The Little Red Float

I made this smoked salmon frittata for breakfast once over Easter. I made up the recipe myself, and it turned out “not too shabby”, as my husband likes to say. Pre-heat oven to 375 F. Heat 1 Tbs of butter and an equal amount of olive oil in a skillet, add a thinly sliced leek, brown it and season with salt and pepper. While this is going on, you beat 6 eggs and about half a cup of milk in a bowl, add smoked salmon cut in pieces (I used maybe three thin slices of smoked salmon).  Pour this egg-milk-salmon batter over the leek slices and sprinkle half a cup grated Gruyère cheese on top. Cook for 5 minutes and then stick it into the oven for another 8 minutes.

There’s power in objects.

When I was nine or so, my grandparents gave me a bicycle. A Crescent, the best bike brand in Sweden at the time. And that bike was the best I’ve ever had: Smooth and speedy. And yellow.

My mother made me a gingham dress with white lace details and decorative fabric-covered buttons. That dress was also yellow. Same yellow as the bike. Not the sunflower Provence kind of yellow – which is earthy and slightly dirty – nor the watered-out pastel kind, but a clean, clear, strong yellow. Like yellow tulips.

It seems to me my entire childhood is encapsulated in that yellow. Years later, when I visited San Francisco, I recognized the yellow there. San Francisco is as yellow as my childhood.

Growing up, I was a competitive swimmer. I swam several times a week, and sported a blue duffel bag with my club’s name emblazoned on it. In those days, you either wore Arena or Speedo swimwear. I had a beautiful Arena swimsuit, meridian blue with white lines on the side. I had another one, a red and white Speedo of a thinner, glossier material, but I never much liked it. And then I had an all-black Speedo with straps that crossed in the back, which was the thing to have back then (it was called “spider back”). That black swimsuit was my favorite. And then I lost it! I lost it during a competition. We were supposed to bring two swimsuits to a competition, one, which to wear during warm-up, and one to wear while actually competing. In between the different heats, as they were called and probably still are, I lost the black swimsuit. I had planned to compete in it, but changed my mind in the last minute and wore it for the warm-up. Someone either stole it or took it by mistake in the showers.

They gave out medals every now and then, in swimming, and you had to do certain things in order to get them. Swim such and such a distance for the silver fish medal; dive this deep for the gold dolphin medal and so on. This went on, and throughout the years I amassed quite an impressive collection of medals. In this I competed not so much with others as with myself. The last medal – and I can’t even remember the name of it – I never managed to get. It involved diving to the bottom of the deep end of the pool to retrieve a little weight that had been thrown in there. Attached to the weight (which I think was blue) was a string with a little red float, and it was this, which you were supposed to seize and bring back up. I don’t know how many times I tried to get that weight. I dove and I dove and I dove. If I close my eyes now, I can still see that red float, swaying this way and that in the aqua-colored water. All sounds are muffled out. There’s just my white hand, reaching for the float. And then I run out of air, I have to give up. I quickly scissor my legs to propel myself to the surface. Up there is my mom, waiting for me to hold up the float. I look at her and I shake my head “No”.

Later in my life, the red float became a personal metaphor for things I tried to but could never reach. Things, people, places, which seemed to always be just that much beyond my grasp. A relationship with a certain person. A certain academic degree. Traveling to the Fiji Islands. There it is, the infuriating little red float, seemingly so very close, yet never ever close enough.