Reflections on Bastille Day: A pool in Paris

The best thing in the morning is swimming. An hour before sunrise, I am in our local pool, my eyes looking down to the right of the black line on the bottom, arms extended, one after another in a steady windmill, warming up with a prayer.

Each person in my life gets one lap, two if they’re in a rough patch. Sometimes, I dream of a round pool where I could begin at the center with my family, then swim in ever-widening circles to include my acquaintances at the shallow end.

What I recite for each person is specific to their need: for someone on a voyage, I pray for a safe return; for a niece in labor, a healthy baby. A broken heart, an illness, or a loss get two whole laps, sometimes three, and so on. To call it prayer is to imply that I have God’s ears but this is more like sending telepathic messages to my dear ones, summoning them one by one to offer what I think I can give, which is compassion.

The first 61 laps are dedicated to this internal messaging. Then I’m free to glide through the water with my own thoughts, following our coach’s set for the day, and the sound of my breath in that little pocket of air when I breathe to the right.

The next best thing is the sky lightening slowly over the horizon. The silhouette of the lifeguard chair growing distinct and a figure in a red parka perched at the very top, watching over us. There comes the bellow of a commuter train a mile away and the aroma of yeast doughnuts from the Safeway bakery nearby. I could be alone in my thoughts but together with my lane mates and the world waking up. A day crammed with promise, a pledge to a practice that maintains my sanity.

I took up swimming late in life and it became my refuge, a blissful reprieve from land, from grief and gravity. So, when I found myself in Paris during a record-breaking heatwave, I sought refuge at a municipal pool in my neighborhood.

The City of Paris manages 42 public pools, some of which are beautiful, historical monuments — and some unassuming. Just after sunrise, a pleasant fifteen-minute walk up Avenue Mozart took me past café owners carrying tables to the sidewalk;  past not one, not two, but three bakeries; past bakers in long, flour-dusted aprons taking their first cigarette break; past building supers hosing off their entrances; and fruit vendors piling pyramids of melons, peaches and nectarines. What a show!

The Piscine Auteuil, in the basement of a brutalist building, is clean and well-maintained. I bought a bundle of tickets for a little under $3 a swim, valid at all the other municipal pools. There are strict rules to follow before entering: no street shoes allowed in the locker room, bathing caps are required, no shorts, only snug speedos for men, and everyone must shower before going in the pool. The number of shoes outside the facility indicate how crowded the lanes will be.

Once in the pool, there are no rules whatsoever. Fast, medium, slow swimmers share lanes willy-nilly. Lifeguards are vigilant but do not police lane etiquette. The word etiquette may stem from French, but in a French pool, it’s laissez-faire, and once I surrender my expectations, I’m having fun.

Here, I suspend prayer for pandemonium. The slow backstroker ahead of me will not pull over at the wall to let me pass. No. She will wait until I’m at the wall to push off ahead of me. If I dare pass, I must motor through oncoming traffic and risk bonking heads. Voila. Take it or leave it. And leave we all must by 8:25 when French public-school kids arrive for their practice. Learning to swim is as essential to French society as table manners.

Once we hop out, we’re in a coed locker room where we shower side by side in our suits. Young and old, yogis, triathletes, and mothers-in-law, chubby and skinny, fellow humans bathing together. I glue my eyes to the tile floor while the guy beside me lathers his privates. I smile hearing my mother’s voice in my head. When I was a self-conscious teenager, she’d say, “Oh, get over yourself.” I did.

Showered and dressed, we dry our hair beneath a bank of built-in hairdryers, feeling exhilarated, pampered even. Hairdryers in the wall for heaven’s sake! Outside, we sit on the bench to put our shoes on. No one leaves without saying au revoir.

Back on Avenue Mozart, the city hums with morning commuters as I duck into the first bakery for my morning baguette. I will take it home, slice it in half lengthwise, gloss it with butter, and pile black currant jam on that crusty canoe. And before I devour it, I’ll telegraph my gratitude to the baker.

On this Bastille Day, now 5,000 miles away from Paris, I am nostalgic for my Parisian pool, yielding to chaos over courtesy. What better prayers to live by than Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité?

Menlo Park resident Donia Bijan is a former chef and author of two books.

Photo of Piscine Auteuil courtesy of Donia; photo of Donia by Irene Searles (c) 2017