Swimming through the Labyrinth of Time: Remembering my Mother

Yesterday was 5 years since my mother died. January 16th, 2011

In her honor I went swimming and thus my musings helped me enter the labyrinth of time and memory...

    My mother was a real athlete and often bragged about the time she dove off a very high diving board..the small black and white photo proved it...Her early days in Vienna were full of swimming and skating...I have a beautiful photo that shows her standing at the rink with her brother, all dressed up, a pensive look on her face as she prepares to skate..he looks impish and it is amazing how much my nephew resembles him....

    My mother swam almost daily into her mid 80's with a beloved swimming partner. After their daily swim they would go out to breakfast or he would make her breakfast as his place, creating a sense of style, elegance and order in her somewhat chaotic life.

     Yesterday I donned the swimsuit that was once hers and went swimming in the chlorine pool...I swam and swam until my daily cares subsided and I swam right into the labyrinth of time and memory...recalling the daily swims at Lake Calhoun all through my childhood and how my mother would walk us to the beach a few blocks away every day for a few hours of swimming while she sat under a tree reading...

    and then.... I swam back to that time a few days before she died when I was by her side in the hospital...everything felt hazy and the dark shadows in bright sunlight somehow mysteriously implied that the end was near....we were in old part of the hospital and I stayed with her through the night...her long eventful life spread out before her on the hospital sheets...me sitting in a chair brought in thoughtfully by the Romanian nurse who accompanied our journey through the night.. and there I was  with longing to leave the looming certainty of death and all of its complexity...I just wanted to crawl back in and swim inside the watery womb that once held me...where everything was quiet, secure and nurturing...

she died two days later..

I keep swimming back to memory and then forward into the present moment day by day... keeping up the physical fitness she modeled for me.......keeping up the exercise..that removes the weight of winter depression and keeps me lively and fluid, musing and wondering....swishing through philosophical waters that lead to mysterious insights and answers....