Keep on Truckin'!

As I narrowly escape a head-on collision (social distancing speaking) with an oblivious chatty family towing a fluffy Shepard mix, I spot her long clean stride. The Scottish Woman. She’s always dressed in black. Stretch pants with a slight bell bottom. Long-sleeved black shirt. Black sneakers.

            She’s making her way across 32^nd street under the sheltering shadow of her massive avocado tree. I wave, happy to see her. It’s been a while.

            “How you doin?” I holler, approaching, and then pausing in the shade. She stops, too, at a safe distance, in front of her well-manicured landscaping of various drought resistance beauties.

            “Oh…I’m okay, I suppose….” she pushes a stray grey curl out of her eyes, her palm slim and fluttering.

            “Yeah, it’s weird,” I offer.

            “That it is. That it is…. I just got off the line with my relatives in Scotland. They tell me it’s not like this…” Her slim arm arcs across toward the various families, skateboarders, bike riders, and walkers crowding down Roosevelt. I nod. It does seem like there are a lot more people out tonight. Has everyone just had it with the shelter in place? Or is it just the balmy eve that has brought them all out of their houses, pried them away from their Netflix binging and cocktails?

            “Yeah,” I nod. “I miss swimming.” It’s all I can think about. I know I should ask about her family in Scotland. I am interested in her connection there since Mr. Ian is from Scotland, too. But tonight, I just am so tired of being out of the water. It’s so wrong!

            “You what?” she hollers back, not catching my whine.

            “Swimming. I’m a swimmer. All the pools are closed.”

            She nods, sympathy oozing from her. It’s palpable. I drink it in.

            “Where do you swim?” she asks.

            “Up at the Y, Richmond Hilltop. But it’s closed. All the pools are closed. The Y, the Plunge, El Cerrito.”

            “Oh, that must be tough,” she says. “To not have that buoyancy that is swimming, right?”

            I beam, “Yes! Right! Too much gravity walking!”

            “And the solitude, the isolation, the silence….” Her Scottish lilt drifts off, dreamy.

            “Yes, exactly! Not like here!” I step aside to let a yapping family pass, pushing a huge navy stroller down Roosevelt, no masks, no sense of social distancing. They would have just bowled me over if I hadn’t moved.

            “It is so warm today,” she notes. “Was it warm like this all day?”

            “I dunno…I guess. I was in the house, you know, sheltering in place.”

            She laughs softly, “I was over in Marin. It was warm there. Do you know if it’s going to last?”

            I shrug, “I don’t know…….it is the Apocalypse!”

            “Oh! Why yes….the Apocalypse!" She takes a deep breath, shaking her head.  "Yes… yes ….that it is; you got that right.”

            I don’t need to explain. She gets it. She got the swimming. Though I don’t think she’s a swimmer. Although Scotland is an island, surrounded by water. That sea must be cold. Yet, she intuitively honed in on my swimming mindset, my ‘blue mind’ as Bonnie Tsui wrote about in her eloquent book, Why We Swim. 

And now, with my comment about the Apocalypse, I don’t have to explain why I said this: the pandemic, the drought, the economic spiral down down down….

            A tired grin lifts her up, as she bends to pick up a stray weed intruding on her immaculate yard, “Yes, well, all we can do is keep on walking, keep on truckin’!”

            Did she really say that? Keep on truckin'? I haven’t heard that for decades. Maybe it’s a Scottish trait saying the sayings that are ‘American’ but have gone out of vogue. Ian does this all the time, but I can’t remember one right now.

            Yet, tonight, she cracks me up with this. Lifts my spirits. Sure I miss the silent buoyancy of the water, but in the pool, I’d never have the chance to chat with the Scottish Lady, right?

            I wave goodbye, turning down 32^nd street, a dusk breeze cooling me for a moment. And, think how all I can do is keep on walking, keep on truckin’, into the moony violet night.