Summer Redux: Please?

With the West Neck Pod this past Saturday,
honoring the children who died in the harbor
on July 4th, 2012. More soon on this from the Water-blog.

I'm trying to milk the best out of August -- or the best out of me IN August.

It's not easy. My life seems to lack a certain flow.

Plus, much as I scramble, there's no way I can cram accomplishing everything I wanted to all summer, into the remaining 24 days of one month.





My bad.

I want June back.

I want July.



My handsome hubby signing at a little get together at our house
for my birthday this July.

I WANT A SUMMER REDO!

I feel panicked as, around me, friends in warmer states (actual states, I mean, like Arizona and  Florida) tweet and facebook about returning to their classrooms, about their kids going back to school.

BACK TO SCHOOL. ARE YOU KIDDING?!?!?!

*covers ears*

*covers eyes*

*searches frantically for healthy denial*

I need summer.

I need warmth and open water,

This was me in June.
Don't I look accomplished and hopeful?!

and daylight hours that extend until 9pm.

I. Need. Time.

I know, I know. I'm starting to sound like a broken record. But I'm trying. I'm really trying.

I'm doing my best to keep my time on social networking limited.

Facebook, you know I LOVE YOU, but you won't get these manuscripts revised.







In other repeated news: I'm doing THIS SWIM on August 11th, to raise money for cancer research. For those who don't already know, I'm swimming in honor of a little boy named Lane Goodwin who's been battling a rare and ugly form of cancer for a few years. He's my hero. If you can donate a buck or two to my swim, I'd be grateful. EVERY DOLLAR RAISED goes DIRECTLY to the cause.*

My "Frankie" revisions are turned in to my agent. They go to my editor on September 1.

And, on August 25th, an attempt at a five-mile swim.

I already know, none of it will be enough. I already know, there will be loss and regret and longing.

If only I could get a redux.

If only I could figure out how to embrace the fall.

-gae

*according to information from the Swim, due to adequate corporate sponsorship, all admin costs are covered and all donations go 100%  to the cancer research orgs.

Grasping

Girls of October
( photo: Carol Moore)

I'm feeling it this morning: the cold, harsh reality that summer cannot --

will not --

hold on.

I see my breath in the air.
(Cannot, will not, hold on).

I know this. And yet I keep trying.

Why do I try, when I know there's no holding on?

I need acceptance. I just need to breathe and transition to the chlorine.
And, yet.
The open water has become more and more my Prozac. I don't want to transition. It feels like such a damned metaphor.

It's Monday. It's October. It's cold.

And, I can see my damned breath in the air.

And all I want is to swim.

I want the bright hues of summer. I want to run my toes in the sand, to feel the sun on my face, to stroke under blue skies, through the waves, through the bliss, through the promise.

But this morning, there's no promise. Only cold, gray skies. And no mistaking my vaporous breath in the air.

- gae

Missing the Ritual and the Open Water

The spring/summer/fall of 2010 will be remembered as one that brought my life a new source of inspiration: the challenge, beauty, and camaraderie of open water swimming.

It not only filled me with a renewed sense of energy and enthusiasm, but, for the first time in my life (since I was a gymnast at age 8 - 12 or so), at age 46, I actually felt physically powerful and capable.

As the winter slips in and I burrow more and more, I feel the glaring disparity between summer and winter even more than I have in the past. As someone who already suffers from a bit of seasonal affective disorder, this isn't the best thing. I already feel the winter sloth setting in. The lethargy. The 'everything aches and I don't want to go outside' blues.

Sure, I head to the pool on a tri-weekly (or more) basis, and the water fills me, but it just isn't the same.

I miss the open water.

I miss this:

and, this:

and, of course, this:

But, especially, I miss this:

Spring really can't return soon enough.

- gae