Swimming Dreams

I had a number of dreams this week in which I had returned to swimming competition at The University of Texas. The plot seems to be the same in each dream: though I’m 37, I somehow find a loophole in the NCAA rules that allows me to compete for a fifth year.

As exciting as that sounds, each of the dreams ends as a nightmare. Either I’ve lost something that I once had—speed, power, or technique—or I’ve returned to a sport that has become unrecognizable. The locker room is full of new faces who want nothing to do with me. The coach has a greater agenda: the young athletes. I have no reason to return.

In the most reason dream, I was trapped in a time loop that forced me to repeat a blown race over and over. It was some sort of purgatory. “I must be dreaming,” I kept telling people within this dream. “No,” they’d insist. “This is reality. There’s no waking up.”

“But I just botched this race,” I’d respond. “Why am I repeating the past?”

And they’d laugh and give me the same cold grin that the bartender ghost in The Shining gives Jack Torrance. “What are you talking about, Matt? This is your first time here.”

I wake and think that the dreams might be a mirror in which I glimpse my fear of aging: of debilitating slowly while the world mercilessly moves on without me.

I have no plans to return to the pool any time soon, but I find myself thinking that memory is an odd thing. NCAA competition was a lifetime ago and memories of the sport return in kaleidoscopic fashion, a mishmash of events and images. How did I dive into the pool for warmup all those years ago? What was I thinking immediately before the race? How did I warm down?

I feel that the everlasting fight with the metaphorical dragon that is time must go on. I can see the bone break in my collarbone when I look in the mirror and can’t help but think, “will it ever be the same?” The truth is that regardless of our bone health, we will never be the same as we were yesterday.

Rather than longingly look backwards, we might as well roll with the punches and prepare for the next adventure.