I did succeed in writing about swimming every single day (!) the outdoor pools were open this summer, which made even the swim-less days manageable, and I swam a lot this last month – gracious friends and family watching my baby while I got a swim in. I even read on the deck twice –  not usually a rare occurrence in the summers but with small windows (babies!) and frigid temperatures (brrrr!).

I watched four Harvards dive and split off and re-find each other during my penultimate swim at Sunnyside, and thought a lot about my Papa Doug who used to fly Harvards and my very last swim of the season was pretty anticlimactic, a cold, fast swim under a grey sky. Definitely a whisper, not a bang.

The pool was fouling-free and sun-full and I got there right when it opened.



After a lifetime of taking FOREVER to get in the water, my swimming ladies encouraged me to jump in last summer, and so what better way to enter the 2017 summer swimming season than with the biggest jump I could muster.

("Mama jump in swimming pool!" my toddler is still saying. I beam every time!)

The fast lane was SO fast – with a U of T swimmer who was tearing it up, and an older man who apparently was on the national team in the 70s – that I had to marvel at their speed one lane over in the medium lane. I will never tire of watching fast, efficient swimmers. That and watching the across the floor jumping combinations in a dance class are two of my favourite things to witness.



The water didn't have the thick layer of sunscreen like it will by August, but was crisp and perfectly turquoise, warmer than the air. My mind drifted and rambled as it only can during a wonderful swim and when I was done, I made sure to float on my back in the centre of the deep end, letting the huge blue sky full my lungs.

And if that wasn't wonderful enough, I ran into a guard who recognized me from my very pregnant swimming days before I had my daughter a few months ago. He had been guarding the day before I gave birth and got a glimpse of my little girl in her stroller.

It's been thunderstorming ever since (grrrrr), but I have my fingers crossed for sunny swimming days ahead!

• BEACH: Musky and fresh all at once, with a consistent blend of wild flowers and fish bones carried on the wind.
• POOL: The sweet smell of chlorine and the occasional waft of stink from the murky public change rooms.

• BEACH: Bands of blue splashing and sparkling under the sun. A strong water woven with waves and pieces of sky.
• POOL: Thin translucent and pencil crayon blue, as sharp and snappy as water comes

• BEACH: Once you are out past the sandbars, it’s a roomy, deep and fulfilling swim. The shallow spaces between the sandbars make excellent wide and warm pools for kids to play in and for one to leisurely frolic and float.
• POOL: During leisure swims, you are elbow to elbow with splashing and smiling families, teenagers and general pool lovers. The joy is contagious, but for a serious swim, seek out the dedicated length swim times.

• BEACH: As far as the eye can see, no end in sight.
• POOL: Bricks and buildings, but look up while floating, the sky is calling.

• BEACH: The finest of sand, soft and unstable.
• POOL: Concrete grip, nubby and unforgiving.

• BEACH: Waterside full of sandcastles, saucy seagulls, games of frisbee, beach umbrellas and pop up tents.
• POOL: Waterside full of conversations, laughter, gossip, harmless rough housing and covert snacks and cellular devices

• BEACH: Endless possibilities waiting in the rich sand.
• POOL: Only sandcastle you are building is around the corner in the Earlscourt park sandbox.

• BEACH: No weeds, but there is the Wasaga beach muck, which collects in the first few feet of the water. It’s harmless, mostly organic plant matter. Just leap over it with a stag jump… or wade through, whatever floats your boat.
• POOL: No weeds in this pool… but there is the occasional clump of stray hair floating along the deep end. Try not too look to closely at the bottom.

• BEACH: A lone beach patrol, 20 something, zooming past every 15 minutes on a 4 wheeler, wearing a uniform and bullet proof vest.
• POOL: A pack of teenage lifeguards, buzzing and patched with zinc.

• BEACH: Sand everywhere. Empty your sandals before departing or entering your house.
• POOL: There will be burning eyes and dry skin. Bring moisturizer.

