mehrunnisa
here are some things that happened this week.
there was sunshine, a day of it uninterrupted by cloud and rain. it meant that i had my first swim in lake zurich. the water was not calm and it was a mix of warm and cold currents. the first swim of the season is always rough around the edges. it takes a while to find equilibrium, to reacquaint myself. my breath is shallow partly because of the temperature of the water but mostly because of the fear of forgetting. i learnt how to swim as an adult and each season i worry that i may have forgotten how to float or to move my limbs. i know now that all it takes to find my groove is an even breathing pattern. the voice of marieta (my swimming instructor) appears in my head reminding me to breathe out. the muscle memory of my early lessons which basically involved working the length of the swimming pool bobbing up and down whilst breathing in and out comes back to me. it is not possible to recreate this in an open expanse of water. but knowing that i have done it in the past is an assurance for being able to do it again. i am right about this as i do get into the rhythm of the breast stroke after a few tries. the joy of swimming never gets old. i certainly do not have omair’s skill or confidence but swimming together has been one of the most wonderful things.
i returned to another spin class. the one on sunday was full mostly with women riding in sync to the beat. i wonder whether their endorphins were mixed with the fear of sharing air with strangers? whether they too had felt hesitant about the return, negotiating the return to communal spaces like i had, a step at a time. i had started with museums, moving on to restaurants outdoors and then indoors and then group exercise in a studio.
this time feels even more tenuous than last summer. if the pandemic was a mix tape, it would most certainly be a jumble of time and genres with no lines through them. it is hard to believe that this is the second summer of the pandemic and that soon enough it will be another autumn and then winter. these many markers of time denote distance from the beginnings of the pandemic. i keep thinking about how much time is needed to forget the shape of the past? or to master the art of living fully in the trough of the wave?
things to remember: the impeccable strength, poise and inspiration of marcus rashford, jadon sancho and bukayo saka, that hope and despair exist together, leadership in sport
things to forget: the danger of pursuing herd immunity, misinformation and fake news, running on empty
Jenny
I’ve been in denial about the season that it is, but there’s no denying it now: this pandemic has been going on for two summers now. Some of the old timestamps are back – mainly from the return of the sports schedule – and with them comes an unmistakable end-of-term feeling. With that, comes anxiety.
Infection rates here are on the rise. I still log the (lack of) symptoms of my household on the ZOE app each morning. A line on the graph that had been flat is now nearly vertical. It’s hard to know what the summer holds and how things will be different on the other side: a horribly grown-up version of the bus home on the last day of school.
As a nominal adult, I have more choice and more control over what I do and who I see, with less left to chance, but I feel more constrained by the possible consequences. Summer feels like a closing window, with each day I fritter a wasted opportunity to get away. I salute my friends for making international travel plans as I struggle with the logistics of a cinema trip – great escape though that is.
Maybe that’s a sign of end-of-term as well as pandemic exhaustion, but there’s one virus-driven change to the sports schedule that I’m hoping will help me through. Spring marathons have moved to autumn, which means that training shifts from winter to summer. To have the luxury of light feels like cheating. I doubt that it will enhance my performance, if the marathon and I both make it to the starting line in October, but I’ll take it while it lasts.
Running is my reminder of the benefits of just keeping going – and that time spent looking for another gear along the way is never wasted.
Things to remember: the latest instalment of my forget-me-not saga as they grow better where they like, between cracks in the concrete, than where I potted them;
Another Round; seeing leaders lead, in sport and elsewhere
Things to forget: waiting for the newsreader to say the magic words “passed off without incident”; incidents