Note: this was written two years ago and I was already back at the pool. This morning’s lake swim was cool but I’m not ready to give it up just yet. Green clear water, ravens squabbling in the cedars, a cloud that looked to much like a salmon that I kept looking, looking, until it dissolved into wisps. I’m reminded that my cell phone ring tone is Bob Dylan singing “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” so if I’m late to answering, it’s because I want to hear it as long as I can.
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My first lap was in a quiet pool. The man who does the wild butterfly was in the hot-tub and no one else was swimming. A quiet pool, and I could hear myself breathe. So I asked for music. The first song that came on was Bob Dylan, “Knocking on Heaven’s Door”. In the light-filled space, the water blue, a Japanese maple turning scarlet beside the big window, I thought of what heaven might be. I’m not a Christian. I swam and thought, keeping track of my laps. I listened, swam, thought. A samara fell from the maple. Crows bickered in the trees beyond the parking area.
When I got home, the house was quiet, John gone to Vancouver for the day, and the cat sleeping. On my phone, images of this day last year. On this day last year we were driving to Alberta. We got an early ferry and stopped at Nicola Lake for a swim. The water was cold, I remember, but as I swam I remembered so many family camping trips by the lake, my children plunging into the water over and over, morning, noon, and evening. In the evenings they’d have a last swim and then we’d roast marshmallows over a fire of sweet pine. There were the days of the blue tent and the days of the tent trailer and then it was over, they were grown, gone into the world to live the lives that include jobs, partners, children of their own. And us, still, on this day last year, driving to Alberta to spend time with one family.
On this day last year, we dried off, changed out of our bathing suits and continued up Highway 5A to Kamloops. Stop, I kept saying, stop, so I can take a photograph. The light was extraordinary.
Past Stump Lake, the road to Glimpse Lake, past Trapp Lake, Napier Lake, Shumway Lake, the old homestead at Separation Lake, we drove, stopping to take more photographs.
As I swam this morning, I thought of what heaven might be. I think it’s in the dailiness of our lives, what we notice, and love. What we carry as memory, the memory of warm air, the scent of Ponderosa pines and golden grass, what we carry home, a pine-cone, a stray feather that might have come from a bird or an angel, smoke from a fire surrounded by children. We could just as easily have driven another highway that day, not meandered along 5A, stopping to swim at Nicola Lake, almost the only ones there. A woman, just packing up her blanket. A man with a dog on the path leading up from the water. Across the lake, Quilchena, closed, the golf course returned to reeds. The sprig of sage I cut for the mirror filled our car with summer. We were driving to Alberta, damp bathing suits on the floor, damp towels. I closed my eyes for a moment and it was as though the years had never passed.
...Theresa Kishkan 