I lose all sense of time when I'm swimming. As soon as I'm front crawling, it could be 5 minutes or 45, I really have no gauge – it's one of the reasons I love it so much. Outside of the pool, I am ruled by clocks and always know exactly what time it is and how long I've been doing whatever it is that I'm doing, but when I'm swimming that all disappears.

I used to have a waterproof watch, but I haven't been able to find it since I moved homes almost two years ago, and most of the time I don't miss it. I guess if I counted my lengths I'd know approximately how long it'd been, but I don't. I can't let my mind wander to all the strange and wonderful places it wanders to when I'm swimming if I'm trying to remember that I'm on length 8, or is it 10?

"Fancy" indoor pools have a racing clock, the red-blue-green-yellow second hand counting down when you have to push off the wall, even if you still haven't caught your breath, but most City of Toronto pools don't have them (or they do, but they broke years ago and are now art installations). Most indoor rec pools usually have a clock somewhere, perched above the pool, often times an hour off because no one re-set it when when Daylight Saving Time started or ended. Then, I count out my 30-minute warm up, 10 minutes of kicking, 5 more minutes of front crawl, 10 minutes of sprinting and 5 minute cool-down.

But outdoor pools rarely have a clock big enough to see from the deck. I would love do it not to matter, to be able to swim until I was tired, but I usually know I've got 45 minutes to an hour to swim.

My trick to make sure I don't entirely lose track of time, is the LZV-patented Lifeguard Clock: using the lifeguards' changeovers to mark the minutes. Guard changes at big pools usually happen every 15 minutes, 20 minutes at smaller pools. I try to remember one feature about a guard near the fast lane – that they're wearing a cowboy hat, or reflective sunglasses, or have a ponytail, or a long-sleeved shirt. When Cowboy hat is replaced with Ray Bans, I know it's been 15 minutes. When Ray Bans is replaced with Side Pony, it's been 30 minutes. It's not a perfect science, and sometimes guards look so similar it's hard to tell if there's been a guard change or not, but it keeps me from getting out of the pool after 10 minutes, or staying in for hours...

* The guy who had a fancy waterproof case on his phone who timed how long each 50m took him to swim.
* The really fast swimmer who looked so much like my ex, I pulled off my goggles the first time I saw him to make sure it wasn’t him.
* The white-haired angry guy who yelled at anyone who didn’t follow the rules, and would intentionally crash into people who were swimming the wrong direction.
* The tall, kind man with the large Celtic tattoo on his upper back who used a striped pull buoy and did a lot of arms only.
* The bald guy with a wicked whip kick and blue eyes who worked at a hospital nearby.
* And the one woman, a kind, soft-spoken woman who only swam in the fast lane occasionally. She did yoga before getting in the pool and rolled her eyes with me at the male egos that occasionally overtook the fast lane.

If I had to daydream a perfect pool, it would be The Regent Park Aquatic Centre. There’s light and windows and a twirly slide and a shallow pool and a hot tub and a length pool. It positively sparkles.

 The length pool was even perfectly cold (I’ve gotten so used to doing lengths in bath-water temperatures, it was refreshing, and probably made me swim faster!)

 It was also the first swim Laura and I have ever taken together! (And Rhya was swimming at the same time in a pool across town, so it was very nearly our first Team Swim!)

 Of course, we didn’t check and see what time the pool ended, so it was a shorter-than-usual swim, but the sun was shining and it was pretty much summer outside and I didn’t even have to dry my hair for the bike ride home.

AND there are inclusive change rooms, that, I’ll admit, threw me initially. It’s the first inclusive change room I’ve used and it definitely meant I couldn’t go on autopilot. Leave the suit on in the shower, LZV! I got hit on in the fast lane, and it felt uncomfortable (not quite unsafe, but not physically comfortable) to be in a change room with the man who “loved my stroke and my smile.”

