Pool-Walk Talk

Three of us regularly get together at the pool for anywhere from most of an hour's simultaneous walk to two hours.  We try to coordinate, but things happen. Sometimes I'm alone making my own way around, in the middle of semi-familiar faces, smiles in passing, and I'm content to just get in my exercise and before-bed cooldown. Occasionally it goes the other way and new people join in for several laps. Even more don't precisely join us but we can tell they're listening occasionally.

It's because we laugh so much while we walk. We laugh a lot. And we can get pretty bawdy. What's that funny? Well, life. Our aging bodies. Men. The recipes we exchange for those iresistible treats (toast with peanut butter and sweetened cocoa powder, things to put on popcorn or in a pot with chicken, ways to use _______). How well we follow our different routines to improve our health and shapes, especially following those discussions of forbidden treats. And sex, of course, depending on who all is listening.

"The girls" are a constant source of humor. Now I never referred to my own breasts that way, but I'm picking it up. The girls flop. They float. They never quite fit the preformed cups in our suits. They have to be re-positioned three times between donning the suit and actually getting into the water. But subtly? Right! Sure, we can do that - not. They defy expectations in the doctors' offices, whether for a mammogram or an EKG or... well, nevermind that one. It was much funnier sharing it in the pool anyway. Younger, particularly male, doctors, including the medical students some of the clinics work with for their residencies, can be quite confounded by them, embarrassed by needing to move them out of their way, apologizing for even seeing them when they're the 700th person to need to do so in that particular visit. They can be so careful not to leer - or perhaps recoil since we're not 18 any more - that they miss what they are supposed to be seeing and working with, like that particular vein or discoloration, a couple EKG electrode patches, or... well, you get the idea.

We compare scars, wrinkles, lumps, and all the idiocy that is supposed to comprise the perfect body/skin/shape/feet/whatever these days. We've lived in our bodies for all these decades and have had our share of partners with their varying degrees of judgments, and we've emerged with acceptance of who we are and how we got here. Fashion? Nonsense! Comfort reigns. Budgets constrain. Workarounds get shared - this thrift store has these, that other one is better for those, but if you must, that store....

We discuss how chlorine damages our suits, how and where they stretch, where our limits of decency are, what styles are preferred or even mandated by our limitations,  and when and where to replace them. One found several in her size from X thrift shop, another from Y catalog. We discuss being unable to locate them in stores where we can actually try them on, or who allows returns and how we can sew adjustments to accomplish what we need to tide us over until we find that next one.

We share other kinds of stories as well, war stories, whether family, jobs and coworkers, accidents, illnesses, losses.  We even - though the young may not credit this - share our future aspirations. What we wish to accomplish. How we'd wish to die, or get buried or where scattered. We discuss philosophies and religions but avoid politics mostly, though I suspect we core three are pretty similar there as well. We are remarkably the same and remarkably different. We come from various levels of affluence, education, abuse, even races. We bring different interests, have lived in different states and the same ones, drive different kind of vehicles, have traveled to different places, watch different TV shows and movies, exercise in different ways until we get in the pool again. There is always something to discuss.

If we take a short break from the topic of the moment, there is always a drowning bee or floating leaf to avoid or remove or swoosh to one the pool filters. We wondered for a couple days why the spa pool had yellow tape across the entrance, always coming back to some foul type of contamination and ready stories of how it may have happened. We can be quite imaginative, especially when it's fun.

As we leave, we do our best to plan the next time. We need to laugh, to share, to bond, and to walk away, hoping for the next pool walk. Just because we're old ladies, just because we are, just because the others are. Just because it's there.