Swimming, at the End of the World

At the end of the world, I went swimming.

It wasn’t that I didn’t care about what was going on around me. But I couldn’t think of anything I could do about any of it just that afternoon, so I turned off the computer and put my phone in my purse. I dropped Michael off at work, and Adrienne and I went to the beach, to go swimming.

When you live in Northern Appalachia, “going to the beach” means going to a lake. The grass was warm green, right up to the edge of that ridiculous artificial beach the park built up with store bought sand. The water was cool green and placid. The trees on all sides were green as well. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. A red-winged blackbird dipped low over the grass, ignoring the crowd of swimmers. I could have believed I was in Heaven.

I paddled back and forth in the cool green, feeling guilty somehow.

There are some people who are going to refuse to see a problem until every semblance of normalcy is gone. They’re going to claim anyone who points out a problem is hysterical, even as wars ramp up all over the world and the country descends into chaos. And there are some people who are totally consumed by anxiety at what’s happening, and they’re not overreacting. And then there’s me. I am afraid all the time. I’m doing everything I can, which isn’t much. And in the meanwhile I live my life, and it feels as if I’m doing something wrong.

I read somewhere about a saint– I don’t even know what saint. But somewhere in the Church’s history, there was a saint who was a novice. He was sitting down to play a game of cards with the other novices.  And his superior came in and asked him what he’d do if he knew that the world was coming to an end and Jesus was coming back to earth in just a minute. The saint replied that since his conscience was clear, he’d sit right here and finish his card game. I could never be that saint, or share his confidence. I’m not a novice or a monk. I’ve never fit in in any Catholic setting, ever. I have always been a nuisance and a pariah, from the time I was a little girl. From the time I was a little girl, I’ve been worried that God was angry with me. I am not safe. If I thought the world was coming to an end, what would I do?

Adrienne swam out to meet me in the deep part of the swimming section, interrupting my woolgathering. She is a little taller than I am now. She can stand flat foot on the mud of the bottom of the lake with her head sticking out of the water, while I have to stand on my toes. We bantered and played and splashed each other. At one point, she grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me down under the water, where the world wasn’t green anymore but brown, dark, and silent.

What if the world really did end just now?

What if I popped up out of the water and saw Christ Himself coming towards me, walking on its surface? What would I do? Would I swim away? Swim towards him? Grab Him by the ankle to see if I could pull Him in?

What if Christ didn’t come back just now, but the world ended in a different way? What if the economy crashed so thoroughly that even us nobodies who didn’t have savings felt the effect? What if the  country stopped teetering on the brink and fell to a brutal dictator? What if a nuclear war cauterized the earth? What if, when that happened, I didn’t die quickly, but I had to live and suffer for a long, long time?

And what about all those other people, who are already suffering? Those poor men who went to the prison in El Salvador? The immigrants packed into detention centers? The people who are starving and dying from disease all over the world? The souls under the rubble in Gaza? The people choking on the wildfires in Canada? For them, the world’s already come to an end, and here I am, swimming and enjoying the summer as if it hadn’t.

What if Jesus appeared, walking on the water, and showed me an army of people that could have been so much happier, if I’d somehow tried harder?

We swam until the water felt cold. Then we got out, and dried off on the warm green grass.

We drove back to Steubenville before it was evening.

At home, the horrible dichotomy continued: the whole world was falling to pieces, and I was living my day-to-day life. There were the Artful Dodgers, who always watch to see when my car parks in front of the house. They wanted popsicles from the freezer and to watch cartoons on my television while they played with Adrienne’s old toys. There was the video of the sitting senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed, as the United States of America dissolved into whatever we become next. There was the mother of the Baker Street Irregulars, texting me to ask if I knew a recipe for a Greek lasagna. I said if she bought the ingredients when her food stamps reloaded, I’d bake it for her. There were the soldiers menacing the protesters in Los Angeles. There was the report that Israel was currently shelling Iran, trying to take out all their nuclear facilities. There were the people saying the United States would be pulled into the war by the weekend. There was the garden with weeds to pull and summer squash to pick.

All the world was in agony, and it felt to me like day-to-day life.

The end of the world felt like day-to-day life.

At the end of the world, I went swimming. And then I went on with my day-to-day life.

And if Christ returned just then, I wouldn’t know what to say.