Plunging In

The first swim can come anytime between January 1 and July. This year, it was the last day of June when we finally made it into the water.

The first swim can be a plunge, and often is — a quick, shrieking in-and-out — because the water is so cold. See people wade in. They raise their arms in the air and flinch away at every splash as they slowly, resistantly walk into the waves.

I prefer the unyielding dash. The swimmer drops his towel and barrels through the gentle break. Thinking of only fast and forward momentum, you dive deep, holding your breath; you swim under the water as fast and as far as you can.

Everyone needs a swim buddy. It isn’t safe to swim alone, because the ocean, for all its therapeutic qualities, is indifferent to human situations. And, yet, swim buddies aren’t just about safety. In my case, were it not for mine, I might not take the time to go swimming at all. I could have kept working, but my friend came calling.

We rode the bike to Gibson and scanned the beach for the least populated span. When I ask how cold it is, my friend told me to touch it first. But that’s cheating: You cannot be forewarned.

I run into the breakers, bracing myself for the deep adjustment. I’m ready for the Atlantic’s chilling sear — but instead I dive into August waters. Warm water already?

In August, the sensation of swimming is cooling comfort. Ease, where you can bob as you tread water, drifting in place, enjoying buoyancy and chit-chat, waiting for a set to come in. A big, red jellyfish, also of August, visible now in the clear curl of a wave, goes slowly, pulsing past.

The death of a friend, Merrall Hildreth, one of Sagg’s oldest residents, puts the past on display, the memories that a person’s passing triggers. Sure, today, Sagg is a tony zip code, but when I was young it was still a rural outpost, and Merrall was the postmaster and the clerk and owner of the General Store, which was really a general store. It sold no T-shirts that said “SAGAPONACK,” but you could get a broom and a box of sugar, the essentials, there.

Merrall made things: birdhouses, mobiles, models. And one winter, near Christmastime, in the large glass front window of the post office he put his handmade replica, a detailed dollhouse of the very building. Girls, boys, everyone was entranced by the accuracy and the historic setting, the touches of humor … and horror; a bearskin rug was fashioned from a real mouse, head and all.

For years thereafter, in wintertime, as our mothers got the mail or grabbed some milk, we gazed, perhaps wanting to touch the miniature world therein that twinkled with both magic and the beloved familiar.