Today’s 90-Second Escape: The Beach

Sometimes, when life starts to unravel, nothing beats a good stare to get things back in order. And in our stare-to-beat-stress experience, there’s nothing better to stare at — or more accurately, in to — than the surf. It comes in, it goes out, it comes in, it goes out … . Add the soundtrack by Pounding Waves and in just 90 seconds you can whip just about any woe. (Especially helpful on this, April Fool’s Day, as you wait to see what the office pranksters have in store.)

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Me? I dove into 15,000 gallons of ice water.

Technically, “ice water” may be pushing it. According to the duck, it was 65 degrees. To put that number in perspective, jump into the ocean during your summer beach vacation, then subtract 20 degrees. It’s a big difference, trust me.

Today was opening day for our backyard pool. As long as I can remember, I have dreamed of having a backyard pool. When we went house hunting a couple years back and found this place in Historic (mid-1970s) Cary with a backyard pool, it was a done deal. At age 51, I decided I was worthy of this perceived extravagance. My wife felt the same: “Give them whatever they want,” she told our Realtor when negotiations reached an impasse.

My reason for wanting a pool hasn’t changed over the years: Water offers the ultimate escape. As a chubby kid, I felt weightless in the pool. As an adult who expects a lot from his body, the pool provides welcome relief for my aging joints. As a kid in an occasionally chaotic household, I savored escaping under water at the neighborhood pool into a world of muffled quiet. As an adult, that same muffled world shields me from the incessant call of the cell phone, the chirping and beeping of email and text messages. As a kid, the water was my chance to escape and regroup. It’s even more so today.

The pool is the one place where I can make time stop. Or very nearly. From now through late-September, I will make a daily habit of going into the deep (8 feet) end and treading water for 20 minutes. I’m not a natural in the water; staying afloat takes some effort, an awkward collaboration between continuously kicking legs and figure-8ing arms to keep my head above water. Once I slip into that unconscious rhythm, I slip into a meditative reverie. It’s the one time I am assured of giving my brain time to do what it rarely gets to do: think. Really think — about whatever manages to bubble to the surface through the usual muck of day-to-day concerns: work, survival, oil spills. Sometimes my brain can get here on the bike, sometimes during a run. But it always happens during my 20 minutes in the deep end. Twenty minutes to think, 20 minutes of physical rehab: You can’t put a price on that.

Which I think about every time I pay the mortgage.

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