doesn’t look slick or professional (except maybe to the Navy Seals conditioning at the Y), but I’m using energy and strength to move myself through the water at my pace. It’s swimming.

I’ve made peace with my temperament and my swimming style. I’m not the over-achiever, I’m not the go-getter or the trail-blazer; I’m the thinker and the talker, the one coming along beside or behind. Everyone swims their own race, and I’m happy with mine–but I’ll have a new sense of pride in my slow and steady side stroke when I jump in the pool next time.

I feel at home in the water, thanks to summers of swimming lessons in the pool at Arrowhead Springs, where my parents attended their organization’s staff training and I went to summer camp.

The pool was huge, surrounded by grass and cabanas, a place you could imagine glamorous Hollywood bathing beauties of the 30’s lounging and playing.  At the entrance, there were graceful curving steps lined with bushes covered in  small, white pinwheel flowers, filling the air with the delicious scent of orange blossoms. The pool had curving edges with shallow shelves for reclining in the water. At the deep end, there were three bouncy diving boards, two low boards and one high dive with steps up the back,  leading to heights that seemed terrifying as a child.

Under the watchful eye of life guards in red trunks, big straw hats and white, zinc-oxide-covered noses, swim lessons started in the shallow end with basic strokes and water skills, and moved to the deep end over successive summers. Those lessons seem pretty intense as I look back on them now.

The test to pass the highest level required us to tread water and do the dead man’s float for several minutes, swim the length of the pool in the basic strokes, and dive off the low diving board. Challenged by the instructor, I dove off the high board once as well, even though I was only brave enough to dive from a sitting position. I got a bloody nose when I hit the water–sort of badge of honor, I thought–but I never tried anything but a cannon ball from the high dive again.

My favorite stroke from those lessons is the side stroke.  I can still hear the instructor telling us to reach forward, pick an apple, then pull it back and put it in the basket.  For some reason, I don’t see anyone else doing the side stroke when I swim laps at the pool at the Y. It definitely isn’t in the Olympics. 

We spent many hours as a family at the pool just playing. My sisters and I sat on the bottom in the shallow end, holding our breath and pretending to have tea parties. We played chicken with my dad and my cousins, putting the lighter kids on the shoulders of the older ones, and trying to dunk each other. My dad would swim with us on his back, or stand us up on his shoulders to jump or flip into the water. My mom preferred to sunbathe and read in a chair on the grass, not wanting to get her hair wet. 

We thought it was hilarious to bring all our  hair in front of our faces under water and then come up and flip it back in a neat roll and pretend to be George Washington. Sometimes we would throw coins in the  pool and dive down to the bottom to retrieve them. We had contests to see who could stay under water the longest or who could glide the farthest under water by pushing off the side. We never got tired of being in the water.

When we had to take a break from swimming, we hunted for lizards around the edges of the grass, and make temporary pets of the little blue bellies among the rocks. One little lizard I caught died from fright, or maybe I squeezed it too hard. I hoped it was just playing dead, like they did sometimes, and put it carefully on  rock to recover. When I checked on it later,  it hadn’t moved, and I felt sad about hurting it when we only meant to play. 

If we stayed until after dark, we would occasionally cross paths with huge, hairy black tarantulas crawling slowly in the road, seeking heat after the sun went down. They seemed almost friendly in their careful, awkward walk, but we screamed and ran, loving the thrill of it.

My older cousin and I loved to go the steam caves, which had natural hot springs running underneath and heating the little caverns. The caves had a range of temperatures, from cool to hottest, and we dared each other to stay in the hot ones and breathe the steamy air. The smell of sulfury steam mingled with the scent of the wet wood benches and grates is a distinct one I can imagine even now. Those memories must be the reason I still love the stinky, steamy air at geothermal sites like Yellowstone.

At the end of the day, a deep breath was sometimes painful,  making us cough. We called it “getting smogged,” the result of breathing the dirty Southern California air of the 70’s. At school, we were not allowed to play outside on the worst smoggy days, but during the summer there were no restrictions. The feeling would usually be gone by the next day, and we wouldn’t hesitate to head back to the pool for more.

Memories of those sweet days of sun and swimming and playing with my family make me love being in the water even now. I don’t care if no one else is doing the side stroke.