One memorable Saturday night

I was transported to heaven. Heaven, not the one where you get endless food and wine, no, heaven where happiness is real and in its purest form. Also, this heaven of mine was on earth.

It was a Saturday night, calm and cold. The wind kissed us gently as we walked the frigid and frozen, almost frozen, footpath barefooted. Only lifeless sky-scrapers, dew-dressed grass and a few fireflies accompanied us. We wandered about the buildings and circled the kids play area, twice. We were purposeless and sleepless but we knew the night held something special for us, except we did not know what it was and so we wandered.

Two fifty, we climb the wall of the community swimming pool and jumped in. Yes, we sneaked in. But, we undoubtedly are the most timid people in the world. So we sat on the ice cold bench and argued whether we should swim. As I said, we are timid and so we only decided to dip our legs in the water.

‘Three’ my watch read as the three of us sat down by the poolside. We folded our jeans to our knees and stretched out our legs into the water. Holy molly, the water was cold as though it was poured in from the North Pole. I immediately wanted to get up and run to my warm blanket back in my room, oh how comfortable it would have been. But I could not, they held me there. We sat there unable to feel our toes anymore, talking gently about life. About how our friendship floated through the gusty waves and how swiftly we promise to swim together for life.

And oh we did swim because why not! So we got up and walked to the other side of the pool. And jumped headfirst into the bitterly cold water. “Why did I think this was a good idea?”-  First words after the foolish dive, okay maybe not so foolish! We could feel our feet tremble, sense shivers running down our spine, realise our hands go numb and hear our teeth chatter. We wanted to get out of there and wrap ourselves in sweaters, layers of sweaters. But we chose not to, we chose to take a swim across the pool. All the hype that there is about late night swims, I should say are all true. It feels amazing. Imagine being totally numbed by the cold water and then pushing through the icy beast, paddling your legs and rowing your hands in order to overpower the numbing aqua. The feeling of doing a butterfly can hardly even put in words.

One lap, two laps, and three laps we went on until my watch read four thirty and our toes were dead. But we were not done yet. Not until we had thoroughly experienced the beauty that lay within this beast. “We should do a backstroke” of course why not? Only we did not know how to! So we just ended up floating, on our backs, watching the sky so beautifully decorated with stars, as if each star held a special memory the three of us shared together. Each had its own story, its own shine. Then we started singing. No we are not beautiful singers with exceptional voices; we can hardly hit any notes. Nevertheless we sang and what song better than “cause you are a sky full of stars and I am gonna give you my heart”.

That moment, staring at the stars along with the real stars of my life is where I found my little piece of heaven. In the icy beast under the blue beauty, the sky, we made memories which we’ll maybe someday tell our kids about, feeling all nostalgic and badass.

Then the watchman came and kicked us out of the pool, and we were back to wandering about lifeless buildings and kids play area, only this time we were wet and we had smiles stapled to our faces. Who says all nights are dark and full of terrors? Some nights are plain beautiful and magical.

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