Live streaming

Thanks to the damn ‘rona (still! Still the damn ‘rona!) I am on my couch, live-streaming the PMSL All-Stars meet, the last swim meet of the summer season. All-Stars is at an indoor pool. No spectators are allowed. My son is swimming in one event, and he rode to the meet with a friend who drives. The live stream is available only on Facebook, which I hate, and it’s glitchy, and I missed the first event, a relay that included four of my son’s friends. 

Everyone inside the facility is wearing a mask, other than the swimmers, who wear their masks to the start, then place them in ziploc bags marked with their names, then throw the ziploc bags into a big basket from which they retrieve the masks at the end of their races. 

It feels a little like last summer. Low-level dread and anxiety hangs over everything. We’re going to the beach next week, and I’m holding my breath just hoping that we can get through the week without anyone coming down with a case of breakthrough Delta variant. It occurs to me that all of this was avoidable, but this is about swimming and not politics, especially not COVID politics, from which Lord preserve us all. 

I’m watching Olympic water polo as I live stream the meet, so I’m hearing splashing and referees’ whistles from the TV and my Chromebook. Our swimmers are holding their own, and the US is playing a close match against Hungary. Is it a match? Or a game? I don’t know anything about water polo. 

We’re on event 12 now. My son swims in event 29, but these races are fast and we’re moving rapidly from one heat and one event to the next. The PMSL doesn’t play. Their technical skills are suspect, but they don’t play. And who am I to talk? I couldn’t run a live stream to save my soul from Hell. 

*****

Yesterday, I forgot to write; or rather, I almost forgot to write. I fell into bed at 11:20 last night, and realized a moment later that I hadn’t written anything. I thought about just letting it go, but my phone was right there, so I added a few short paragraphs to a work in progress, and then I went to sleep. Neither those paragraphs nor these are anything special but there’s something to be said for consistency and persistence and routine. 

*****

Event 18 already. The meet is near the halfway mark, and I’m going to wrap this up so that I don’t miss the race that I’m here for. And just that quickly, it’s over! My son was in the lane farthest from the camera, so I could see him only as a faint outline moving through the water, but he moved pretty fast. A best time, a better-than-expected finish, and another summer swim season is in the books. No more excuses for forgetting to write, at least not for now.