#thatmanmaysee | Red Boots

Alcatraz Swim for Sight, October 23 2016 image: http://www.sfgate.com

The helpful young woman wore a headlamp and a big smile as she wrote on the back of my hand in thick black permanent marker. 31. She wrote it on both of my hands. And then she handed me a goody bag containing a cap and ear plugs and waved me on into the early-morning darkness with a cheery and very heartfelt “good luck.” I stumbled over a rock and swallowed. I’d come this far.

I stared down at the numbers inked onto my hands. I doubted my own ability to withstand the next couple hours, so my confidence in the staying power of a few black marks on my skin was tenuous. Even if it was a Sharpie. I have bony hands, and skinny fingers. My grandmother’s hands. The contours of the “3” hugged the veins, which seemed to pulse with nervousness even in the dark dawn. How will they know it’s me when they pull me out, if those inky numbers are gone from my hands? My heart was playing tricks on me. I took a breath of cool morning air, and noticed the sky already light. I turned east, toward the rising sun and looked out across the Bay. There it was.

Alcatraz.

It didn’t look so far away. Now my eyes were playing tricks on me too. Because it was. Far away. It was a whole two miles far away.

I’d never swum that far before. Suddenly I couldn’t wait for it to be over, one way or another.

***

The water was cold, some might say freezing although I know it doesn’t get below 55 these days. My toes and arms, the parts of me not swathed in neoprene, tingled and then went numb. Sometimes not feeling is the only way to get through it. I turned my head to breathe and caught a glimpse of the numbers on my hand. Here we go, 31.

The water was rough, and the waves were real. They were big and powerful and nothing like the swells I had been swimming through while training. It took me a few minutes and several mouthfuls of salty Bay water to realize I had to turn more than just my head to take an unobstructed breath. How is it no matter how long and how hard we train, no matter how many protein shakes we drink, no matter how much we think about it and talk about it and reassure ourselves there are no sharks in the Bay this year and the odds of being attacked by one are practically zero, no matter how prepared we think we are, we really aren’t? Because there are forces and wild elements much bigger than we can imagine out there, and when you’re floating somewhere between the world’s most famous prison and an elusive, misty shoreline the only thing to do is go with the current and keep. moving. forward.

Admittedly I wasn’t that prepared. I didn’t train as much as I should have, and I didn’t drink a protein shake after every swim. Often I opted for the pool instead of a session in the Bay, and sometimes I did neither. But, I told myself, I had swum from Alcatraz before and I knew what to expect and if nothing else, I had a wetsuit to keep me buoyant and goggles that didn’t leak and a strong freestyle stroke. And it wasn’t a race. It was a fundraiser for a cause I care deeply about, and it was a test of endurance and a chance to push myself into an uncomfortable place.

Kick, stroke, breathe. Kick, stroke, breathe.

There was nobody in the Bay but us. No early morning sailboats, no ferries full of tourists heading to Sausalito and no fishermen anticipating a good catch. There were no cruise or cargo ships gliding toward the San Francisco shore after a journey across the great Pacific. There was only us, one hundred swimmers in bright green caps with numbers on our hands. Kicking, breathing, pulling ourselves toward the shore. Picture-perfect San Francisco gleamed gently in the still-early light. Our beacon, the Palace of Fine Arts, stately and beautiful and still so far away. The sky was clear, and on my right the Golden Gate Bridge loomed large and distinctly red. International Orange, they call it.

I stopped kicking. Stopped swimming. Let my wetsuit hold me afloat in the middle of the famous Bay. Mermaid Bay, my daughter says. And it was magical.

My hands hit the shallow shore first. I planted my feet in the wet sand and moved forward almost on all fours before I unfurled from the water, hands in the air and every muscle in my face and body exhausted. “Don’t let me do this again,” I gasped to my husband as he wrapped his warm arms around my already shivering body. He smiled.

It took many hot showers and more than a few days for number 31 to fade from my hands. And my unique perspective of the Bay will stay with me forever.

I’m struggling.

To find the words. To form the sentences. To capture the thoughts. To get underneath the feelings, and plumb the deep salty waters I am swimming in.

