Ep.49: This is my church
This morning the air is so cold each breath feels thick on my tongue and catches the back of my throat as we pick our way along the icy track to the shore. We pause to admire the perfect paw prints of a badger in the crisp snow. It’s minus 4 according to David’s phone but I’m warm enough in my wetsuit and toweling poncho. I have a thick knitted hat pulled low and a huge soft orange and yellow scarf wrapped round and round my neck. I clutch a flask of hot ginger in mittened hands. Undoubtedly i look ridiculous but not one millimeter of me cares.
We woke to an utterly calm, quiet Sunday with hardly a caress of wind. A milky yellow sun nudged up over the opposite hill then poured itself in through the bedroom window. One of the things I love most about this house is the generosity of light it gives us, a commodity to be treasured when you live as far north as we do.
The Loch, ribbed and rippled with gold, was irresistible.
Apart from the odd emergency dip, I have been resisting the water over the winter months, the temperature of the water itself doesn’t phase me, but the discomfort after the swim is enough to put me off, I'm not brave enough to face wriggling out of a freezing wetsuit by the back door. Until David, so effortlessly the problem solver, simply said ‘then don’t, take your wetsuit off in the downstairs shower’. Game changer.
Now I feel the pull of the water almost daily, the desire to get into the Loch is becoming a need.
I normally come to the shore on my own so it’s a little strange to have David’s company, though he has no intention of swimming. I have my routine, carefully removing two ponchos, one towelling and one microfiber, tucking my phone into my mittens then pulling on thick neoprene gloves. The shore is stoney and slippery so I take a stick to help my balance as I carefully pick my way into the shallows.
The water level is especially low. It’s been too cold for rain and the hills all around are clinging on to deep snow. When it melts the water will rise again and the water temperature plummet even further. I’m wearing booties but my feet still feel like ice. Once I’m deep enough I sink down, turn and float onto my back, kicking to push myself out further. The icy water pushes through the zip and I concentrate on my breathing, forcing back the raw gasp of shock. Sometimes I count. I have about a minute, maybe two of this exquisitely focussed, teetering on the edge of pain moment, before my body temperature starts to warm the water between the suit and my skin.
In this place everything becomes elemental, sharp, intense and intensely free. As I start to swim in parallel to the shore I realise, perhaps for the first time, that I’m no longer coming here just as an antidote to cancer. I’m coming here as an antidote to everything else too. Only here can I escape to worry desperately about how unhappy B is in lockdown schooling, to dilute some of the crushing parental guilt. Here I can fret about the constant work pressure I see in David’s face, and wash away that sense that I don’t know how to begin to help him. The icy water cools my panic over the insanity of going into business after the year we’ve had and lets me quietly think through the meetings and creative acrobatics each day demands.
And this is where today, for the first time, I start to realise that cancer is receding. It’s becoming a bit player because I care far more about B’s and David’s happiness than I do about cancer.
The realisation of that subtle lift and shift of my world feels significant. I want to mark it, stand and raise my arms above my head, throw and arc of icy water in triumph. I don’t, instead I raise my gaze to the snow-laced hills and choke back the gratitude that coats my throat and threatens to make me cry. ‘This is my church’, I whisper and the soft steam from my breath curls away over the water, ‘I have all this and I am so insanely lucky, yes, this is my church’. Then, I push my worries out into the Loch, leave my soft prayer of thanks hanging in the air and I turn and swim to the shore, to warm mittens, a doubled up poncho, hot ginger and to David.