Meditation at 25m Intervals

Swimmer Jeanne Wilson Underwater by Wallace Kirkland

SYNCRETISM
A poem
By Nina C. Peláez
September 28, 2025

My father does not believe in God or therapists—
instead, he pedals his bike past Brighton Beach
to the Coney Island Y to swim his fifty laps.

Once, I went with him and watched as he emerged
from the locker room in faded swim trunks

moving slowly to the edge of the pool. He paused,
lifting his hands over the gray halo on his chest,

pressing his palms together in a gesture
I know he learned as a boy.

My father’s eyes: devout with a darkness
he keeps buried deep inside

where it glows hell-hot as the ember
from the cigarillo his father—a womanizer,

drunk, half-asleep—dropped on the sheets
setting the bed ablaze, and even though extinguished

kept smoldering invisibly inside the mattress springs,
reigniting, sending the house up in smoke a second time.

So my father’s anger burns, a blood-wicked flame
scorching through the softest parts of his interior

until it rages through the house,
blackening the rooms again.

Even in the absence of ideology
I am trying to learn forgiveness—

I watched my father’s body breach the air for just a moment
before he dove, disappearing beneath the surface.

Steam coiling through the chlorinated room,
the ripples his body made still reached me on the other side.

---

Breath, stroke, stroke, stroke, breath… no, not an adult-themed party game, but what I'm thinking, when I am thinking, as I swim lengths of a 25m pool. Eventually, it's unnecessary to count strokes and breaths. You take measured breaths without thinking about it, and a fitness tracker can bother with the counting. I wanted to talk about the meditation that is swimming, but the poem above, published in The Atlantic, hits the mark better than I could. Not the part about a daughter seeking to forgive an angry father, but the thoughtfulness swimming can bring. When I find I'm overthinking a problem, I know I need to get out of my head, but underwater, you stay in your head because there’s nowhere else to go. The only option is to expand your mind.

For years, running, biking, and swimming kept me in some relative shape (usually pear-shaped). Since the pandemic (I am so, so tired of that expression), I've had real trouble maintaining a workout routine, which I've found not only affects the waistline, but also the mind. My smart watch "measures mindfulness", which is actually crap because it's really just measuring the time I spend in certain apps it tracks. Sometimes I wonder if it's really tracking narcissism, just the apps where I record myself. Lately, I appreciate my times spent going back and forth in water, 25 metres at a time, as more important for mindfulness than looking at an app on a phone. I know I'll not convince my watch of this fact, but that doesn't make it less true. That's how swimming can become a cardio workout, a strength and resistance training, a stretching exercise, while also being a mindfulness session.

Anyone who exercises outdoors, biking, running, or hiking trails probably already knows this. There's been a lot written about spending time outdoors in nature and the benefits of doing so. Yet lately I haven’t been swimming as regularly, and we've had a lot going on. Buying a house without having sold the one we're in, making lists of things I need to prioritize, or decisions that need making. Those are the sorts of things that can distract a mind. So as to avoid getting my head in a froth about troubling news or nuisance "To Do" lists, I’ve returned to focusing on my breathing, which lends itself to a wandering mind and imaginative thinking. When I return to the pool, I won't worry about a faster time, a longer workout or improving my technique. In fact, I won't worry about anything, and that's the point.