Swimmingly

What's the hardest part of swimming a mile? The first 15 laps. At that point, the whole mile stretches ahead. It seems impossible. Your breath is short. You feel you need to stop. Each lap is the same so there should be no difference -- in fact the later laps should be harder -- yet the test is not for the body but the mind. The mind looks at the whole mile and balks at the road ahead. But you swim one stroke, one lap at a time. By the time you reach 50, you have a flow and it is hard to stop until you reach 72.

Cancer is daunting. It is not a sprint but a marathon, a triathlon, just when you finish biking and running, you find yourself swimming. One stroke after another. One day, one second, one moment: the now. Keep your head in the right place and the body will follow.

Greg Anderson says cancer is not a thing but a process. You don't "have cancer," you are "cancering." You need to participate in the process, like swimming. One stroke after another. There is nothing else except this next breath of air. Touching the side of the pool and turning around. Churning through the blue water, I remember taking swimming lessons at the Y as a kid. I am grateful to my parents for teaching me how to swim. How could I have known what this would mean so many years later in this pool?

I think of my mother swimming back and forth in summer across the iced-tea-colored cedar water of Bellplain Park in the pine barrens of New Jersey. Then I see her face and she says peacefully: "I died, so maybe this is your time to die" -- then she adds with a familiar flash of her eyes, a mischievous smile reflecting her inimitable humor -- "or maybe not." I smile in a way that gives me great hope, and my tears suddenly mix with the purifying chlorine, unseen in the pool where many others fight their unknown battles, swimming again their personal tides, moving forward one stroke at a time.

I cry, but do not miss a stroke. The road ahead is daunting, but I keep swimming. As long as I can do this, I am alive. My body and mind are strong.

So, how am I doing? Swimmingly.