Early January and last year’s holiday is weighing in my body.

More clothing layers and a few extra pounds make me want to slow down, quit my brisk exercise, just stop fighting inertia.

I want to curl up, snack and read.

The colder winter weather whips at my morale.

The daily news, the state of the world, feels like another layer to bear.

Some days I want a break from holding my shoulders back, pushing through and toughing it out.

Instead, I head to the local pool.

Getting undressed at the locker, arms folded over shivering chest, there is an elderly woman next to me, talking to herself, or maybe to me.

She tells the room that she has to do re-hab and this is her first day, she will need to come all the way to the gym four days a week, take a cab.

She has a cane with 3 prongs at the base; she has propped it against the bench and I reach out to pick it up when it slides to the tiled floor.

It is hard to start up a new exercise routine. It’s hard to move our bodies at all some days.

I pull on my suit and head to the showers, then into the pool area.

Two small kids are screaming and splashing at eachother with water noodles and I shy away to the other side.

Silence, quiet, moving inward, trying to shed the cold air on my skin, to submerge.

The water is a little cool, but still it’s shimmery blue reflection with bright flags, is cheerful.

There is something about immersion, about going down deep, letting myself sink, that invites.

Through cloudy goggles all is hazy blue, and the world goes quiet.

All except for the exhalation of bubbles, the air coming from deep in my lungs, even deeper.

There’s almost a panic at the thought that all of this activity is happening all the time without thought.

The heartbeat and breath play in my ears. A hyper-awarenss. How full my and then how empty my lungs can be.

My shoulders pull the thick water, stroke after stroke. Suddenly I am lighter.

A pool’s lessons are so easy.

I glide in my lane, the ropes help rein in my self-consciousness.

Keep the head down, but not too far, sip the air, control the thrash of the lower body.

Stay in the lane. Focus.

Let the water hold me. Don’t fight it, ease into the cradling support.

Slice the water any which way, the water always calms, evens out.

The grace comes in finding my pace without trying.

Because today I want the least resistence – to let the stream of motion from my kicking legs propel my torso without much fight.

Who says we need to strive?

Life can be a buoyancy without any control at all.

Today, swimming doesn’t feel like giving up or giving in, it feels like rising.

I rise and shuffle stiffly from my bed to the new bathroom.

My fingers graze the soft plaster on the wall where there is nothing at all – no light switch, just my muscle memory. In the dark, I grope towards the little sink.

In the newly painted kitchen, I smell the beans, fill the coffee carafe and punch the soft button; there is such comfort there.

I am a spirit, floating through our new place, noting, testing things out, treading lightly across the unfamiliar hall.

Later, I drift across the kitchen with fresh laundry and move into the bedroom that smells yeasty like bread, or like old homes.

It is not a new house.

Tiny cracks in the the fireplace mortar, I imagine mice droppings in the walls. A paint drip that I know I didn’t make.

I run the vacuum across soft oak floorboards where I uncover tiny dinks and protruding nails that snag at my socks.

But always the dishes; warm water is the same anywhere.

The dry, cracked skin of my hands feel tight and sore as they press into the yellow sponge that catches the crumbs as it moves across the pitted, ceramic countertop.

The water runs through my fingers at the tap, like the thin, slippery beads of a rosary.

I flip the lid of the same blue pan, to rinse it once again, watching the foam run clear in the shiny sink.

Each task, done a thousand times, but now in a new old place.

It is a new year.

I clip the doggie calendar onto the magnetic fridge and write a few notes on the clean January page.

It seems to me that the challenge is keeping it all new.

These jobs we do, the mornings we putter and the days we structure, and the nights, when we cycle though the tv listings, again and again, looking for a fresh stream.

This year, my birthday, 61, and mostly the numbers mean nothing.

Until they do, and I wake at 2 am and wonder how they add up.

I read somewhere that our negative thoughts and events carve sharp pathways in the brain, while positive ones are harder to recall.

With this, I call up the mountains from a few years ago, and soothe myself back to sleep.

It can’t always be an option, I know this, but when it works, I take it.

I think I am trying out the Danish expression of putting the spoon in the other hand – to switch up the tiniest of tired movements just a tad.

So today, I escape the bungalow and find a second space, the public library, to try to write. (Instead of staring at the same surroundings, I’ll write about them!)

Attempting a pivot, to grasp a new sensation in the old.

Yes, happy old new year it is.

So, spoon in hand, I move forward (or not).

Anyway, I feel the shift – subtly awkward but a teeny bit exciting, too; it is fresh.

And so, moving onward – keep writing, I say – do it any which way you can.

Keep writing, just write.