BUT, ideologically I support inclusive change rooms. For trans and gender queer folks, for parents with kids of a different gender—it’s a terrible thing to not be able to swim because of a stick figure on a door. I’ve since I read this amazing take on it: . “They take getting used to,” Meri Perra writes. “When was the last time any of us here showered with three strange men and two strange women to keep us company?”

 It takes getting used to! Yes. And I’m excited about going back to that glorious sunny window-filled day dream of a pool and getting used to it.

My local swimming hole is closed for a month. Of course there are other pools that I could swim at, but none are a five minute bike ride from my front door, and none are at the perfect time on the weekends. It's overly dramatic to say I'm devastated, but I kind of am.

And it's clear I am not alone in my dismay. On the final length swim before it closed, the tone was somber and funeral, like we were never going to see each other again, our mixed and motley crew of weekend swimmers. The fast lane and the change room were tinged with despair.

But out of the despair, some coping strategies were born:

Hardcore Triathlete (who you know is hardcore because she has a triathlon cap and a mesh bag with fins and her own personal pull-buoy) had done extensive research about all the pools in the west end of Toronto. She even had them ranked them depending on their length swim time slots and water temp. She had an amazing tip about one pool on the Lakeshore where lifeguards kick slow swimmers out of the fast lane (#heaven). 

Fast Lane Friend claimed he didn't have it in him to trek any further than the two blocks our local was from his house. He planned on pulling out his bike.

The two Elderly Women Who Do Water Aerobics In The Slow Lane made plans to check out Memorial's warm water. Their grandsons like swimming there...

Super Fast Swimmer Who Doesn't Look Like A Swimmer And Has The Most Beautiful Butterfly, nodded a stern, meaningful goodbye at the end of the swim, but other than that he didn't really have much to say about the pool closing for a month. He's more the strong silent type.

I have great plans to do weekend yoga (which I haven't done) and brunch, (which I have done) and I've made a few trips to pools further afield, which semi-filled up the pool-shaped hole in my heart. It'll be warm enough to get my bike out, but really, I miss MY pool, with its lackadaisical lifeguards and fast lane politics and chatty, opinionated change room ladies. 

The countdown to April is ON...

Christmas at my grandparents was the best. Not only because they spoiled us with a ridiculous number of gifts (Cabbage Patch Kids! Gund dogs named Muttsy!) and not just because my nana put out unlimited almond bark for me, or because there were sweet potatoes with broiled marshmallows on top or because there were trays of bacon wrapped water chestnuts. It was the best, not just because we were allowed to put on all of my grandmother's rings my grandfather made for her, and look at all of her lipsticks in their decorative cases in the bathroom, or because I'd get to blow out birthday candles with my mom and dad and cousin, and ride the elevator, and call up from the intercom, and listen to the police scanner, and stand on the balcony, but because we got to swim.

Their apartment building had a pool in the basement, and the weekend before Christmas, we would pack our bathing suits and goggles along with a trunk full of gifts. The only other time we swam all together was at the cottage, but by then the lake was frozen over, and swimming altogether was a distant memory, but every December, we would do a conga line in the shallow end, practice handstands and show off our somersaults. 

My grandparents didn't know how to swim, but they loved that we did and we would open presents smelling like chlorine. Our hair would be crispy and tangled, and everything about it was perfect.

When I was pregnant, he would kick even more than usual when I was in the bath, kicking so hard, the water would ripple from where his heels struck. And when I would swim, spandex stretched over my belly, he would spend lengths doing somersaults, and when he got too big for somersaults, he would pummel the space under my ribs.

He was born a Pisces, our little water baby. 

Sadly, the pool just blocks from my mom's house where I learned to float and blow bubbles, coloured badges sewn up the side of my suit, is closed this summer, but there is another pool nearby, one I used to lifeguard at. This was Jack's first swimming hole.

He was skeptical at first, but over the last two months has grown to love it, perfecting an inchworm-style kick, learning to splash (today's watery triumph), laughing when anybody blows bubbles, and grinning when he gets splashed by the big kids' cannonballs.

I never want Labour Day to come mostly because I don't want the pools to close.