It's not goodbye, but see you later.
In our last issue (for now), we feature a sports writer, who recently wrote a book about why we swim.
First, a note from Rachel about why we’re closing down shop (for the time being).
The summer is over.
I’m back in Boston at Tufts, Erin is still stressed out about finding child care, and we’re settling into the new normal. Is this “the other side of this” we were envisioning when we published our first issue in June? No, but it’s what we’ve got for now. This issue, our interview with writer and journalist Bonnie Tsui, is our last for the foreseeable future, and I think it’s an apt endnote.
Bonnie is a perfect example of why we did “The Other Side of This” and why it’s impactful. She’s someone whom Erin greatly admires, and as it happens, a distant family member of mine; we’ve never met, but we both have close relationships with relatives we love and value. Because of this project, Erin and I were able to connect with this extraordinary, yet ordinary human — and many others — in a way that would normally seem a little bit odd, even out of reach.
Erin and I started this newsletter, in part, because we were tired of listening to our own narratives. We wanted to get out of our bubble and hear how other people were coping. The people we interviewed had different external presentations — a midwife, a wine expert, a photographer, a poet — that allowed them to verbalize their experiences in different ways. The reason that I found this project so fulfilling is that everyone we talked to was able to articulate things that I was feeling but hadn’t been able to put a name on yet. Even so, the internal narrative was the same across all of our interviews: we appreciate our privilege, our safety, the natural world around us, and connecting with our family and friends.
I don’t want to get too melodramatic, but I think that this idea can be extrapolated to a high degree. We’re all struggling in different ways, and it’s clear that the world is falling apart, yet we all want and value the same things. Maybe instead of being so concerned with the external trappings of each others’ lives we should get down to the nitty gritty and talk about the important internal things: who and what we love, why we love them, and how to show it.
I guess what I’m saying is that I want to take two things to the other side of this:
1) Nobody is that far away. Just send the email. Badger them. It’s always worth it to make the connection.
2) It’s empowering to find solace in each others’ shared concerns. It’s not always easy to start a conversation about our deepest worries and desires, but those conversations are the best for my soul, and they’re the ones I want to have.
— Rachel
Name: Bonnie Tsui
Hometown: Queens, New York
Current Residence: Berkeley, California
Living Situation: House with husband and two sons, ages 10 and 7
Age: 43
Occupation: Freelance journalist and author
Photo caption: This is me on the right. I was out for a socially distanced open water swim with my friend in Tomales Bay, California.
Ok, a couple of rapid fire quesions for you to start!
What is your water temperature limit? Low 50s
Do you wear a wetsuit? Sometimes
What brand of swimsuit do you prefer for lap swimming? Patagonia Nanogrip two-piece suits, because they stay in place
What was your best stroke/distance when you were 18 and under? 100 breastroke / 200 IM
Do you swim in a group? Mostly on my own in these pandemic times
With a kayaker or boater? This is important if you’re in an open-water situation where there’s a strong current or you’re not familiar with the area, but usually I’m very careful of where I swim without one.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve seen in the water? Ton of whales, dolphins and sea lions; lion’s mane jellyfish
Who is your favorite Olympic swimmer? Katie Ledecky -- she’s a phenom
What is the best Olympic swim race of all-time?Dara Torres’ 50 free final in Beijing -- she got touched out by one-hundredth of a second. It was her 5th Olympics and she was 41 years old, seeded first going into the final race.
Favorite place to surf? Nosara, Costa Rica. It’s the most consistent wave I’ve ever surfed and I dream about it all the time.
Photo caption: A Zoom book event on my virtual book tour for “Why We Swim.”
Ok, now let’s get into the nitty gritty…
Your book, Why We Swim, was published to much acclaim earlier this year, but it was released right when the pandemic hit. Reflecting on this timing, you wrote in The Guardian:
“What I couldn’t have imagined, of course, was that this book about swimming would be published in a time when most people couldn’t swim.”
And yet, you’ve received letters from swimmers all over the world who are finally embracing open water swimming. Tell us about what you’re hearing from folks about this experience in the outdoors.
One silver lining of all of this has been that people have allowed themselves more openness to reaching out to people or making connections, and maybe it's because they have more of the bandwidth for it, even when they might not have bandwidth of another kind. A lot of things have been cut out, like something as mundane as a commute, travel for work, sports or school. And so people have had the time to meditate on things and also make connections.
One of my favorite letters was from a sports journalist who has lived in Dublin, Ireland for 15 years. He looks at the ocean every single day from his home, and yet he has never gone swimming in the sea. He said that he started to read my book, and by the end of the first chapter he said, “I have to go and get in the sea.” So he drove down to the water and went swimming!
It feels to me like you’re really in the position of a teacher or coach with this book; you’re changing peoples’ lives!
As a writer, you'd never purport to change someone; it's just a ridiculous expectation to even go into writing something thinking that it would end up changing someone's life. I wrote this book as an investigation of a world that I have always been really enamored with, and the whole thing is collectively framed in my own personal story and relationship with swimming. So I am a guide of sorts; I am this person who introduces you to all of these people and stories. But my purpose was not to be like, “You should swim.” I hope that it’s enlightening for people to think about what happens to their bodies when they swim, why they do it, and to think more deeply about their relationship with water.
