Swimming For My Life

                    Swimming For My Life



      Three times a week, come rain or shine, you'll find me churning the waters in the swimming pool at the Kerrisdale Community Centre.
      "Swim or die," is my motto now in the closing years of my life. For two years ago I had a mini-stroke, or a "Transient Ischemic Attack" or a TIA as it's called.
     "Your blood pressure is dangerously high," my doctor told me after I'd had the TIA. "You've got to bring it down."
     Now I can only walk about six blocks a day, without a ferocious pain hitting me behind my knees at night time. So walking and running are out. So too is bicycling. All that's left for me as an exercise is swimming.
     Which in the end was just fine. At the age of 10 or so, I learned to swim in an open air pool in north London. And I love swimming. I sure didn't love playing or doing other sports. I hated playing baseball since I never learned to catch a baseball or hit one no matter how fast or slow it was thrown at me. I only learned how to catch a football and throw one in my early twenties. Even then my football skills were very poor.
     "You threw the ball like a  girl," a friend said, even after I improved my throws and catches. Hockey? I could skate but never stick handle. As for basketball, eventually I learned to shoot a jump shot. Yet I was hopeless as a team player.
     Yet put me in  a swimming pool, and I feel right at home.
      Of course swimming has its dangers. Every year close to 30 Canadians drown in private pools. A few old and young people even drown while taking a bath. Yet I swim in a pool with at least one life guard looking on. So hopefully I'm safe from drowning.
   Swimming, by the way goes back at least 10,000 years and maybe even longer. "Rock painting in south west Egypt," says Wikipedia,"in the place called the Cave of Swimmers show people doing the breast stroke or doggy paddle." This was about 9,000 B.C.E.
     Wikipedia then points out that these people maybe weren't swimming. Yet later some Egyptian clay seals show some people swimming.And there's swimmers mentioned in the Bible and the Greek classic tales like the Odyssey and the Iliad.
     Competitive swimming first caught on in England in the 1830's. At the first modern Olympic Games held in Greece in 1896, there were four swimming contests, though six were planned. Since then super stars in Olympic swimming have included Americans like the 1920's athlete  Johnny Weissmuller and  1970's power house Mark Spitz. My favourite swimmer right now is Diana Nyad, an aethiest I think and a former t.v. star. She swam from Cuba to Florida, a distance of 90 miles in 55 hours a few years ago.
     One of the great things about swimming is that you can do it at any age. Diana Nyad is in her 60's. I'm 72, and partly disabled . I know an amputee who has no legs who swims regularly.
     Swimming also fits my character. I'm an introvert who lives alone. Most of the things I do I do alone, like painting and drawing,reading books and going to movies. Swimming fits neatly into this pattern.It's also helped my health.
     "Your blood pressure is way down," my doctor told me recently. Of course pills like ramipril and statins have also caused my blood pressure to plunge downwards too. Yet swimming regularly has also helped. I hope to keep swimming for some time longer.
     Swimming also fits my character