Midnight Reflections

Forty-two years old and I'm still doing the same thing every summer night. The pool water is cold, almost sharp against my skin, but I keep swimming. Lap after lap, my arms cutting through the darkness while the neighborhood sleeps. My ex-wife always said I was avoiding something when I swam, that the silence underwater was easier than the noise of our marriage.

I never played baseball, but Mark did. He was the one who taught me what a 'full count' felt like—the tension of a 3-2 pitch with bases loaded. We met at his brother's baseball game, stood by the chain-link fence drinking warm beer, and within a month I'd left Sarah. Mark was everything she wasn't: impulsive, passionate, messy in ways I thought I needed.

Now Mark's married to someone else, and I'm swimming at midnight.

Last week, some friends invited me to play padel at that new club downtown. I'd never even heard of it—some tennis-squash hybrid that's apparently everywhere now. But as I stood there on the court, racquet in hand, watching the ball bounce off the glass walls, I realized something: I'd been waiting for someone to tell me what game to play my entire life. Sarah chose our restaurants. Mark chose our weekend plans. Even now, my daughter tells me where to meet for dinner.

The water is still. I float on my back, looking up at the moon through the skylight. I could learn padel. I could join a baseball league. I could stop swimming in circles and actually try something new. But instead I climb out, dry off with the rough towel I've had since college, and check my phone. No messages.

Tomorrow I'll call that padel club. Or maybe I won't. Maybe I'll just keep swimming, caught somewhere between the person I was and the one I'm too tired to become.