‘Art was an attempt to preserve the amber of the moment.’
– The Offing, Benjamin Myers
The final week of the year falls into a gentle rhythm: swims in the sea before breakfast, leisurely midday meals, lots of reading, even more snoozing. It’s exactly what’s needed. It’s a whole lot of quiet at the end of a very busy year.
A few days ago, the solstice fell, marking the start of summer, the turning of light, the gradual shortening of days. I woke early and headed to the beach for a sunrise swim. But the swell was mighty beneath the morning drift of clouds and so I headed home again, curled beneath my duvet, and went back to sleep.
I’ve been talking with friends recently about granting ourselves permission to rest; of needing to allow our bodies moments of reprieve amongst the rush and tumult of day-to-day life. Of how emotional turmoil and mental strain needs a physical response – rest, sleep, replenishment – as much as physical exertion does.
We are all just beings at the end of the day. As Mary Oliver wrote in ‘Wild Geese’, ‘You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.’
There’s a deceptive coolness at the start of heatwave mornings. People are rushing around trying to get errands done before the heat builds and hits the city with full force. It feels cool as we go from a to b and b to c but it isn’t, not really.
It’s warm and the heat begins to shimmer off the roads and some people head to the beach but others, like me, head home. Blinds down to keep the heat out. Fans on. Ice blocks in the fridge.
These are days of doing little, while the heatwaves hit.
Change is afoot around me. In many ways, it feels like it always is. My twenties have been full of it. I hope my fast-approaching thirties are more settled instead.
In recent weeks and months there has been a rush of decisions. Against the steep learning curve of big life moments and starting a new job, I’ve had soul-replenishing dinners and nourishing phone calls. These quiet moments have kept me relatively grounded – a dimly lit conversation in the lull of the night, dinner in a garden as a heatwave cooled around us – even in the moments when it feels like being caught in the surge of a heady swell.
There’s a week where I have a swim a day. I need it. I crave the water to clear my mind.
I’m standing on the edge of the bay, halfway down the steps, trying to push myself in. I know it will be worth it once I’m in there, but I can’t seem to make the final leap. A woman clambers out to the side of me and throws out words of encouragement.
‘I’m the opposite,’ she says, ‘I dive right in. I think it’s something to do with my ancestors, a Neanderthal instinct or something.’
I laugh at the thought of it. She does too.
‘What a humble brag,’ she adds.
With that, I push forwards, letting the water rush over me. It’s glorious when it does.
I float and my body is moved around by the ebb and the flow of the saltwater. Rising and falling. There’s nothing to do but be and float and give in. It forces me to let the water do its thing.
I’ve needed this. I’ve been holding on so tightly to logistics and plans and fighting against what’s happening by endlessly wondering what could be instead. Wishing I had a partner to do all this with, to do life with. Weeks out from thirty and I’m thinking that this isn’t where I wanted to be with my life. Here, now. I love so many of the details of my life, the very essence of what makes it mine, but still – still – there’s a grappling with what could have been mine, with what might have been, with how mine compares to the lives of friends around me.
I’m not able to dwell in that downward spiral of thoughts for long. The water, the water. The saltwater flow. The endless surge of waves through the bay forces me to keep afloat. Legs spinning slowly around and around in egg-beater kicks as my head takes in the sunset, the kids jumping off the side, the surf life saving club perfectly positioned at the top of the rocky slope.
I have to roll with it. Go with it. Float amongst the stuff of life. No amount of wishing that things were different – that the past was different, and the present – will make it so.
Here, now. That’s all there is.
I go to visit my parents in Tasmania for Christmas and begin to unwind in the crisp, clean air and beneath the towering gums.
On Christmas morning, Mum and I manage a dip at the nearby beach. It’s a beautiful morning, sunny with not a cloud in the sky. The water, crystal clear and glimmering in a stretch across the bay, is cool at first and it takes us a while to get in, as we push forwards through the shallows.
We swim and float and our legs begin to get used to it or ‘maybe they’re just going numb.’
A young family comes down to the beach, their eldest daughter running towards the sea and immediately backing away when her toes reach the water. The dad wades in with his legs in shorts and a puffer jacket on top.
Later, we pick cherries from the tree in the back paddock and eat them fresh alongside lunch.
It’s idyllic, this country life. I begin to see why my parents have fallen for it.
As we come to the closing of the year, I think of all that it has held: trips to Melbourne and Tasmania, and further afield to London and Berkshire and Menorca and Croatia. Leisurely lunches and dinners with friends. More swims in the sea than ever before.
It’s been a good year, this one. There have been unexpected things like a redundancy and the general day-to-day unknowns and uncertainties of life, but for the most part I’ve been careful to hold onto a sense of carving out my future, of proactively pushing myself and determining how things will happen. Of making opportunities for myself.
I had vague resolutions for this year and the resolution that’s mattered the most has been a pledge to swim at least once a week. The pool or the ocean, it doesn’t matter. But it’s changed how I’ve felt about my body and the natural world around me. It’s made me do things I never could have imagined myself doing (swimming through winter and completing the Swim Serpentine, for a start) and made me feel all the more powerful for having done so.
As the final full moon of the year begins to rise, I begin to write my resolutions for the next. At least I already know what will sit at the top of the page. Swim more. Write more. The rest can flow on after that.
Loved this a lot ❤️
Good Lord, Emma.. Your pieces take hold every time and change me for the better. Thank you and Happy New Year xo