Hot & Cold Water
We are in Beacon, New York this Labor Day weekend for my son Tom’s wedding, which will take place on Sunday. He is marrying Jenna, who we have known for ten years, and Kim and I could not be happier about it. Tom and Jenna got engaged two years ago when he proposed to her under the Manhattan Bridge on the Brooklyn side of the East River. As we were coming here from San Diego we were keeping an eye on Hurricane Idalia, less because we were worried about how it might impact us (it was 1,500 miles south of us), and more because we just lived through our own hurricane watch. Where a San Diego hurricane or tropical storm is highly unusual, it is all too common and very normal on the Gulf Coast of Florida. As Hurricane Hilary approached us, if fell from a Category 3 hurricane to a mere tropical storm by the time it made landfall. By contrast, Hurricane Idalia went from a Category 1 to a Category 4 by the time it hit the Big Bend area of Florida. The big stated reason for the difference was in the temperature of the water. Hilary moved from warm Mexican Baja waters into cooler coastal waters between San Diego Bay to the offshore Channel Islands. That cooler water literally drains the hurricane of its energy. Those tepid northern Gulf waters actually added energy to build the Idalia system and the extreme and dangerous outcome was effectively a turbocharging process caused by the crazy and ongoing global warming process that scientists have warned us about all along. The 97+ degree Gulf waters are a good five degrees warmer than the temperature I keep my hot tub in summer, and probably ten degrees warmer than the pool temperature in which I like to swim laps. The ocean off San Diego averages 70 degrees in August, which is one of the moderating conditions that keeps San Diego summer weather so pleasant.
During the summer, I like to use the hot tub to cool off in 90 degree water, but I’m swimming laps these days for 25-30 minutes per day, enough to get an aerobic burn and get some of that motion that is supposed to be the best lotion. That makes me want to swim in cooler water than the hot tub. I don’t know the exact pool temperature at my L.A. Fitness gym, buy I’m guessing its 87 or so. When I arrived at JFK on Jet Blue a few days ago, I was ready for and even anxious for a swim in the TWA Hotel rooftop pool. It overlooks a busy set of runways and was modestly crowded with early Labor Day weekend travelers reveling in the Eero Saarinen 1960’s vibe, but mostly what was noticeable about it was that it was perhaps 95+ degrees and felt more like a hot tub than a lap pool. I doubt they were heating it to that level, but rather that all that tarmac and sun was doing the deed. I did my laps nonetheless, but I could feel the added overheating and wouldn’t have wanted that as a day-to-day swimming temperature. I could feel the water draining my energy rather than doing the hurricane trick of getting energized by it. When we arrived in Beacon, we went right to the AirBnB rented by Jenna’s parents, since we were well ahead of our hotel check-in time. They have a pool at that rental where I knew our quaint hotel did not, so I decided to keep my daily routine streak going. It was a nice 75 degree day here in Beacon, but the pool must have been at or below 70 degrees and a little bit shocky to get into. Nevertheless, I did my full 30 minutes of laps and Aqua stretch-calisthenics, but was glad to get out of the cold water when I was done.
My plan is to swim in that pool each day I’m here. The days will be heating up towards 90 degrees, so I’m hoping that the pool water temperature goes up commensurately. This weekend is filled with a pretty active schedule of wedding-related events. While some of it is obviously the formal nuptial ceremonies, the rest of it is a combination of normal socializing gatherings with the far-flung family members and friends coming in from both bride and groom sides for the blessed event, and specially designated intimate family functions designed by Tom and Jenna to bring our families closer together. We already knew and liked Jenna’s family, but it seems particularly important to Tom that we get even closer in a more complete and expanded way. So, at our first agendized meal together, we sat around the makeshift expanded table in the AirBnB dining room (me on a metal folding chair) and told each other old family tales of Tom and Jenna’s youth. They both seem to have had boisterous childhoods with their fair share of missteps, only to both break through to a better place of accomplishment and social ease. Both Tom and Jenna seemed to have, in their own respective urban and suburban metropolitan New York upbringing ways, developmentally moved from hot water to cold water and learned to better control their manners to become the delightful and well-loved people they both are. They have both left their Category 4 lives of early childhood behind them (they both seemed to have been little terrorists in their younger days) in favor of calmer skies.
I find it funny to think of these two wonderful and respectively accomplished right-brain and left-brain Ivy League educated 20-somethings as little Dennis the Menace kids who worried their parents as to what would become of them. We are able to sit around and laugh at episodes of being threatened with lower school expulsion and being literally banned from the school bus and make light of youthful fist fights and parent mocking in full and blatant displays of disrespect of authority. How does that transition happen? What are the physics of temperament that take a Category 4 whirling dervish and turn them into a soothing and gentle midsummer rain? How does hot water turn into cool and refreshing water without going completely cold? I guess that’s why there is a whole field of study around human development. The answers do not present themselves easily.
Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, sometimes the porridge is too hot or too cold, and sometimes it ends up just right. I know nothing about making the porridge, of that I am certain. I am a mere observer of the human condition, even when it comes to my own youngest son and his lovely soon-to-be bride. About all I can suggest is that whatever they have each done or the guidance they have been given to this point by all the forces of nature and the friends and family that helped mold them, I hope they manage to keep swimming in waters that are warm enough to entice them and soothe them and yet cold enough to invigorate and propel them to keep developing into the interesting and successful couple that they have each managed to become on their own up to now.
I have been asked to give voice to the seventh blessing during their marriage ceremony tomorrow. It is that “May you be ‘best friends’, better together than either of you are apart.” I believe in that wish very deeply and would add that may they also appreciate the value of all the hot and cold water they will undoubtedly need to swim through (including the occasional hurricane) on their journey towards an enlightened life together.