The Pink Friday Swimmers
Peeping out at the cold through the wooly gaps of winter layers, I arrived at the beach to meet a friend for a blustery walk. A few surfers in thick head-to-toe wetsuits bobbed about in the water, but otherwise the beach was empty save for this small group of men and women dressed in nothing but bright pink swimwear. I shivered in unsolicited empathy; they smiled and laughed in excited anticipation. What the hell were these people doing dressed as if it were a balmy summer's morning? I hate the cold! I’ve been cold my entire life and go to great lengths to try and beat it. Even in summer, if you knock on my door in the middle of the day, there is a good chance I will answer, looking like a medieval farmer with a floor sweeping blanket wrapped around my waist.
We stopped to chat with the swimmers, interested to know what they were doing. I assumed it was something for breast cancer, but this was wrong; they just liked the color, and they loved to swim in cold water. They welcomed our questions, happy to answer our bafflements as they stretched and stripped down to their primal neon pinks. From the safety of our insulation, we watched them laugh merrily down to the water, some choosing to run right in, others gingerly stepping into the rough grey waves. Before we parted ways, they told us they try to meet here at 9 am every week for Pink Fridays, and we were more than welcome to join them. How sweet, I thought, silently chuckling at the absurdity, maybe I will said my friend.
A few weeks later, wanting to know more about this group, I went back to find them and saw Eric striding out of the ocean with a big smile on his face! After being brought up to date on his swim, he paused and, with a slight hesitation, the cogs perhaps wondering if he was opening the door to a wolf in sheep’s clothing, he invited me to join them all for a late breakfast just up the road.
I arrived at the restaurant before Eric, nervous there would be an uncomfortable silence as I introduced myself to the table, but he had called ahead, and they greeted me like a long-lost member of their group. I told them I had left Eric at the beach sweeping, apparently, they were in the habit of leaving a sandy mess, and he didn’t want the authorities getting mad at them. They all laughed, eyes rolling in kind amusement,
“Ah, Eric, he is so particular!”
I sat down at the end of two tables joined together. Rubbing my hands together, I snuggled into the warmth of the people and a restaurant I had always wanted to try, a surfer's shack, the menu overflowing with weird and wonderful ways to eat eggs! Next to me was a lady called Michelle, across from her was Emma, a fellow Brit who now lived here and was a teacher. Further along, there was Laurie, Keith, Rory, and Melinda, who, coincidentally, I knew from the sidelines of local soccer, back when our kids were tiny, and soccer was still a pack sport. At the end of the table sat the captain of this ship, Liz! Liz, who also hailed from over the pond, was responsible for bringing everyone together. Cold plunging for years, she started recruiting fellow swimmers the moment she arrived in RI. She “stalked” Laurie, “bullied” Emma, and “strong-armed” Eric. Telling the story later on about how they met, Eric said, in his best British accent, “She said, I’m going in, are you coming?” When Eric hesitated, she continued, “You know you really ought to!” Eric obeyed!
During the winter, the group tries to swim at least three times a week. When Michelle first started, she hated the cold but very quickly noticed a shift in her anxiety and sleeping. Now she tries to go as often as possible, but as a working mum, it is hard to find the time. Sometimes she goes for a solo swim at a beach near her house, but becomes uncomfortable with the attention she gets.
“People always come up to me and ask if I am crazy or mad! I don’t like it,” She said.
I cringed at the memory of asking the same question the previous week.
“I think it probably comes from a place of awe and amazement!" I fumbled.
Emma agreed with Michelle about the mental health benefits.
“ I don’t actually like the ocean, so going in feels like a massive deal!” She said. “I do it for the cold, I’m less anxious now and sleep a lot better.”
Improved mental health was not the only thing to come out of these plunges; a community of like-minded people has blossomed.
“It’s an amazing sense of community,” said Emma, “I’m with my people, I feel a sense of calm.”
Since its watery beginnings, the community has evolved to hanging out on dry land as well.
“We had a fancy dress party in November,” said Emma, a British term for a costume party, “and we also went to see Eric sing, he is part of the James Town community choir.”
In more recent weeks, some of them have started doing art classes with another member called Kim, who is teaching them watercolor.
“She is an amazing artist,” said Michelle, ”I had her do a painting for my father's 70th birthday.”
