The Way We Say Thank You

Yesterday, I floated with a blue pool noodle for an hour and a half in a little inland lake in Wisconsin. Around me were boys throwing a football ten thousand times and landing loud on their bellies when they came close but missed the catch. A middle-aged couple had matching cushy floaters with drink holders. The mister looped the buoy rope around his ankle so they would float away or apart. They bopped there together the whole time.

Standing at the shore was a mom in a dress with a baby maybe three months old and then a man walked up to her holding a newborn, a baby so small, I wondered if they’d come straight from the hospital. They were part of the same gaggle of people but I couldn’t sort them out.

The water was perfect and the sky very blue. When I looked west at the giant willow trees, I remembered being in that very lake thirty years ago the night before one of my kids had a big heart surgery. It was so like us to decide to drive forty-five minutes to swim the night before a big, scary thing. Did we cook out or bring sandwiches? I should have written it down.

I watched a man in a wetsuit, not really needed because the water was so deliciously warm, who had a buoy attached to his back. He set out swimming with a perfect stroke and I figured that he was training for a triathlon. That would make sense.

I thought of my friend, Karen, and how, together, bumbling along, we did a triathlon and swam a half mile across a lake. It was harrowing and wild, all the women flailing with their arms and legs, and the weeds, oh, the weeds, but we got to the other side. That gave me a sense of triumph that I still carry like a really amazing tattoo. I don’t have a tattoo but if I did, it would be me coming out of that lake.

Sometimes, I wonder if I’ll ever do anything again that amazes me for a long time like that swim has.

So, to gratitude. That’s the whole point of floating with a pool noodle in a little inland lake in Wisconsin – to tell the gods (and yourself) that you are glad to be alive, and you take nothing for granted. To say thank you for getting to this moment, on this summer day, with this pool noodle, floating like time has stood still.

Thank you, universe.

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Prompt: How do you express your gratitude?