MONDAY, ALL AT ONCE

Monday came crashing in way too early this morning.  Awake at 4 and unable to get back to sleep, I got up and went over to the high school pool for some laps.  I always feel much better after a swim, but thats really hard to remember at some ungodly hour of the morning, the only time the pool isn’t filled with raucous teens.  From 5 to 6:30 we old folks have it all to ourselves; a group of gray and white-haired women ‘aquacizing’ in the shallow end; several of us using the lap lanes and a passel of old guys paddling listlessly in the deep end.  ‘Oldies’ on a tape player provide some low background ‘ambience’, giving rhythm to the ladies exercises.  All the laughter and gentle joshing is muted to undertone by limbs slapping the water’s surface in the lanes. 

I move slowly up and down my lane; usually sharing with a much better swimmer who I know only as “the woman from Mantua”, a tiny town up the canyon from here.  She’s in before 5 (there’s a cadre of 2 or 3 who are allowed to help open the place) and out not long after I get in, usually at 5:30.  We exchange smiles and nods and go on about our morning rituals.  For her that’s several leisurely laps with the kickboard, then many laps of more seriously vigorous swimming, then back to the kickboard to cool down.  For me, a slow lap or two with the kickboard, then a ‘sociable breast stroke’, so dubbed by an old fellow I swam with as a very young woman.  He called it that because he kept his head above water all the time so as to gossip with all us other swimmers.  So, after some head above water breast stroking, I’m back to the kick board for the duration, usually about 45 minutes in all.  I feel lucky to have access to the pool and lucky I can still get around as easily as I do. 

Coming out into the dark morning, the moon was a huge crescent lying up there on its back.  It’s colder today than it’s been so far this fall.  A hint of winter creeping down from the mountaintops.  There’s been snow up there already, but it hasn’t stayed with us.  To the south, the tallest of the Wasatch peaks have accumulated some feet of snow, but our shorter, less massive mountains aren’t holding onto their’s just yet.