I am struggling.

To separate the excitement from the nerves, the adrenaline from the dread, the determination from the apprehension.

I am struggling to harness the power and strength, my power, to pull it away from the fear, the worry, the panic. Even as my legs propel me forward, and my hands slice neat and even strokes through the cold, choppy water, my heart beats an unsteady rhythm: Won’t make it. Can’t make it. What if I don’t make it?

I am struggling to write it all down.

In one month I hope to swim from Alcatraz – that Alcatraz, the once-upon-a-time prison, the iconic Rock way out there in the middle of the Bay – to San Francisco. I will join 100 swimmers, some of them visually impaired, to raise funds and awareness for That Man May See, the support foundation for UCSF’s Department of Ophthalmology.

I am inspired, determined, excited. And terrified.

I’m not quite sure why.

I mean, for all the reasons one would think: it’s cold, there are sharks in the Bay (not great whites, I’m told, but little ones), the weather, the distance. These are all legitimate reasons to make my heart pump a little more erratically, to cause me to swallow hard a few times, to feel queasy and constricted even when I’m not wearing a wetsuit.

But that’s not it.

I talk about this swim with my family and friends. I truthfully say I am nervous and also excited, energized and really scared. I think about it all the time. I plan my days, my meals, my sleep around training sessions in the pool and in the Bay. But I am struggling to write it all down.

So. This is my attempt to name my fears, here on the page, in the hope that when I stand on the boat anchored at Alcatraz in 31 days and look across the water toward my favorite City by the Bay, I will know what I am swimming through to get there:

It’s far. The freezing temperature (it’s not quite freezing and the impending El Niño promises water that is warmer-than-usual), the sharks, the dirty waters (my swimming partner came face to face with a dead bird last week)… these are not the things that have my swimsuit in a knot. I swim in a wetsuit, I haven’t heard of a shark attack during an Alacatraz swim (maybe I’m naïve), and I’ll take a shower afterwards. But when I look at that island standing stoically in the middle of the Bay, it seems very very far from anywhere. I know it’s a perceived distance. The actual distance is less than a mile and a half. But I am someone who tracks each mile, each step, each stroke. I watch the tiny airplane inch its way across the satellite map on flights, I check my Google Maps continuously whenever we drive somewhere, carefully noting how much further, how much longer till we reach our destination. On November 1, I will be in the map with no way of measuring how far I’ve come and how much longer till I get there. I will have to pace myself, track myself, trust myself.

There are great big invisible forces in that Bay. Nature is strong, powerful, much larger than any life, and I will be floating somewhere between the unseen wind above and the hidden currents below. What if, what if, what if? I watch my hands slice through that murky green water, I hear myself count the strokes in my head, one two breathe, one two three four breathe. I realize it’s not only the wild elements that have power. There is force in those hands, that breath, that body too. And if I focus on my own strength and power, I will move forward.

I’m a crappy swimmer. This is the one that stops me mid-stroke, the niggling thought that I’m not a good enough swimmer to take on this challenge. I’m not fit enough, strong enough, fast enough. It’s a version of the insecurity that often lurks just beyond my reach: I’m a shitty mom, an uncaring friend, an insensitive wife, a lazy volunteer. And if I let it come closer, close enough that I can touch it and feel its tentacles creep up my arms and around my neck and squeeze my heart, I will be paralyzed right there in the water. I’m not a terrible swimmer. I am an okay swimmer. I can kick my legs and move my arms in rhythmic strokes and keep myself afloat and breathe when I need to breathe.

These are my fears. To write through them is to name them and own them, and to know that this is what I will be swimming through to get from Alcatraz back to shore. So. I will trust myself, believe in my own power… and know that I can do it.

If you’d like to support my swim and That Man May See, please click here.

This is a Finish the Sentence Friday post, where writers and bloggers gather together to share their versions of a completed sentence. This week’s prompt was, “I can’t believe it took me so long to realize that…” Hosted by Kristi of Finding Ninee, and co-hosted by Ivy Walker from uncharted, and Roshni from Indian American Mom.