It has been my best friend for over fifty years.  It has been my guide for just as long,  it has provided me with a place to shine, and please, and connect.  It has labeled me as disciplined, driven, strong, and dedicated.  For me, it is a silent partner as I try to make sense of it all.  It defines the place where I can be lauded for efforts that simply disguise what I do there.  Every minute, I am coping.  I am hiding my stress, my anxiety and my pain in an activity that looks so wholesome it could be in a commercial for milk.  It doesn’t judge me while I struggle with  shame, confusion or the hurt.  I am safe with it.  

It goes back and forth with me.  It doesn’t always look the same.  Sometimes it is ornate and tiled, and other times it is simply paint.  It is usually black, but sometimes there is an experiment in color with blue or stripes.  Sometimes it isn't even visible, but its boundaries are defined by ropes or walls or from simple experience.  

It doesn’t say anything to me, but it has a message that is always there: “Start here.  Follow me.  Stop to rest here if you would like, but know there is a wall.  When you turn around I will still be here.”

I find it everywhere.  I seek it out.  It is lit at night so I can always see it.  I find it in almost every city and country.  It is usually about the same length.  Sometimes it is set up in an orientation that is really long.  I prefer it that way.  If I am counting or thinking or simply meditating, there are fewer stops and turns to disrupt my brain which needs this together time.  

I am with it every season.  It is perfect in the summer as it keeps me cool while allowing me to absorb everything fabulous about the sun.  It isn’t as inviting in the winter, but I get warm as soon as I start.  There are very, very few days I regret spending time with it.  

My parents brought me to it when I was four years old.  They said this was something I could do my whole life, even if I lost a limb.  My brother was there, and if he could be there, I was damn sure I was going to be there too.  I watched him and his methods and simply mimicked him.  If he moved his arms fast, I moved mine faster.  When people saw what I could do, there was praise and wonder that at four, I could do this.  The joke was on them.  I wasn’t doing anything different.  I was copying him.  

They encouraged my parents to allow me to compete, but age limits said I needed to wait a year or two.  My father was busting with pride, and I was delighted to find something that pleased him.  The better I was, the more he liked me and I felt more secure.  

The whole scenario suited my mother well.  She could drop me off and leave, or she could find a chair, put on her sunglasses and avoid her own pain without anyone knowing anything about it.  She preferred the drop off.  We were close enough that she could drop by the grocery store, the department store or the pharmacy on the way back.  As I got older, they gave me a bike which gave me my own transportation and allowed her to stay home.  

They had adopted these children.  Thank heavens they found what they were good at.  It was something acceptable, too.  Something other people could see.  It was a cycle of practice and praise, practice and praise.  Wasn’t this a pretty picture.  

That did lead to compete and criticize.  Not from my mother, but from my father.  In one of my first competitions, I had been disqualified for a false start.  This resulted in a subtle hesitation at every start.  “Get off the block faster.  She almost had you and you would have had more lead with a better start.  Work on those turns.”  He would pace down the side during the races with a serious look and determined arms working like an airline guide with urgent intent.  The blue ribbon was reward enough in his mind.  Sometimes my mother would buy a little treat, like a new pencil or a notepad.  On one hand, the attention I received was critical, on the other, material.  At night, I would rock myself to sleep, back and forth.  

Back and forth.  Down and back.  Every day it remains a constant.  It listens.  It knows.  Without it life would be aimless floating.  Oddly, the floating portion suspends me above it.  It is a comfort, it is soothing.  It is where I go.  It is where I can let it all go.  No one can see you cry in the water.