The Last Word

Iwas immediately attracted to the title of Bonnie Tsui’s charming new book, Why We Swim. In the summer, we have more chances to swim on vacation than during the rest of the year, unless we regularly swim laps or do water aerobics at a local pool. Tsui’s memories echo my own, and her research about swimming combines with her contemplation of activity that can raise our adrenaline because of its dangers or put us in a meditative state because of its rhythmic nature.

As Tsui notes, swimming is the second favorite casual exercise after walking. Swimming seems simple on the face of it: get in the water, pick up your feet, and move forward, sideways, or backward, but it is many things to many people.

It can be an act of daring. When she swims in the cold deep waters of the San Francisco Bay as part of a club, she joins others who prove to themselves that they can brave a situation in which they are not the apex of the food chain. She finally ditches her wet suit so she can experience a freezing swim in which she starts to feel intensely alive, only to truly experience the dangers from the cold after she gets out of the water. Although swimming can be a solitary activity, she experiences both her own solitude and the camaraderie of her club. It is one of the few activities where you can be alone and together at the same time.

Her views of the water are more philosophical than scientific, which suited my tastes. A large, elegant swimming pool belonging to one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces in Baghdad ironically became an egalitarian place where everyone from various Embassy staff members to migrant workers came to learn how to swim properly. In this case it was a community without hierarchy, where people came together and knew each other through swimming as one group no matter their job or place in life.

Competitive swimmers relish the pace and thunder of a race, flipping through the water with adrenaline flowing. Concentrating on their strokes in training keeps them in the moment, but so does their automatic plunge into a race. Both make them feel alive. While a competitive