My rubber ducky Budgy Smugglers always make a statement, and I questioned if I’d made the right choice. My daughters and I enjoy swimming laps together and own several pairs of matching swimsuits for lap swimming. The older two girls had started swim team a few days prior, and had worn their rubber ducky suits to their first practice. The suits were their “sister swim team” suit of armor.

I thought it was only fitting that on my first day of adult swim league I put on my similar coat of armor. Or at least it would distract me from my nervous feelings.

“I’m not sure what lane to swim in, or whether I have the stamina to make it thorough the entire workout,” I said to the swim coach, also named Tyler (like me).

“I’ve seen you swimming at the indoor pool, and think you’re at the moderate level. Why don’t you swim here?” the other Tyler said.

I put my things down on a chair, walked my rubber ducky armored self to the edge of the pool, and jumped in. The quietness of the water enveloped me. The cool water touched my skin. For a brief moment, I allowed myself to sit on the bottom of the pool.

“Here’s to a summer of rebuilding,” I thought.

Saying Goodbye

Before summer break officially began, on my last day of school, our downstairs neighbors moved out of their apartment. It was significant, because our downstairs neighbors were Emily’s sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew. Our apartment landlord who lived in our building had died earlier in the school year, and I’d felt the “winds of change” swirling around our family for months. I’d tried to anticipate what I might feel as I watched them move away, closing the door on our shared Queen’s Family Compound. It was really hard to see them leave.

For nearly 10 years we’d lived in the same building. My brother-in-law had been Mabel’s nanny when she was a baby. My sister-in-law and I had worked at the same school, where my daughters also attended. She’d been one of their specials teachers during the school year. We went to the same church. We had also traded countless babysitting dates and sleepovers. We’d been on Cash Cab together. They’d become a core part of our family’s relational identity. And now they were gone.

In the days that proceeded my jump into the cold swimming pool waters, I’d felt the mental and emotional weight of transition. The school year had ended, our family had moved, and I struggled to figure out what to do with my feelings.

I knew that summertime was going to be a rebuilding season. And that rebuilding started with signing up for adult swim league.

Rebuilding Season: Relationship with Others

I knew that one aspect of rebuilding would be trying to intentionally build friendships and community. I knew that friends weren’t just going to come knocking on my door, and that I’d have to look for them myself. For 10 years, we’d had a buffer of family relationships right in our building, and now that family had moved, relationships would be different.

So that’s why I threw on my rubber duckies, and joined the summer swim league. I was excited to swim regularly, interact with people who had a shared recreational interest, and hopefully develop friendships. I’d started over before, and knew that a rebuilding season took intentionality.

Swim League

For six weeks of the summer, on Monday and Friday mornings, I swam laps with my swim league. Each practice I shared a lane with a rotating group of people. Between sets, often when the coaches were busy scribbling the upcoming swim distance and stroke exercise, we’d chat with one another. Initially our conversations centered around the swim workouts but we gradually talked about other topics. There were a lot of teachers (or former teachers) in the group, so we had a lot to talk about.

“Have you ever swam in open water?” one of my new swimming friends asked.

“Never,” I said. “I’m terrified of fish.”

“You might love swimming in the lake,” he said. “It’s clear, there are barely any fish, and you don’t have to worry about any flip turns.”

All summer I’d been working on increasing my swimming efficiency and improving my flip turns, but forgetting about flip turns during a swim workout sounded intriguing.

“How’s Wednesday morning at 8:30am? Tyler, you in?”

“Sure,” I said. “See you then.”

Rebuilding Season: Relationship with Self

One aspect of rebuilding was building new friendships and community. A few weeks into summer I’d made large steps towards accomplishing that goal. But I was about to discover another equally important aspect of a rebuilding season. I was on a journey to find self again.

Wednesday came very quickly, and I put on another suit of armor. This time it was printed with flamingos.

“I’m really nervous,” I told Emily as I began to walk out the door. “What if I don’t get in the water? I’m terrified of fish.”

“I think you’ll be okay,” Emily said. “Remember the fish are more afraid of you than you are of them.”

I smiled and rolled my eyes.

“Also do you remember that little sign that’s hanging by the stairs?” Emily said. “It’s the one that says, “When was the last time you tried something for the first time?””

“What sign?” I said, “Does it really say that?”

“Yes,” she said, walking to grab the little sign that had been hanging in our cottage for years.

Emily put the sign in my hands and I read the words back to myself, “When was the last time you tried something for the first time?”

Trying Something New

As I’d soon come to learn, my summer rebuilding season would be completely reoriented because of those words. I continued with the swim league. I faced my fear of fish and swam across the lake several times. I joined open community pickle ball sessions and learned a new sport. I started planning tennis again, started running again, and went to the library weekly to check out new books.

As a parent, I’ve often encouraged our girls to try new things and have sought to quiet their fears of the unknown. This summer I realized that at some point I had stopped doing that for myself. All school year I’d nervously felt the winds of change surround me and tried desperately to hold on to control. The pursuit of control, as always, left me feeling exhausted, depleted, and in need of rebuilding.

This summer I started the journey of rebuilding my sense of self. And an instrumental part of that was trying something new for the first time. The butterflies that would form in my stomach each time I tried something new made me feel alive.

Rebuilding Season Questions

Heading into this new school year, I’m still in a state of a rebuilding season. I’ve been thinking a lot about the following questions as I embark on this new season:

• What do I want?
• What do I need?
• In what areas can I rely on me?
• In what areas will I need to rely on others?

As the sun sets on summer, I’m excited to think about what’s next. There’s a lot of firsts on the horizon. This school year I have a reduced schedule for the first time and am only teaching 4 days each week and I plan to spend more time writing. All three of our girls will be in school Monday-Friday for the first time, and our season of preschoolers at home will come to an end. Oh, and I’m starting a 6-week stand-up comedy course on Tuesday nights. That should certainly give me some butterflies in the stomach.

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