Talkin Bout My Generation

20 laps in the pool this morning, and I'm feeling a little less unfamiliar in the water each day. I swam every day as a kid -- who didn't? -- and got all the certifications and junior lifesaving badges, etc. But it's been, I dunno, probably 40 years since I did any significant amount of real swimming. I always preferred running, basketball, soccer, baseball and softball, and just about anything else I could do. But all those other things took their toll, and I am lucky to have swimming now, because it is working for me and it isn't beating me up the way any of those other things.

The other thing that's fun about these morning swims is that, in addition to perhaps doing a bit to hold off my personal aging process, I'm also getting a pretty good glimpse of where I am headed, age-wise. There are usually about a dozen people in the pool when I step in around 7:15 or so, and I am often the youngest among us. The men and women are friendly and solicitous, we exchange greetings, and some offer some words of encouragement -- "Good to see you back here today" or things of that nature -- since they may recognize I am, er, just getting my feet wet at this. I can see that for many of them the daily visit to the pool is a social event as well as an exercise regimen, which is as it should be.

I may be younger than they are, but I feel at home with them. The music that is piped into the pool area during the morning adult swim period is heavy on standards from the 1940s and 50s. "Is that Al Martino?" someone asked today about a finger-snapper lodged between songs by Sinatra and Tom Jones. No problem. We're all comfortable. Toward the end of my pool time most days the demographic changes as 30- and 40-something moms come in after dropped their kids off at school. That's fine, and it's not like it's uncomfortable, but I will say that I feel closer to the group that is older than the one that is younger. I'm just hoping I live long enough to enjoy my 60s and 70s as much as they are enjoying theirs. And to give myself to keep making my health as much of a priority as they are making theirs.

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I had a very nice dinner and visit with my daughter Kippy tonight.

She just hit town from New York last night after finishing her work on the Public Theater production of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and she is starting work on an exciting new project to create a new play for the Ensemble Studio Theater through a grant from the Sloan Foundation.

I picked her up around 6:30 and we went to an old favorite where we've been dining together since she was about 8 years old, the Acapulco Restaurant in Jamaica Plain. It was comfortable and a bit nostalgic, and I ordered what I've been ordering there for over 20 years, Pollo al cilantro. Delicious, as always. And just for tonight, i did not count calories. Or chips.

Pheromones Redux: Adrienne Campbell-Holt

"Pheromones" is an occasional feature of this blog, in which I will share and share alike from among the reader creations and suggestions that flow back toward me. Feel free to send yours in to me either as comments on the blog or by sending me an email at hppress@gmail.com. In the next few days I will re-post a few past entries that may interest you:

Pheromones - December 8, 2007 - Adrienne Campbell-Holt

Turns out Stephen King's son is a novelist named Joe Hill. I dreamed I saw him. It's kind of funny, though, the things that any of us do to give our children a boost, or to give them distance, or to try not to seem to be giving them a boost.

I am so proud of my daughter Adrienne Campbell-Holt, mentioned here occasionally as Kippy. She is an actor, a writer, a director, a dancer, an artist, a blogger, a runner, a choreographer, a comedienne, a teacher, an arts administrator, a lefty, and a Sox fan. She is bo-coastal, not that there's anything wrong with that. She is at home in LA, Brooklyn, and Dorchester. As you can see above, she is a photographer too. But above all else, as she says on her blog, "you will never meet anyone else like me. I love, and also dance, harder than most people."

There are many other remarkable photographs on her blog, Adventures with Blue Car. And many powerful words well worth reading.

It is clear from her blog that we must see Into the Wild. And so I will.

(Update: Happily, I got to see Into the Wild with Adrienne, which doubled my enjoyment of a terrific movie. More recently, just this past weekend, I got to see the latest blossoming forth of Adrienne's amazing creativity -- she is assistant director of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Public -- and to celebrate her birthday with a lovely outdoor brunch at 5 Front Street under Walt's bridge).