I asked them if they try to keep politics out of the group.
“Well, yes, we try,” they said, “except when the results of the most recent election came in, we all met the day after at the beach and had a good cry in the water!”
Since then, the group has expanded to well over 50 people, and they are aware of some with differing political views, so they now try to keep politics out of the conversation to be respectful.
As the food came out, Eric arrived. Before sitting down, he addressed the table, telling them all about the swim he had this morning. Inspired by his talk of the beautiful waves, Michelle asked if anyone had a spare swimsuit with them. She would like to go in after brunch, and would people come and watch her so she didn’t drown! Michelle is on a mission this season. She wants to get in 100 dips between October and April. It was February when we all met for brunch, and so far, she had dipped 70 times. Everyone thought she could easily get in another 30, 15 in March, 15 in April.
“ I used to hate the cold so much; now I get sad when winter ends.” She said, “If I didn’t have a kid, I would consider moving to Norway or Sweden.”
“Me too!” piped up another voice along the table, “my mood shifts in the summer, I get more depressed when I can’t get my dopamine hit from the cold water.”
Eric will often take a thermometer with him when he swims. Today it was a warm 38 degrees. Sitting opposite me, Eric announced to everyone,
“I learnt a new word at the gas station this week,”
We all stopped and waited.
“Apricity!” he declared to blank faces. “The feeling of the sun's warmth in the winter.”
Ironic, coming from Eric, considering his own near-death experience with cold swimming.
“I failed to respect the wind,” he said.
It was January 1st, and the temperature was 23 degrees. He took too long getting in and then stayed in the water far longer than he should have. When he got out, his hands were too cold for him to take his gloves off, which meant he couldn’t take the lid off the flask filled with warm water that swimmers use to warm up their bodies quicker. It was a silly mistake, one he thankfully managed to recover from, but it was a reminder that the cold water, despite its magic, demands respect.
Midway through the meal, the table suddenly broke into a rendition of Happy Birthday I had not heard before. Eric, the choir master, had remixed it for Liz’s birthday, which was also being celebrated at brunch. The ease they all had with each other made me want to become a cold water swimmer just so I could hang out with them. It was a similar feeling to when I was younger and lived in NYC, dating a young man who went to AA. One lunch time, he invited me to one of their meetings, and while I don’t wish the weight of alcoholism, I was envious of their sense of community and belonging to something. Regardless of my reservations about cold swimming, they invited me to join their WhatsApp group so I could see when and where they were gathering. Eric also gave me advice on the necessary clothing I would need, all of which he said I could get on Amazon. A woolly hat was a must, thick wetsuit gloves and booty’s, but not too thick, 7.5mm is too thick, hard to get on and off. A year earlier, I had bought my husband a cold plunge for Christmas. An avid surfer in both summer and winter, he had read about the benefits of cold plunging. I can say without exaggeration that it has been a life-changer. I’ve never seen anything cool a volcano faster. The cold is like a reset button, a slap in the head to cool your fucking rocks. I’ve tried his cold plunge ( in the summer) and can attest to the mental reset, halting rage in its tracks, but the journey to get there is, at the moment, too hard for me.
With promises to stay in touch, I thanked them for inviting me into their world. I have not seen them since, but I follow their daily chatter on WhatsApp, reading about the places to meet and ruminate on the delights of their swims.
There are no fees or other rigid club rules to become a part of this group. One member joined after seeing them on the beach, and not having a swimsuit, she stripped down to her underwear and dove in. Growing up in the late 80’s I was warned never to leave the house in ugly underwear in case I got into a car accident and ended up in the hospital! Did this member follow the same archaic laws and skip into the ocean in her best La Perla, or was she free of such limiting constraints, happy to frolic in the waves in grey fraying knickers? Having never been able to shake that decades-deep patriarchal voice, I once used the inverse of that idea during the early days of dating my husband. Deliberately wearing a tatty old bra I assumed I would be too embarrassed to allow things to move past PG viewing. 2 children later we can agree on how well that idea turned out but it shows there is a crack in the veneer, a fraction of a possibility that this winter no matter what under wear I am wearing, if the moon is cusping on the right day, at the right time and if while I am walking on the right beach I have a particularly vicious hot flush, maybe, just maybe I too might be able to join the Friday pink swimmers club!
