My newfound ritual of ocean swimming is as close as you can get to God on this Earth

Every morning now, after the kids are poured off to school, I head to the beach before the light gets attacking and hard and feel old muscles awakened and strength coming back.

Freestyle, dog paddle, breaststroke, backstroke then back to freestyle; in a stop-start rhythm I can feel the heart pumping, the body straightening. Stretching and strengthening. Picture: Richard Dobson

Into the sun-speared depths I bullet, carrying my father with me. “Come on, dad, let’s do this,” is said in the head as the ocean is stepped into, higher and higher, to the danger spot of thighs and waist. Too cold, nup, but yes, and suddenly I dive, tunnelling into the cool. My father propelled himself through water all his adulthood, as an ocean swimmer, surf life saver and ocean baths freestyler and now, far too late in the span of a life, I’m doing it too, taking him with me every morning. The glory of this – and it’s taken decades to follow his lead.

Life had closed over this book-bowed body, sludged it up as bones curved like a comma over laptop and desk. But summer’s obscene heat was a blessing in disguise – Darwin in Sydney – and I forced myself into the heaving blue; a creaky body protesting all the way. Now I’m hooked. Dread the weather closing in, dread days shrinking at their edges into coldness and dark. A fellow swimmer tells me that when the weather turns she fills a two-litre milk carton with warm water and tips it over her head after her daily swims. Result, an instant shower of reward, and I’m holding onto that thought. Dread a stopping.

The 12-year-old rolled his eyes at the initial hesitation. “Mum, no one’s looking at you” – and with that magic mantra I was in. Boardies, goggles and cap, all astoundingly ugly but the armour to keep me on track. Every morning now, after the kids are poured off to school, I head to the beach before the light gets attacking and hard and feel old muscles awakened and strength coming back. My face is returning, the old face; wrinkles and age etched upon it, yes, but something younger, lighter, is breaking through; the person I once was.

The swell rises to meet me as I’m borne into this marine world; enveloped, held, carried; words of euphoria and cradling. I smile in glee, all by myself out here; have I ever smiled wider or freer. And through goggles a wonderland is beneath. It’s like being in an aquarium. Fish going about their business, in obedient schools, synchronising their turns in this shallow, foreshore-hugging, predatorless expanse. Cloudy tufts of sand in ridges dance in the water’s push and pull and it’s always different, every day; the light, the swell, tide line, clearness or murkiness. Freestyle, dog paddle, breaststroke, backstroke then back to freestyle; in a stop-start rhythm I can feel the heart pumping, the body straightening. Stretching and strengthening.

I dive for bits of old china that were once colonial dinner sets, used as ballast until the new settlement was neared then tossed overboard, and still the water gives the pieces up, and still. Through my goggles I see the dramatic slope of sand disappearing into sinister depths; out there, of course, are sharks and submarine cables but here, close to shore, is an adventure playground of kickboards and snorkels and lappers lapping; all these people staving off death.

This piece is composed strongly in the water then held in my head, precariously, until I can get home and fall on the laptop. Anne Carson wrote, “How slow is the slow trance of wisdom, which the swimmer swims into” – and yes, so true, as thought is swum into each day. And at the end of every dip a ritual is now enacted, a moment of stillness flat on my back, pencil-straight with arms wide and palms up, communing with the vast bowl of sky above. Alone but not, tiny but part of this wondrous planet, seamed into it, connected, lit, and as close as you can get to a God on this Earth. And to nature. Born afresh, with the salt-laden water holding me up. I walk from this world luminous with beauty with posture straightened, ready, charged, changed. Walk through my days differently now, cleansed and cleansed again, every morning, brightened and unlocked.