I would love to make a documentary on why women swim. I see so much visual possibility, and I can imagine a great many stories –– funny ones, moving ones, inspiring ones –– being shared. I think many women choose the water after some kind of trauma. A surgery, perhaps, or an emotional struggle. It’s a gentle, soothing place. You feel your limbs stretching, your breath regulating. We are 60 per cent water. Swimming is intuitive. It’s instinctual. It’s nature. I don’t believe most women swim to achieve a perfect body. I think we swim to feel comfort and wellness in the body we have. Many women swim through pregnancy, as it gives them the gift of weightlessness. Many swim after childbirth because it feels like a gentle way to take care of a post-partum body. It’s one of the first activities that many new Mums do with their babies. It’s where women come to be alone, but to feel buoyed by the water, and their fellow swimmers. After three babies, and many years running on hard tarmac, swimming was the antidote I needed. It felt like a kinder approach to exercise, and something I could sustain for the rest of my life. I know a number of women, well into their 70s who have swum all their lives. You see it in their faces, as much as you see it in their bodies. A serenity, I think. One lady at my community pool, wears lipstick to match her frilly hat. Swimming is an occasion. Another lady spends as much time nattering to the young life guards as she does pushing her flutter board up and down the lane. But everyone seems as comfortable in water, as they are on land. “More, actually,” says a mother of three teenagers. She swims like an amphibian, with long, exaggerated movements that have become her signature. “For me, swimming is a meditation. I write speeches while I swim, work through arguments, solve problems, zone out. It’s exercise, and so much more.” The water, the ritual, it keeps women centered. “When you enter the water, something like a metamorphosis happens,” writes Roger Deakin in his 1998 book on swimming. I couldn’t agree more. Something happens to us, we are reminded that we are akin to whales, and designed to do this.

What a lovely combination of daffodils, tulips and roses. Three such classic blooms, in an arrangement that’s anything but. It’s the mix of fried egg daffs and dusty pink roses that got me. I’d plonk them all together in a tall tin cylinder with something green, like Eucalyptus branches.

My feet are my locomotive. I walk, a lot. There are details that you miss in a car. Graffiti on walls, flyers on telephone poles, the seasonal planters on people’s stoops. I bump into people that I know; a quick banter en route to the community centre, a smile and a wave from the other side of the parkette. I look at people’s shoes as I walk. The colour of their polish. Or I marvel at the way birds fly in those seemingly choreographed formations.  On some routes, ones I’ve walked countless times, I could tell you every word inscribed in the pavement. I know my favourite coloured doors, laneways, and murals. I know which traffic lights are slow to change. I’ve watched houses being built. And demolished. And trees lose their leaves. And produce blossoms. I’ve read the plaques on most benches in my neighbourhood. I’ve watched crabs scuttle through Chinatown. And raccoons leap out of bins. I’ve watched people kissing, and shouting and crying. I’ve walked so slowly, I’m barely moving. I’ve walked so fast, I am soaked through. Artist Maira Kalman puts it more poetically: “I walk everywhere in the city. Any city. You see everything you need to see for a lifetime. Every emotion. Every condition. Every fashion. Every glory.”

It helps that we’ve had one glorious day after another, but on days when the air is crisp, and the light is golden, and the sky looks like someone painted it with one even shade of blue, there is no lovelier season than Autumn. I’m a city girl, but at this time of year, I really feel the draw of nature. And seeing as I don’t drive, the city’s ravines are the best I can do. Yesterday, I took my children (with much coercion, and some tears) to the woods. It was more twenty-minute leafy walk than woodland adventure, but I did come away with a fir cone and three twigs in my pocket. More importantly, we re-entered the city in much better moods than the ones we were previously in.

One of things I love about travelling, is the opportunity to bring unusual things home. I still kick myself for not buying half a dozen cheap-as-chips rugs in San Miguel Allende, or for leaving that hand carved mirror behind in Marrakech. When you’re on the side of the world, and you see something you love, buy it. One can’t be too practical about such purchases. This summer, we drove through the Hudson Valley and the Berkshires, and it was a fabulous ostrich egg that returned as our prized purchase. We found it at a Saturday market in Rhinebeck, and after much deliberation, decided to bring it home with us. We kept it in a cooler bag at my feet for the entire drive, and replenished the ice at every stop. One ostrich egg is the equivalent of 24 chicken eggs, a massive frittata, but my intention was never to consume the egg. It was the shell I wanted, drained of its contents, and displayed in a beautiful ceramic bowl. One drill, several straws, and many squeals later, the egg was clean. Trust me, your appetite for an omelette disappears when you see that much yolk ooze out of an egg. It’s a family jewel now. I admire it everyday.