Swimming Upstream
One of my prized possessions from my mother is an odd poem in a silly little gilded frame that goes:
Most any poor old fish can float
And drift along and dream:
But it takes a regular LIVE ONE
To swim against the stream
It is attributed to a Maurine Hathaway, a woman nicknamed The Poetess of the Pines. She was one of the contributors of these little ditties to a guy by the name of George Buzza who started a company at the turn of the Twentieth Century that engraved what became known as Buzza Mottos on posters, greeting cards, books and little wall hanging plaques like the one I have inherited. According to eBay, another one that looks just like mine, comes from 1925 and there is an active secondary market in these minor collectibles. That timing seems about right since my mother would have been 9 years old then and given a few years for this trend to find its way into rural Upstate New York, she probably got her hands on it during high school. It is the sort of sentiment that must have resonated with a basketball and tennis playing young woman who aspired to go on to college despite being attractive enough to land a nice fella had she wanted to drift along and dream…
I particularly like that Buzza Motto because it hung on every hallway wall in every house I remember growing up in. I spent way too many minutes rereading that little poem and contemplating its rhyme and reason while I waited outside our single bathroom in a house shared with two sisters and a mother. Read that poem enough times and you not only memorize it, but it gets burned into your brain and psyche. I have to pee just thinking about it. I certainly wanted to be more than any poor old fish and while I wasn’t sure in those days exactly what a LIVE ONE would do, I wanted to be doing it.
I’ve never been a big fisherman or eater of fish, but fishing is the type of activity we all seem to inherently understand a bit. It’s a form of hunting, but much less aggressive because the fish have the ability to pursue their free will to feed on the baited line or not. Some fish fight mightily to keep from being taken into the boat and out of the water, but for the most part, once on the hook, all that is left for the fisherman to do is to reel in his catch (clearly I am offending many true fishermen with this simplicity). And, of course, the other imagery at work is the laziness of the fisherman (another offense for sure) while he waits for the fish to take notice and gain interest in his baited line. There seems always to be some amount of snoozing at the switch with a grubby off-kilter hat pulled down over the fisherman’s eyes. So, its funny to use an image of one of the lazier activities we all consider to be a pastime more than a sport to discuss fish themselves as the analogy for those who are aggressive versus lazy.
I think if I were to be able to sit down and discuss this Buzza Motto with my mother (did she even know it was called that?) or with George Buzza or even Maurine Hathaway, I could probably reach agreement that the sentiment is intended for the young or mid-life people who really do need to swim against the stream somewhat to realize on their dreams. That implies that I also think that in later life we are supposed to relax a bit more and spend more time contemplating the swimming upstream rather than the actual act of swimming upstream.
I know that Dylan Thomas said that we all must “rage against the dying of the light” in his Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, but he was talking about death and how we each choose to face that inevitability. I don’t believe that Dylan Thomas, of all people, was a workaholic or thought that we shouldn’t each smell the roses at some point in our lives. I bet as a good Welshman, he probably even enjoyed floating down a lazy stream with the pretense of a fishing pole in one hand and a stout brew in the other, letting his grubby off-kilter hat flop down over his brow as he let nature and life take him where it was going rather than some far-sighted place upstream. I don’t know too many Welshmen, but I do know one quite well and I have watched my friend Michael Walsh alternate in his life between the work hard and the play hard in a manner that would likely satisfy Hathaway and Buzza as much as it would placate Dylan Thomas. I suspect Michael would say that balancing the two is what makes life both interesting and rewarding at the same time.
I have owned several homes with swimming pools and yet none that has such good weather for a pool as this one. And yet, when the decision came to me in my early days in this house, I was decidedly against putting in a pool but quite adamant that we needed a great spa. In the realm of home water features, a spa is the opposite of say, a lap pool. One is meant for lounging and relaxing and the other is designed for purpose and sportive obsession. I like the concept of a lap pool, but I far prefer the reality of the large spa. It can be privately relaxing (I use it solo perhaps three or four times per week) and yet is can be equally social (I probably have guests in it every other week). After ten years of ownership, I can say quite definitively that having a good spa is a necessity for me. I can also say that not having a pool is simply not missed.
Winston and Kathleen across the street have a nice salt water pool that they keep about 85 degrees. Our new neighbors to the south, the Mooneys, have just finished putting in a pool down by their casita. It is just beyond our field of vision, which is a good thing for all concerned. I expect I will be invited over some time soon to see the new feature since they are good neighbors from all I can tell. Kathleen invited Kim and I over for a swim yesterday. The weather here is typically warm for this time of summer. The temperature is running in the mid-80s with a few days a week below by a few degrees and a few days above. It is not a heat wave by any means, but afternoons can get warm in the sun. We gladly accepted, less for the swim per se and more just to catch up. In that family, Kathleen swims almost every day and Winston sits in the shade and stays out of the pool. I am more a water bug than Kim, but on this occasion, we both went in and enjoyed the cooling effect as we bobed along while telling stories of our respective summers.
Walking across the street in our suits was no hardship and leaving the toils of maintaining a pool (a job I know all too well) behind was equally no hardship. I suppose I have come to regard a pool much like some people regard a boat, its a great thing to be invited to enjoy for a day but an even greater thing to not own if you can bring yourself to avoid such a thing. I will refrain from telling that to the Mooneys, in hopes of getting occasional invitations over to swim in their new pool. You see, most any poor old fish can gloat and suggest he likes the bumming, but it takes a cunning moocher to keep the invites coming.