Love At First Launch

Ms. Rachow says the wife is always the last to know.

Recently my husband disappeared for a few hours and had a very guilty look on his face when he returned. So it was my wifely duty to give him the third degree.
Where had he been? Not shopping for a new car. Not rendezvousing with a secret lover. Not even hoisting a few cold ones at Schnookie’s Bar. Nope. My hubby was sneaking around with a kayak.
My response was WHAT?!?
This man has lived in a California beach town for all the years I’ve known him, and I’ve never once seen him get more than his ankles wet in the surf. And now, ocean kayaking?
Yes, and it’s love at first launch. When my husband’s infatuated, there’s no stopping him. Within a week he paddles as if training for the Olympic team. And now he wants me to join him -- a little ménage a mer.
A woman doesn’t get to her golden wedding anniversary by getting in the way of her hubby’s new loves. But I worry because of all that water in the ocean. It seems to me that if we’re venturing out to sea, it’d be smart to be able to swim.
That’s why we’re at this end-of-season swimsuit sale. I’m hoping to find something like the Wonder Woman bikini I had in high school, but I find there’s no such thing as a bikini in my double-digit size. And there must be a federal law banning colorful suits in any size above 6, because there’s no such thing as a red, white, blue, purple, green, orange or yellow swimsuit in my size either. I get to choose from one style in basic black. Luckily, black is exactly the color I want to match my brand-new, geeky, black swim goggles.
As a show of solidarity, my husband has also chosen trunks in solid black. My new swimsuit is about as conservative as one can get without returning to the swimming costumes from circa 1920. Nevertheless, other than technically covering my X-rated areas, there really is not a thing left to the imagination. If I were more of a drinker, a couple shots of tequila would make this whole endeavor a lot easier.
However, when I finally take the walk from the locker room to the pool, no one looks. Of course it is 10:45 on a Monday night, and the gym is deserted. So I might as well be naked because there’s no one to see me, except my husband, and his glasses are in his gym bag.
The last time either of us was in a pool, Nixon was still in office. Although we both knew how to splash around back then, swimming skills are not like riding a bicycle. You can forget how to swim. And I’m glad we’re discovering this fact in four feet of water at the gym, rather than at sea, capsizing our kayaks somewhere around the half-mile buoy.
In the pool we encounter the challenge of breathing while swimming. Even a newborn babe knows instinctively not to inhale water through the nose. But after thirty-some years of breathing on dry land, our noses do not respond well to the new directive to wait for our heads to be above the water.
Also there’s the issue of floating. According to recent caliper tests, we both still have sufficient layers of “buoyancy” to have survived the sinking of the Titanic without a lifeboat. Nevertheless, our bodies have forgotten the simple art of staying afloat.
And if that wasn’t enough, we discover that the swimming strokes we did so easily when we were kids require actual coordination. We don’t have it anymore, and that’s why we’re flopping around in the pool as if we just landed here from a planet in a galaxy without water.
We cough and sputter our way from one end of the pool to the other, vowing to keep at it for an hour. We gasp for air at the end of each lap. This is going to be a very long hour. We make thirty laps in sixty minutes, and there’s not a pretty one in the bunch.
The next morning I study my cottage cheese thighs in the mirror. Already they’re looking better, more like yogurt with a little fruit puree.
For the love of kayaking we learn to swim. And now, against all odds, we’re falling in love with swimming. Soon the Olympic committee will beg us to try out. Mark Spitz my word.
First published in the Montecito Journal November 1, 2007