After two weeks of orbiting in vacation sphere, today was touch down, re-entering the atmosphere of obligations, email, networks, meetings, schedules, deadlines and Droid notification signals. David and I both kept yawning as we drove home from work, doing our daily download with each other. “I think we’re yawning because we were so busy at work, we forgot to breathe.” He yawned again.
When we got home, we changed into our bathing suits and went to the pond for a swim. The sky was grey, with some piles of clouds that looked potentially thunderous, but we couldn’t hear any rumbles and went in anyway. Stroke, twist, breath, stroke, stroke twist, breath, stroke, the water slipping over me, under me, filling in all the space around me. Re-entry space, back at work space, back to swimming after work space, the grey space of the deep water, my hands plunging a burst of air bubbles into the pond with each stroke, the rhythm slowly working its way into my brain space as I swam back and forth and back and forth across the pond.
At one point, lifting my face from the water to breathe, I caught a sharp light among the clouds and froze. Lightening? I stopped, pulled my head up and saw it was a slit of direct sun through a fold in the clouds. I listened. Still no thunder to be heard anywhere. The flash of brilliance hung there in the sky, then the clouds moved again and it was gone. I went back to swimming.
Grace Mattern 