Getting My Toes Wet!

I went swimming yesterday at a hotel pool. It’s been at least 5 years since I struggled into a bathing suit. It’s always a struggle to get in those darn things, not mentioning going to a shop to buy one. Trying dozens on underneath florescent lights and criticizing every bit of cellulite in warped mirrors is not my idea of fun. It’s the circus-like mirrors that blast our images of ourselves. They are made like that to trick us into buying clothes that don’t fit, that we’ll hate even before we get them home. So we’ll go back and buy more!

Swimming’s in my blood. I learned to swim early. My father, a zero-par golfer, belonged to a golf club and so I took swim lessons at the club pool by the time I could walk. I was in my first swim race when I was 5-years-old. Our club had an Olympic-sized pool and the 5-year-olds were to race the width of it. And I won! My first (and only) blue ribbon. Not bad for being the only kid in the race.

As a teenager, when it was too hot in Michigan (and when in the summer is it not too hot in Michigan?), my mother and I would run down to our pond and go skivvie dipping. No bothering with bathing suits – a set of panties and bra worked for us!

While living in Weligama for the first 1.5years in Sri Lanka, I went swimming in the sea every day, in one of the 4 bathing suits I brought from the US – no skivvie-dipping in Sri Lanka! My swimming place was a small bay, just outside of Weligama at the hotel I lived in. It was glorious. Nice gentle waves, broken by a small reef. Fish to look at. Sunlight to float in. Soothing rhythm on a hot day. I loved it.

I called my special place Red Cliff Beach.

It's where I swam daily. 

Red Cliff beach in the evening.

Perfect place to chill out!

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