July 16, 2013

Nightswimming

The stars were bright overhead, and their eyes followed us like watchful big sisters from the parking lot of the wild tomato, to the gravel dead end road that leads to pebble beach. the earth had cooled in the evening hours, leaving us with only the heat and salt of our sweat soaked flesh to contend with. And all the clothes we'd spent hours soaking as well as we'd dished out pizzas to bloodthirsty tourists.

Here we'd met, on this island of misfit toys.
A place where no one grows up.
A place where everyone belongs because no one does.

gretchen, the mother and wanderer. sometimes i think the most mis-fittting of all the misfit toys. she'd returned to Door County after a shaky divorce, and 10 years raising babies on Maui. She is a bellydancing yoga teacher. She calls herself a mermaid.

Then theres marie, my kindred spirit. the theatre major i could have been. the instant life-long friend i've made on this lonely island. 

And so there we were. Misfits bound together only by three decisions:
The decision to move to door county
The decision to work at the Wild Tomato
The decision to skinny dip in Lake Michigan after a long Monday.

Loaded only with our towels we walked the pebble beach down to the water. We laughed raucously, each of us nervous in our owns ways.

Personally, I'm always worry about being caught naked by law enforcement. You know, like you do. 

There were others on the dark beach. We could hear the voices of younger men perhaps 200 feet down the rocky land. We joked about asking them if they were naked. Because we would be soon.

We figured we'd better not leave them with false hope.

I began to strip down first. I removed my sweat soaked t-shirt and black skirt and paused, waiting for the others to catch up.

After we'd stripped down I was astounded at how clothed i felt despite being completely clothes-less. Gretchen, the skinny dip queen, the hippie mermaid warrior, was unashamed also, her body half covered in passion-flower tattoos that stretch from her thigh to her top of her ribcage. She joked about her tan lines, in the starlight you could barely see the line of tiny Brazilian bikini. We laughed.

'I'm not going to think about it, i'm just going to jump it" gretchen declared. and we agreed.
don't think about it.

1. 2. 3.

We dove into the cool cove water. mMy body felt instantly leached of all aching anger that accompanies serving impatient people. I frog-swam under the water until i envisioned myself swimming right into a massive unidentified fish, and quickly shot my head above the waves.

It was like summer camp. or perhaps it was just like summer. The feeling of letting all go, the knowing that your makeup will bleed down your cheeks no matter how water proof, the feeling of lake soaked hair, and skin still warmed from the day's sun.

nightswimming
deserves a quiet night

This summer feeling is intoxicating and beneath all of it I feel the possibility of what's next calling me. I have this deep longing to wake up with the sunrise, paddle out on a borrowed board and look for the most perfect rolling water to gain my sea legs on. To sweat and soak and warm all of the old ache from my bones and be born again as the woman I so long to be. To do this again and again and again until the newness reveals itself like midsummer flower that grows quietly and unnoticed in the darkness and one day simply blooms.

I long to release this woman in me; the one with an unencumbered heart and a reverence for every grain of life. The one who believes in yoga, and nature, and love, and herself. the one who believes.

I feel this woman growing inside of me every single day. asking me to be patient. to remember that this time is important. That I must purge all of the old pain before I'll be allowed to become new. That I have to straddle these worlds for as long as possible in order to become whole.

But I'm so impatient. I want the answers, and I want the direction now. Even though I know that nothing will be revealed until the exact moment it is meant to be, I wish for it everyday. I resist the hollow sadness that i know is the key growing up.

Knowing the answers and yet resisting them, this is what makes me the girl
but perhaps realizing this makes me the woman too.

All this rattles in my mind tonight as I think back to our smiling faces in the moonlight. There we were: baptized in the waters of Lake Michigan, three agnostic priestesses of light, casting our pain and baggage to the abyss of the still black water. Each of us still learning what it means to simply be. To let happen. To sigh when we need to. To laugh at only the things that truly make us laugh. To be the women we can make sense of.

Or perhaps we simply jumped into an icy lake naked.

Either way,
I will see the stars above those towering evergreen trees underneath my eyelids forever.