In the Deep End of Aging

I look at myself in the mirror.

My bathing suit is faded and starting to sag. That is fitting, metaphorically speaking. Everything is sagging. Layering, folding, crinkling. It is pitiful. What do you expect? I ask myself. You don’t get to be this old and have no consequences.

I will feel different when I get in the water. I’ll glide along with my shortened breaststroke, sheltering my left shoulder with its frayed rotator cuff like the broken wing of an old sparrow. The water makes swimmers ageless. That is what I have always thought.

Another older woman comes out of the locker room. Her suit is new and fits her perfectly. Her legs are smooth, nothing about her is falling to the ground. She swims a swimmer’s best freestyle, a perfect stroke and a skim through the water that looks sharklike. I wonder what I should have done differently to be more like her and less like myself, to not be so falling apart.

There are two very young women in tiny bikinis. Of course, their bodies are perfect and while I float in the deep end, occasionally putting my arms over my head and submerging myself, I try to remember if I was ever perfect like that. If I was, I have forgotten.

Many years ago, my friend Karen convinced me to do leg exercises with her. The purpose was to prevent the formation of cellulite. I didn’t have any then. She often remarked about what good shape my legs were in, but she’s not said anything like that in a good while. I remember especially a time we spread out big towels on the Lake Michigan beach to do our exercises in the sun. Hundreds of leg lifts and dozens of downward dogs. It made me dizzy and hot.

I decide to buy a new suit. And maybe a new swim cap and goggles. Take the bull by the horns, as they say, reimagine myself. Floating, I decide to give myself a pedicure, use the deep rust polish with tiny sparkles. I’m not trying hard enough, I say to myself. I am on the dangerous cusp of not caring and I have to pull myself back to vanity and effort.

Aging is so challenging.