I won’t tell you the exact location of my own personal pond, but it’s a cove attached to the oft-chosen pond of families visiting Wellfleet with small children. In summer, the family pond is always crowded, which makes it very loud and also quite possibly the one with more pee-pee in it than any other body of water on the Outer Cape.
My own personal pond, most of the time, is silent but for birdcalls. Of course, it isn’t actually my pond, but few know it and those who do, well, it’s their personal pond, too. They like the quiet the same way I do. In the hours my daughters, 7 and 10, are with my mother, I see maybe one or two other people there, and they all seem like they’re my people, as if Mother Nature were screening my calls.
There have been summers in Wellfleet when I gravitated toward the roar of the ocean — last summer was one. I felt compelled to hurl my body into the bracing cold and balance myself against its forces. Ocean bathing required a certain willingness. It was my version of a cold plunge, which had purported anti-inflammatory advantages, and I liked the way the ocean altered me. Whatever thoughts I had on entering were never the same ones I had as I dragged myself out.
The sea before me never appeared the same as it had the day before. It all depended on the time of day, the hue of the water, the color of the sky, the proportion of beach to sky to dune, the variety of cloud formations, what kind of winds were blowing, and the tides.
This summer, in this tumultuous time in America, I want a body of water I can see the other side of. Sure, at my own personal pond, each day is subtly different from the day before, but by and large my pond doesn’t change. I find that reassuring. You always know where you stand in a pond.
My pond has a small beach, with room under the shrubs for exactly one person to sit in a chair in the shade. I set myself up there and write in my journal; if no one else is present, I make phone calls; if I’m not alone, I read a thriller like The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.
When I get hot, I wade in, then I take the biggest possible inhale I can muster. I swim under water for as long as my lungs can bear it, until I have completely exhaled my breath, at which point I break through the barrier where pond meets air, and there, somehow, a softer world awaits.
I tread water for a few minutes, astonished by my life’s many blessings before swimming back to shore and replanting myself in my shrub.
The surfers were dazzling to watch last summer, but this summer I find myself taken with the breast strokers who glide slowly across the pond and back. Patiently, they move about six inches at a time, their bodies hidden beneath the water, their heads gently bobbing. Their strokes are unhurried. They do not make a single splash. You can go really far, slowly.
One pair I see regularly. Both are psychotherapists and mothers of children older than my daughters. They are listeners, and they are funny, and we find our way into conversations about caring for children, caring for elders, aging, divorce. They are wiser, calmer, more pond-swum than I am.
The other day, I saw two heads bobbing my way from across the pond. Once their faces were legible, I could see that they were a mother and preteen daughter, steadily swimming in tandem. A paragon of excellent parenting. Co-adventuring. Co-pacing. As they approached the shore, I could hear the mother suggesting to her daughter that they keep going. “Let’s make the turn,” she said, and her daughter nodded, and together, trusting one another, away they silently went. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, this moved me to tears.
Lizzie Simon, a former feature writer for the Wall Street Journal and author of the memoir Detour, currently writes Refreshments, a weekly newsletter on Substack. She lives in New York City.
