Extreme sports

I’ve been known to be a worrier.  I have permanent squinting lines from fretting (and sun damage) around my eyes and mouth.   Some of it is genetic – or I learned it from my dad and grandma.  But as the kids get older I’m learning that I need to give them longer leashes.

Ironically, another home schooling mom commented not too long ago, as I was pulling my seven year old off the top of the swing set at the park, that she thought I was pretty free with how much I let the kids roam.  I had let that same 7 year old ride down to her house by himself to see if her son could play.  She said she talked to her husband and her neighbor about whether she was too protective and decided she wasn’t. I couldn’t tell if she was criticizing or just commenting, but I decided I would encourage my son to play with some other kids the next few times he was feeling lonely.

Still, I tend to err on the side of caution. But living in a place like this, where the weather is great, the neighborhood is safe, and the beaches and woods are open for exploring, is making me loosen up a bit. This Saturday the boys and I woke up before dawn to go and meet some friends on the south side of the island to swim across a channel to another little island, Cocos.  The boys had camped there last weekend with the scouts, and while they were describing it, we decided on the spur of the moment to try to swim to it.

One friend thought it was 1.5 miles, another 2. At any rate, we were looking at over an hour swim. The reality of it didn’t really sink it until the night before. I wouldn’t go run for an hour and a half without training for it, but I really haven’t done much endurance swmming here at all, just paddling around in coral reefs and laps a few times at the pool.

But sometimes it pays to shove realism to the back of your mind.

Our safety was taken care of: a friend rented some kayaks and gathered a few other friends to kayak or paddle board along with the swimmers. Four of those happened to be my husband and boys, whose life-saving skills are untested, but they had extra life jackets and a space in their boats if something happened.

Fortunately the sea was calm, and the tide was out.  We were swimming before I was fully awake enough to be a pessimist. 

It was a beautiful swim. Nothing bad happened.  I never felt exhausted, and in fact, paddling back in the kayak was harder work than swimming.  I did have a moment of anxiety when I was out in the blue, and I couldn’t see anyone close to me. Far off I could see some kayakers, and I worried about my boys flipping their boats, or letting someone else sink (although all the other swimmers were completely competent – one was a former swimmer for the Guam Olympic team- his claim to fame: he asked Michael Phelps to get out of his practice lane.) For a moment, I worried about my own sanity.  I’d been swimming for 40 minutes or so, and still had a long way to go. The ferry to the island was going to start running soon.  It might not see us.  Sharks could be out here.  I started thinking about Louis Zamperini in Unbroken, stranded in the middle of the ocean beating sharks off with a life boat paddle.  So I started saying the Divine Mercy chaplet, have mercy on us, have mercy, to turn off my brain.  And eventually, I sited one of the other swimmers and the kayak with my 11 yr old. My confidence returned.  A rainbow even stretched across the blue morning sky, although it wasn’t raining where we were.

Finally, we hit the lagoon, and the water was too shallow to freestyle, but I was determined to swim the whole distance, so I crawled on in to the beach, in a less than an hour and a half.

Scarier was letting my 14 year old test out his claim that he could have swum the crossing.  Another of the guys was already planning to swim back – he too had been a competitive swimmer and a swim coach, so he encouraged my son to swim with him. I was off finding a private spot in the woods at the moment they decided to go, so I didn’t have a chance to nix the plan with my worries. I wanted to be angry at my husband for okaying the arrangement – the 14 yr old hasn’t swum laps in years! But he has been playing football and baseball, so at least he has some conditioning. Since the other adults were being good sports about paddling with us, I tried to keep my worries to myself.

The current was stronger on the way back, and the waves were taller.  If I had taken in a few mouthfuls of seawater during my swim, I knew he’d be swallowing twice as much.  I was somewhat behind him, in a kayak with the 13 year old, trailing a 3^rd guy who also had decided to swim both directions.  But my protective mother instinct was kicking in.  Even though a friend on a paddle board was up alongside my son and the former swim coach, I was in a boat that had extra life jackets.  As I began to envision my son tiring but being too hard-headed to admit it, my heart began racing, and automatically, I was paddling faster. Forget this dude I was spotting. There was another kayak right behind me. He was a grown-up.  I was going to row right next to my kid.

We nearly ran over him. 

It took all my willpower not to pull him into the boat when he kept changing his stroke from freestyle to breaststroke and back again way too frequently.  But I figured if I ordered him out of the water, he’d be more stubborn and more likely to drown. So I bit my tongue, repeatedly.

Finally, finally, we grew nearer to shore.  With about half a mile to go I let the 13 year old jump out to swim.  I can’t tell you how relieved I felt when we reached the area where he could touch again. But he didn’t stop swimming. He was slow, but he swam all the way in.

Hurrah! Everyone clapped, even though they had to wait at least an extra half an hour for him to finish.  I think he was too tired to feel proud of his accomplishment at that moment, but he was happy to eat a whole Snickers bar on the ride home.

Some things really satisfy.

(Sorry, could resist…)