I have a confession.

"I peed in the pool, Father."

I’m just going to come out with it. I started taking swimming lessons. It’s been over a month and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I mean, is this not why we gather here? To sort through the awkward minutiae of just this type of torture? But I only just decided this week that I am definitely not going to quit. Definitely not. And yet---maybe. Maybe I’ll still quit.

My reasons for engaging in this chlorinated hell span the emotional, physical and mental.

Emotional: My mom was the strongest most beautiful swimmer I ever knew and I want to feel her while I’m in that water.

Physical: I think I’m turning the arthritic corner (and am taking it verrrry slowly). I can’t explain it, but you’d think I just ended my NFL run for how banged up I feel. I figured I’d go low-impact for a while (as opposed to all the triathlons I’ve been up to). But, get this---I think I have swimmer’s shoulder. Or swimmer’s arm. Or swimmer’s wussiness. Whatever it is, I’m gonna put ice on it.

Mental: As we know, exercise helps me stay on the not-so-Black-Swan side of sanity.

These were all my hoped for results. It was supposed to go swimmingly (I’m sorry) and I’d be all---hip, hip, hooray, I found my sport! And it was supposed to be easy.

Not so. Not so!

I know if I had told you I was thinking of doing this, you would have warned me.

You would have said, “Lola, you know it’s the middle of winter, right?”

And I might have said, “Oh, yes, that’s true isn’t it?”

You might have said, “Are you sure you’re going to want to stuff your raw chicken skin into a bathing suit this time of year?”

And I would have said, “Well, you have a point there.”

And you most definitely would have given me a stern “No, Lola. No!” when I told you I scheduled these lessons for 6:30 in the morning.

Dan did not say these things. It’s kind of his fault in that way.

I can’t pinpoint what pisses me off more---setting my alarm for 5:50am or the skinny gym types (those toned-assed sprites!) who are working out at that hour. Did you know that even in this most mild winter, our cars still have frost on them at 6:30 in the morning? My lessons are on Wednesdays and the night before every one---every one---I am like a despondent kid whose parents are trying to discern why their child seems to get a stomach ache every Tuesday evening.

But I push on (because Dan refuses to let me quit since he’s kind of a smiley sadist) and get to the gym locker room for 6:20am. Oh, the naked. SO MUCH NAKED! As always, I am entirely uncomfortable with this and wish people would keep their nakedness to themselves and their dentists. I, of course, have everything on beneath my sweats (which sometimes look remarkably like pajama pants and maybe are). I rock board shorts and a tankini top for the lesson---a mid-winter’s stomach reveal? No suh.

The reason I opted for 6:30 lessons---the only reason---is because I figured nobody else would be there. But, guess what? That’s when the real swimmers show up. So there I am chugging along on my little kick board like a motorized bath tub duck while Greg Louganis is doing the fancy flippy tumbly thing off the wall in the next lane.

Now, I do know how to swim; the kick board is for length strengthening. The floaties? That’s a matter of safety. I’m actually a pretty strong swimmer despite the fact that I inexplicably started to avoid the ocean, pools and clogged tubs at some point in my teenage years. But if there is any sport I can say I’ve done since I was a kid, it’s swimming. Yet this is suuuuuch a stretch. I was a hack, a beach kid---not the goggles and swim cap type. More the you’re-lucky-if-you-get-suntan-lotion type. Saying that swimming was my sport as a kid is a little like saying I was the captain of the Tag Squad or that I was a born Hide and Go Seeker. Still, the fundamentals are there. Though, last week we did work on breathing and floating so apparently I’m not quite gold medal material just yet.

The first thing I have to do once I get there---it’s a gym rule---is rinse off in the poolside shower so that people don’t catch my grossness. The shower water is really hot so I tend to linger because going from the steamy shower to the tepid pool water is entirely unpleasant. They say they keep the pool between 82 and 84 degrees but I’m pretty sure they’re stupid lying liars. I was so reluctant to get in the water at my first lesson that the instructor asked me if I felt safe enough to go in alone.

My instructor---oh, she is so lovely. But sometimes I have to hate her because every time I see her it’s 6:30 in the morning and she’s in the same room as I am. She is nothing but supportive and patient and kind but the moment I first get into that pool I feel such an urge to grab her by the head and dunk her. Thankfully for both of us she stays outside of the pool and stands along the edge for our lessons. This is my favorite part because it makes me feel like an Olympian except she doesn’t have a a stop watch. Maybe I should buy her a stop watch. I like pretending I am a real athlete and she is my coach even though it is nothing like this whatsoever. I keep hoping she’ll do coachly things like lecture me about steroids or ask me to join her in the shower after practice.

We work mostly on my crawl stroke. I am apparently missing some technique. I strain my neck. My breathing is inconsistent. I point my hands down which causes my body to follow therefore making me strain my neck to take inconsistent breaths. Basically I swim like a dying whale with goggles. (Yep, goggles. Cuz I’m fuh real.) My instructor spends much of our lesson trying to figure out new ways to help me understand things she has already explained several times.

“Like you’re climbing a ladder,” she says, trying to reiterate how I should reach and then push through my stroke.

But in my head it’s all--- “I wonder if it would be weird if I said, ‘See ya, Coach,’ at the end of our lesson today.”

I also get to work with all the fun pool tools that I should be too embarrassed to use. In addition to the kick boards, we also work with those foam dumbbells that make me feel like The Rock and rubber flippers which make me feel like a newborn mermaid with cerebral palsy.

And then our half hour is up and I make my way through The Frigid Hall of Doom. This is the hallway which connects the giant, echoey pool area to the locker room. And it is cold. And when you are wet, it is glacial and could make you cry. And then your tears would freeze and weigh down your cheeks and you would look like Droopy. That’s exactly what The Frigid Hall of Doom is like. So it is absolutely necessary after The Frigid Hall of Doom to pop into the sauna. I’ve only ever been in the sauna alone and I pray it stays this way. I’m just not the “let’s take a steam,” type of gal and don’t even get me started on how I would react to a naked infiltration. I go in there because I think it’s supposed to open my pores or or increase my blood flow or just do something that benefits me while all I do is sit there. (This is my favorite type of self care.)

But then it gets ugly. Shower time. There’s no way around it. I am wet and I am cold and a shower is what the circumstance necessitates. Fortunately, we are dealing with a stall situation. It is entirely private and since there is a small changing area before the shower stall, there is a two-curtain barrier between me and any potential passing human. My walls are fortified. I wear flipflops---because my mama raised me right---and I even use their “Luxury Shampoo” which is also body wash, a concept that has always baffled me. I dry off in my private stall and dress in my private stall (because that’s where such things should be done!) as quickly as I can. Last week I was in such a rush to get dressed---lest I be naked for one second more than necessary---that I put my pants on backwards and walked out of the gym with my drawstrings swinging behind me. Lola “so cool it hurts” Mellowsky at your service.

Before I know it, I’m home with a well-earned latte in hand. And like the kid with the belly ache, I roll in to our apartment so enthusiastic and proud of myself for what I’ve done.

And Dan says, “See? Now that wasn’t so bad was it?”

And I say, “No! I was so brave!”

But today is Monday and tomorrow will be Tuesday. And I’m certain I feel a plague moving in.