bday eve before

bday eve before

Thursday, May 23, 2013

SWIM BAG --- with hope and promise for what's to come soon, mary pat


It’s all here, where it was stowed away ten months ago --- the bronze padlock with its small silver key, the old plastic soap holder with a slit of Yardley’s English lavender still in it, plus odds and ends of those tiny motel shampoos and packets of free sample conditioners my friend’s husband got us.

There's a bright fuchsia bathing cap too, some places require you to wear a cap though I hate to and broken goggles, which I found somewhere but never wear.  There is an empty soft pink container that will keep things ‘sort of’ chilled and a few plastic bags tucked in to hold a wet bathing suit.  Scents of suntan lotion and chlorine come out at me.  And in a protective bag are Benadryl pills (in case I get stung by a bee --- I hope not!).

I thrill opening the zipper of the bright blue bag and finding everything there --- waiting.  I notice that the soap holder has a rubber band around it --- it pops open without it.  In some ways, I have never really liked the blue bag that holds it all --- it bears the name of my old boyfriend’s company on its side.  The bag’s got a droopy shape to it but I can’t quite part with it.  Maybe, I can’t part with this remnant of him so I carry the blue bag back and forth to beaches and pools, wherever I can find to swim.  Today it will be our local Brooklyn pool in an adjoining neighborhood.  It’ll be my first swim of the season.

It’s summer again.  The pool finally opened.  I often wonder why someone who loves nature, plants, flowers and water so lives in a climate where I only get to enjoy outdoors such a short part of the year? 

Everything's packed up and ready to go.  The bag waited up on a shelf in the middle room all fall and winter and spring but now it’s time. 

And, but a few blocks around the corner, cool aquamarine water awaits me.  And, the magic, the silent thrill, of gliding through it.

 

read at Pyramid Lake to a group of women who love water.

 

 

 

Tuesday, May 21, 2013


 

Mona, the little dog I walk and love so who eats carrots like crazy and sometimes

takes them to bed with her.  How she loves spring in our neighborhood and

shows it to me.

Thought of the Day


If my pencils are sharpened, I’m a happy person.