Things I Will No Longer Carry

If “Picking My Battles” were a child, I would have had to report myself to DCF for willful neglect, and I doubt my reasons would hold up in any court, least of all public opinion. But it’s a blog, and while sometimes it seems to telepathically reproach me, it and I know that the periods of non-blogging are often like the dark winter a tulip bulb needs to germinate.

Picking My Battles has taken a back seat in the trunk of my creative car while my dissertation has lapped up all my attention. That pecking order will rearrange itself soon, as I have some other things I carry.

The Big Guy and I no longer carry the constant kid schedules. We set down the care and feeding of a very unconventional house in the middle of the big woods for a much smaller condo on the Connecticut Shoreline. The Big Guy has lost most of his sight, and a more comprehensive infrastructure has helped mitigate some of that. I still teach but hope I will carry that love for as long as I’m able.

But there are some things I’m setting down permanently.

The weather gets warm much earlier in Connecticut than it did in Vermont, and we’ve been swimming almost daily for several weeks now. Being roughly the shape and texture of an overripe cantaloupe, I spent way too much time looking for a swimsuit that would camouflage like a tent and still perform like a Speedo.

My first visit to the community pool was in a suit that looked almost like a shirt combined with a tea-length skirt (sometimes it’s good to be really short). The Big Guy and I were almost alone aside from a new neighbor we had met on another walk. The neighbor was already doing his laps and completely unconcerned with what we were wearing. We slid in, splashed around for an hour, then got out, and, amazingly, no one noticed or cared if we were swimsuit-perfect.

The skirt suit was a pain in the neck to get out of when it was wet, so I trade to something with slightly less coverage and hoped no one would be there the next day.

But that was not to be.

The next day a small group was already lounging in one corner of the patio. I knew I had to choose my moment to ditch my cover-up and jump in when no one was looking. There was no such moment, but there was something much better about to happen.

As I slid into the water, one of the group members came over to get in as well. She was about my age and size but instead of wearing a micro-tent, had chosen a conventional suit with a gorgeous pattern that told the world she was ready to celebrate summer, whatever her size. She got in, and we started chatting about life, kids, and getting older, and not once did we think about whether we were too fat to be enjoying our time in the sun.

I’ve gone back almost every day since then, meeting other women of varying shapes and sizes, none of whom care an iota about who is too fat to be wearing this or that outfit. And I’ve stopped carrying some big things there and everywhere else.

I no longer bother bringing the giant coverup (a towel is fine for the short walk, thank you). I’m no longer carry the worry that I’m too fat or ugly to enjoy life in public. And I’ve decided I’m no longer interested in carrying the worry that things have to be perfectly in order to do the things that make me complete.

The dissertation doesn’t have to be done to take a drawing class I’ve always wanted to take. The house doesn’t have to be clean enough to work on my blog and a book that’s been rumbling in my head. Things don’t have to be perfectly in place to set down the things we were never meant to carry and enjoy our all-too-short time in the sun.