Moonglow (LynnK)

The sun was setting on Wednesday evening as we gathered, a dozen of us, for water aerobics. The day had been warm, so I skipped practice for Handel’s Messiah to join the other Aqua-naughties at the far end of Coronado’s recreation pool.

We back-poolers are the ones who have mastered the art of simultaneous high-intensity aerobics and yakking. Mostly about food. Go figure. Or singing along to the music. Yipyipyipyipyipyipyipyip boomboomboomboomboomboom get a job! Nanananaa!Nananananaa! We’re thinking of forming a rock group. The Pagan Babes.

Up front, the scarily energetic young Leader and her devoted followers are throwing themselves into frog leaps, cross-country "skiing," jumping jills, donkey kicks, and assorted other means of legalized, self-imposed torture.

Don’t get me wrong. Although we aqua-naughties are young only at heart, we work hard. Usually. But unlike the Good Students in the front, we don’t feel obliged to follow the drill. I detest "sprinting," so I boogie. I prefer "pendulums" to "sinkers." Dolores likes to lunge.
Sue sometimes abandons us for the competition pool to swim laps. Thea performs invisibly, only her head breaking the water.

The Aquatics Center is located on a narrow spit of land known as the Silver Strand, with the ocean on one side behind a sprouting of condos and San Diego Bay alongside us on the other. We’re outdoors, with glass windscreens that help until November. Even then, it gets too cold only for weenies like me.

The evening was proceeding as usual until the sunlight over the black west went (h/t to Gerard Manley Hopkins). And then, ah, rising above the eastern mountains, soared the Harvest Moon.

I cannot tell you how beautiful it was, huge and round and golden against the indigo sky. The colored, twinkling lights of the city mosaic-ed into the background. To the left, the bridge curved like a dancer’s arm. The moon traced a silver-gold path across the dark water of the bay, a primal summons to ancient mysteries.

So I did what came naturally. Lifting my head, raising my arms, I howled.

Moments later, the Aqua-naughties—of course, they immediately understood—took to howling as well. And shortly after, the others joined in. Choral practice after all! Howl-leluiah! Except that we were baying at the moon.

I’d bet nothing like that had ever occurred in Coronado!

It didn’t last long. We were pretty breathless from exercise and blather. But just as we set to howling, a nice-looking guy who’d been working out in the large competition pool strode past us on his way to the locker rooms.

I’ve no idea what he thought was happening. Maybe the equivalent of construction guys hailing a cute chick, or that we’d all got high on chlorine fumes. We were facing his direction at that point, wet and scraggly, looking more like the witches from Macbeth than Harvest Goddesses. All I can say is that the look on his face was priceless.

Later that evening, showered and robed, I walked alone beside the bay and watched the moon rise high over San Diego. A cool breeze lifted my hair. Water lapped against the dock. A white heron, glowing in the moonlight, poised motionless on a rock and waited for supper to swim by.

How lucky I am.