Swimming, But Not in Books

Faced with almost six hours each day to myself, having spent the last five years with less than six minutes a day to myself, I am understandably lost. In an effort to shape my days, and my thighs, and keep me from wandering the neighborhood as the scary lady with the empty stroller, I've made two commitments to myself: to find the me that is buried beneath the five years of days spent with children, and to write a book. And so, three days a week I drop off the kindergartners and join my husband on the train to the loop, posing as an actual commuter who has an actual place to be. In reality, of course, I do not. I could stop and do some shopping, or wander the Art Museum, but I don't, I head to the gym and swim away my morning, flopping about in the pool with more direction, and less skill, than ever before. And after an hour or so of that, I make my way to the library where I sit and focus on task number two, a bit more challenging, especially today when it seems that all of Chicago is on fire and every fire engine in the city is racing by my window, but it's a great view.

The pool is one of the best places to be, back and forth I go in the initially painfully cold water, all alone. At my time the real swimmers are off to their offices, leaving me alone with the pool guy who wanders around picking up towels and playing on his computer. This is the perfect schedule, this solitude allows me ample to time to think and organize my thoughts, which is what I must do before I sit down to write anything. But problematic, I'm old now, drat, and what I compose so elegantly in my head is lost immediately if I don't get to a pen, fast. Difficult when immersed in 8 feet of water, perhaps I could shout out my musings to the meandering pool man, he looks like he needs something to do, other than watch me flail away in the deep end.

There are two real challenges to writing a book, aside from my memory issues, as I see it. First, used book stores. Let's start here, I love my local used book store, I can spend hours, really, wasting time, peering at the unorganized madness. But who wrote all these books? There are this many books in the world that have been relegated to used book stores? My book will never make it to the first run shops, I know it. Boxes upon boxes will be deposited on the steps of the used book store, never having seen a Barnes and Noble. My book tour will involve me stopping at Dunkin' Donuts on the way to Powell's, I'll bribe a few people I pass on the way with free coffee and bad donuts, if only they will come and listen to me read from my fresh on the used book shelf book. Who could possibly read all these books?

Which brings me to the second problem, apparently no one. In my two days of pseudo commuting I have discovered that in the five years I have been away, people have stopped reading books. In fact most have stopped reading all together, save the few hardy souls who soak up their morning news in the form of The Red Eye, the Tribune's effort at soft core news, with all the local celebrity sightings; today's juicy tidbit, the Bachelorette and her fiance were seen "canoodlin'" in the Windy City. But no books, rather people played with their phones. My phone does not play with me, it allows me to make and receive calls but we do not play together. There's no hard feelings, I think we like each other, but for several reasons, it is just not a good playmate. It also does not give me directions or allow me to check football scores, so perhaps if I upgraded to a better and newer friend, we'd have more to play with. Others who have better friends then are probably far more skilled in finding celebrities and hot spots, but not bookstores, they don't need to be, they aren't any. We don't read books anymore.

Back to the pool.