You wrote, “We want to be near the ocean, the lake, the river. We build houses on the beach despite hurricane warnings and sea-level rise because that view does something to us.” I sense that this yearning for these kinds of places is greater now than ever before because of the pandemic. Don’t you?
Well if you could see all the people that were where I have been the past few days — in Narragansett, Rhode Island — you know that it was absolutely true! People are thirsting for freedom. They want to get into the water. And then of course it's summer, and one of the most iconic, quintessential summer activities is going swimming, whether it’s in a pool, or in the ocean, or in a lake. I am very grateful that I am not at home in California right now because it is so apocalyptic there right now; you can’t even go outside because of the horrible fires and destruction. It's no wonder that people are wanting some relief from that, and I think that being in the water is a psychological and physiological release.
Photo caption: Keller Beach in Richmond, CA; my open water pandemic swim spot.
You recently tweeted:
“Eau de chlorine, how I’ve missed you.”
There was a beautiful shot of a lap pool. I just wanted to jump right in. I haven’t been in a lap pool since March and I miss it so much. What did it feel like to get back into the water?
The pool felt so long! 25 yards felt like it just kept going and going! One of the community pools near me had just reopened, and I actually ended up writing a story about that pool and its reopening for the New York Times.
What’s terrible is that just because of numbers, spacing, and health protocols you can’t give everyone that experience. When it’s limited by who can log in at a certain time and snatch up the reservation, only a certain group of people get access. It’s better than nothing, but I think about the members of the community that are really left out of that equation. Like all of the women who I saw five days a week meeting up at the same time each morning for their aqua aerobics class. These were older women who enjoyed their locker room chats before and after class, swapping advice. A lot of these folks use the warm water as a way to gain mobility and manage joint and muscle pain. For others, it’s a destination, a reason to get out of the house and do something enjoyable for themselves. It’s tragic to have that community snatched away -- not just the physical relief of being in the water, but also the camaraderie and conversation.
Last year you wrote a piece about the importance of fallow time and taking breaks from work. This summer everyone is home all of the time. On the one hand, some people are struggling with isolation and a lack of motivation in the face of such immense freedom. On the other hand, some people have found that they’re more living at work than working from home these days. How do you think COVID has made people rethink their work-life balance and flow?
I have been thinking about this a lot because I’m actually writing a book based on that essay. It was a much more clear-cut project until this happened, and then I was kind of like, “Whoa, this is the greatest natural experiment ever!” So I've been observing how it's been shaking out over these months.
At first I think people were in kind of a frenzy to bake bread and pick up new tasks, and now that things have had a chance to normalize a bit, a lot of people have started to feel completely trapped, like all they do is work because there's nothing else to do. The sort of natural signals that they would get to stop working -- leaving the office, picking up their kids, grabbing dinner with a friend, going on a bike ride -- they can’t do those things anymore. The work has subsumed them in a much less healthy way now that their boundaries are so eroded. Some people are working so much that now they don’t know what to do with themselves when they have some downtime, but then there are people working non-stop that also have so many other responsibilities that they feel like they’re drowning. There are a lot of different permutations of this same kind of problem.
Your next book, Sarah and the Big Wave, is a picture book for children ages 5-8. Sarah was the first woman to surf Mavericks, one of the most feared surf breaks on the planet, located in Half Moon Bay, California. Tell us about what you want young readers to take away from Sarah’s story.
I didn't start surfing until I was in my late 20’s. So it's something that I came to as an adult, and I have really embraced it. I grew up on Long Island and I knew people who surfed, I just didn't have the interest in it that I maybe might have if it had been something that was encouraged for girls. When I interviewed Sarah she said a lot of things that resonated with me, like when she first started surfing there were no girls. None of the equipment was right for her; there were no wetsuits that were the right size, and it made her feel a little bit like an outcast. But she was really adamant about being successful, and like a lot of pioneers, she found workarounds.
There are so many picture books out there about awesome and inspiring women, and they’re kind of moral histories that are often very much about message first and story second, and that’s just boring to read! I decided I was going to write about the time Sarah meets her first wave: where that wave starts out, where she starts the day, and where they come together for that first ride. I actually wrote the book in one afternoon, but I thought about it for a month beforehand. I'm really happy with the book, we just finalized the art, and it's so exciting. It's so beautiful.
Photo caption: Visiting my grandfather through the kitchen window.
What do you want to take to the other side of this?
I want to take this thoughtfulness and awareness of how valuable our time and our environments are, how important the people around us are. We’ve been holed up with our kids for months now, and we’re very grateful that they still want to hang out with us, that they aren’t trying to sneak out and see friends, that we can have this time to really enjoy each other’s company, and that we’re on each other's team. Not to say that isn't super hard; when you spend all of your time with the same people you can obviously get frustrated with each other. But this has been an amazing time to learn about my family really deeply, to learn about real patience, and to celebrate what we have together.