Personal Essay | Cape Cod
On Swimming and Staying
By Rebecca Mahoney
It is a cool, foggy day on Cape Cod when I arrive at Millway Beach. It’s almost seven a.m. on a Sunday, so it’s just me and a few roosting seagulls. Their eyes follow me as I make my way to the shoreline, perhaps wondering, as I am, if I really want to swim on this chilly morning.
I do. I drop my towel and keys, nestle my travel mug of hot tea in the sand, and wade in as far as my knees. Then, before I can hesitate, I dive into the waves.
It’s that first bright, bracing shock that I love and hate so much. In the seconds before I dive, goosebumps erupt on my biceps and I feel a thrill of dread. But then I’m under and the cool green water rushes over my cheeks and forehead, and with it comes a burst of endorphins and adrenaline. I surface, gasping, then dive again and again. Soon the water doesn’t even feel cold anymore, just salty and silky and delicious. I feel free and joyful, turning somersaults underwater like I’m 10 years old again, playing in the backyard pool.
In the few months since I moved to Cape Cod, this has become my favorite way to start the day. I’m a four-minute drive from Millway and I’ve spent most mornings at this beach, with tea and the sea, the sun and the sky. In spring, before the water warmed, I walked or sat in the sand, writing or watching the fishing boats heading out for the day’s catch. By July I could swim, and what had been a lovely hour of my day became the best hour.
There’s a wonderful Greek expression, “να πάρεις τη θάλασσα” (na páreis ti thálassa), roughly “to take the sea,” that captures the idea of receiving something restorative from it. From the Aegean to the Ionian, people from children to the elderly make time for a daily dip, not only for recreation but because they believe there is something sustaining and therapeutic about ocean swimming.
They must be onto something because my body seems to recalibrate during my morning swims, as though my brain waves sync to the ocean waves. I arrive with scattered thinking, thoughts bouncing all over the place, muscles tense – but by the time I leave I am calm, focused, content, optimistic. I feel, undeniably, restored.
Of course, the idea that the sea can heal, cleanse or transform appears in cultures all over the world, including in my own family. My grandmother and her sisters were fervent believers in the restorative powers of the sea and always made a point to wade into the ocean every August 15 for the Blessing of the Sea, when faithful Catholics gather at the ocean to pray for protection and dip their feet in the water for good health. I remember being shocked one summer to see my great-aunt Libby, who rarely left her spot on the oceanfront porch, roll down her nylon stockings and wade into the water up to her calves.
There’s science behind some of this, too. Researchers have linked cold-water immersion with physiological responses that may affect mood and stress, while exercise and time spent in natural “blue spaces” have independently been associated with greater well-being. Even my own doctor regularly “prescribes” outdoor walks and time in nature as part of my anxiety management.
But it’s not only the restorative effects of swimming that make my beach mornings feel magical to me. It’s that I dreamed about this for so long: a life where I could spend mornings by the sea, where I could start my day by writing or swimming or both. Where I’d wake to the sound of seagulls and the smell of salt air. Where I’d check the tide chart as often as the forecast.
Now I am living it. And not a day goes by when I do not feel extraordinarily lucky and grateful for it.
***
What will happen later this year, when it becomes too cold to swim, or when the New England mornings become too bitter even to walk the dunes?
It would be easy to think, well, spring will come around again, and there’s always next summer.
But this Cape Cod life, as wonderful as it is, also feels fragile. Fleeting. With this move I have put myself into a financial deadlock: between the shocking cost of living on Cape Cod and my sky-high rent, there’s no extra money for, well … anything. My location also makes commuting to Boston for a potentially higher-paying job nearly impossible. And I already work two jobs, so getting a third would erase any time I have to actually enjoy living here.
So it’s hard to see staying as a viable long-term option (unless, you know, I win the Powerball or something). It’s a truth I knew before I chose to make the move – though now that I’m here, it’s a bitter truth. There is a part of me that already knows I will look back on these quiet beach mornings as some of the happiest of my life.
But if sea swimming teaches you anything, it’s mindfulness – the act (and art) of being in the present. There’s no space for rumination or worry when the physical sensations are so strong: blood surging through your veins, the roll and heave of the waves, and that delicious, shocking chill.
There’s only this beautiful moment. And that’s enough.