An 89 year-old man in a tight blue speedo swam with carefully placed arms and long, graceful flutter kicks in the Master's swimming meet last weekend. After four lengths in the 100 freestyle event, he touched the wall as the timers hovered over the edge.
As his head came out of the water and his arm went in the air with a thumbs-up victory sign, the packed crowd in the bleachers by the steamy pool erupted into wild applause.
And then the room became eerily silent as a tiny 87 year-old woman with a hunched back emerged from the bleachers and walked slowly to the starting blocks to compete against people twenty years younger. She slid gently into the water. Five other swimmers towered above her on starting blocks. The gun went off and she glided off the wall with a beautiful strong stroke, keeping her own time, as the other five swimmers flew into the churning water and passed her.
The crowd began cheering wildly again, "Elsie. Elsie. Elsie." She finished a 100 i.m., which is a length of butterfly, a length of backstroke and a length of breaststroke, followed by a final length of freestyle, performing a breathtaking show. She touched the wall at the finish and the crowd went wild again. She didn't even break a smile as she emerged from the pool, instead she just sort of saluted the stands and shuffled away.
I wondered how many times she'd had to start over working at this craft of swimming. Like Marcia's metaphor for writing and her son's ice hockey experiences and Jennie's expository on the different stages of growth in a writing life, perhaps that is what this writing game is all about: reinvention and reincarnation.
Not to mention a little bit of tenacity and maybe a bit of orneriness.
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1 comment:
Swimming... an excellent analogy for writing: the refinement of strokes, the testing of endurance, a slow and steady progress toward the goal.
May all of us dog-paddlers become masters of the IM!
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