The trick, we both knew, was not to think too hard. My husband and I dropped our towels. We ran right in, like five-year-olds, and dunked under the waves, like clumsy grownups. We stumbled out, wet and cold and laughing.  One plunge was enough. This was the Washington coast, out where the Pacific Ocean rolls in all the way from Japan and smashes the sand so hard an intact seashell is hard to find, where the snowy rivers of the Olympic Mountains pour right into the surf. One plunge was enough to make me feel—newborn. Like the ocean had just washed away all the bullshit I’d allowed to build up in my mind and body and self and soul over the past two and a half years. All the piling on of the world’s problems, the ones none of us can solve though we know we have to try because some progress is better than none. All the sorrows, universal and personal, that Covid has brought. And, for me, all the anguish of feeling frozen, as a writer, after I hit pause on the Book That Apparently Wasn’t Working and then realized I hadn’t hoarded quite enough confidence to get going on my next project. We plunged into the ocean again the next day. Later that week, my daughter and I took a plunge in the coldest part of Hood Canal. Since we got back to Seattle, I’ve gone swimming six times. Every time, I relive that baptismal moment on the Washington coast. Every time, I feel [...]