Today was a glorious long swim out to the point and back. There was a big crowd, which made it feel like the weekend. I set off with Angie, Sheila, and Kim in flat, gray water. It looked kind of dreamy when we arrived; heavy with dark clouds, but the bay glowed with a strange kind of light and was almost eerily calm. 

As we swam the wind picked up a little, but not too much. We swam to the big tree and Sheila was keen to keep going. She’d missed the day we went to the point last week. So we swam on. When we arrived at the point, I could see her eyeing the next landmark (what we call the point of the point), but good sense took over and we headed back to shore. It felt good to swim for nearly an hour.

One of the challenges of swimming every day has been the subsequent need to shower every day. I have never been a daily showerer, mostly because my skin is so dry that that much washing turns me into a cracked piece of sandpaper. Over the last few months, I’ve learned to forgo soap and shampoo most days. My skin is pretty happy with this; dry but not excessively. But my hair not so much. Not shampooing every day left it strawlike and gritty, but shampooing daily was its own dry, limp disaster.  

So I cut it all off. 

And phew! It’s like I sloughed off six years of baggage from my shoulders. I spent all of my thirties and some of my twenties and forties short-haired and I forgot how good it feels: the weightlessness (hair is heavy!), the feeling of air on my scalp, the breeze of putting on a swim cap, not having wet hair for hours every day. It’s been a week now and I still feel as if I’ve shed some unwanted burden.