While many today are writing about their outrage at the state of the world, I am choosing not to write about broken things. I don’t want to write about the world teetering off its access. I want to write about something much more fun and up-lifting. I want to write about happier times and skinny-dipping.

At the gym the other day, one of my pool friends was talking about her thinning hair and how she had a new strategy to volumize it. In a flash this brought me back to a time many years ago when I was hosting two young girls at our house for a month. One was my niece from Colorado and the other was the daughter of a dear friend. They were both 10 years old. Both were interested in music and drama and had signed up for a performing arts camp nearby. So I had the rare pleasure of being their Mom for the month. We had a swimming pool at our house in Massachusetts and one night after a long hot day of camp, I told them that I was going to introduce them to the special pleasure of skinny-dipping. This was met with gales of giggles and some consternation as to whether my husband would peek at us. I assured them he would not. So with little hesitation, we all took off our sweaty clothes and jumped into the pool. Molly, one of the girls, exclaimed loudly- I feel so free!! So volumized!

Volumized indeed. I have a long history of skinny-dipping as I think it truly is one of life’s great pleasures. There’s something about the soft caress of the water on your skin, of the feeling of being unencumbered that is simply sublime. I recall being at a sales meeting at the Mohonk Mountain House in New York and convincing my cronies late one night to sneak down to the deep, dark lake and go for a dip. A skinny-dip. It felt like we were really breaking the rules which was quite liberating. That is until the security guards marched onto the dock and asked us what we were up to. While I tried to hide under the dock, my colleague, a salesman from Detroit, put up his arms as if he were being arrested and said- “We’re guests!!” Mercifully, we were allowed to gather our belongings and sneak back to our rooms.

This was not the only time I was an outlaw at a sales meeting. I recall another time when I convinced several of my much-younger colleagues to jump a fence into a pool area and go for a forbidden dip. I might be old, but I’m still fun!

For a girl who mostly plays by the rules and wants to do the right thing, this is one area where I love to break the rules. This story holds special meaning for me now as my niece from this story has spent the last four years working in the White House. I think about her daily and wonder how she is navigating the horror that is taking place. I love to think of a happier time when we could feel so free and volumized. I yearn for the day, when I can say to my pals- jump in, the water’s warm.