I’m writing from my daughter’s swim practice.

The Aquatic Center is like a greenhouse. It’s hot in here, way too hot for October. This is the last column of the month, and I haven’t written a single word about Mr. Pumpkin or Halloween.

The Cranors still don’t even have their costumes picked out. I’m considering going as a werewolf, a safe bet, considering the beard, the body hair.

If you can’t tell, life has been, well, crazy. A good kind of crazy, but crazy all the same.

My daughter takes these swells the hardest. She doesn’t like it when I’m away. She’s nine, old enough to understand what’s being wagered but still young enough to miss her daddy when he’s gone.

She asked me if I’d take her to swim practice tonight. She wanted me to watch. There isn’t much to see. Lap after lap. I don’t know how she does it. A full hour and a half worth of breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly.

Then again, I spent the better part of my day at my desk. I just started a new project, an idea I’ve been dreaming about for what feels like forever. Those dreams spiraled down from my mind and out through my fingers, all the way up until the kids came home from school.

I ate supper with the family. We played music. I sang and strummed the guitar while my daughter tickled the ivories and my son pounded the drums. Then it was off to swim practice.

It’s still going on, lap after lap, and here I am, doing what I've been doing all day: writing.

Maybe I do get it. Maybe my daughter finds peace in the pool the same way I find peace with a pen in my hand, mind focused only on the next word.

My mother was a triathlete. She excelled in the water, but she once told me that looking out across the lake, the ocean — wherever that leg of the race took place — always scared her.

“The secret,” she said, “is to just focus on the next buoy.”

I don’t know if I’ve ever told my daughter that story. I need to. I will, tonight, when she finally gets out of the pool.

I think about the next buoy every time I sit down to write. I’m thinking about it now, as I come into the homestretch of this column, a short piece about being too busy, about getting back into a rhythm, a routine, finding your stroke.

“Where are you writing from?”

The spell is broken. I look up. A woman is standing over me.

“Actually, I’m writing from right here,” I say, even though it takes me a moment to remember where I am, the whole reason I came to swim practice in the first place.

The woman smiles, nods, then walks away, but my daughter’s still out there, swimming. My eyes catch her eyes on the upward thrust of a breaststroke.

Another splash and she's gone under again.

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