Reviewed by Dorothy Rowena Rice
Midstream: A Life Remade in 50 Swims (Beacon Press; July 2026) by Kate Washington is a natural sequel to her 2021 memoir Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America about her years as a caregiver during her husband’s cancer.
Midstream picks up with the years following her husband’s recovery — when, at the end of her forties, facing a milestone 50th birthday, Washington was ready to chart a new path for herself, one not solely dictated by the needs and desires of others.
Kate began what she terms the 50 Dunks Project to shake the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, by returning to what she had always loved and found joy in: immersion in natural water bodies. A native Californian, with roots in the family’s Chico-area orchard and the nearby rivers and streams, the project was also a way to rediscover the childhood freedom of leaping into cold, clear water. The goal of 50 dunks in natural water bodies by her 50th birthday frames a time of transition and discovery, of peeling back layers and years of putting others first and finding who she wanted to be entering the post-50 era.
Of her first swim, a cold plunge into the Pacific Ocean at Dillon Beach in Northern California, she writes:
“For a moment water, wind, sand, and sun washed away the doldrums of the pandemic and the years of caretaking, family obligation, and burnout that for me had preceded it… Was I really going to turn fifty feeling stuck and depleted? Was this all the middle of my life had to offer? What could I do to mark a new decade that wouldn’t punish myself, like so many such goals (weight loss, say) but might actually be a fun quest?”
Swimming holes, hot springs, rivers, lakes, tiny creeks, and oceans — they all counted. California, the author’s home state, has an abundance of natural water bodies. And while most of the fifty swims are in California, there are notable dunks in other western states, Hawaii, and, near the end of the author’s journey, three while visiting France.
Midstream is not a recitation of all fifty swims (though, for the curious, a listing of all fifty is provided at the back of the book). The narrative weaves highlights of swims and water bodies that hold particular significance for the author — often due to their associations with other aspects of the narrator’s life, past and present — her changing marriage, motherhood, and how patterns of behavior set in the past have brought her to a crossroads, a time where change feels vital, inevitable and necessary.
In addition to her personal narrative, the author reflects on the nature of the traditional marriage contract between men and women more generally, on the way its obligations vary between partners. Her reflections are buttressed with references to others who have written powerfully on the topic of gendered roles and expectations in marriage (such as Maggie Smith, in her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful) and on how women’s needs and pain are more easily minimized and dismissed both societally and by the medical establishment (such as attitudes towards menopause).
As the months and swims accrue, Washington’s marriage becomes more tenuous — the connection with her husband weakening as she takes time for herself, time to, not only sink into cool, refreshing, mind-clearing water, but also time to find her own center, the root of her own happiness and strength, apart from how she has been defined by marriage, caregiving and family obligations.
It happens that the 50 Dunks Project coincides with the promotion of her previous memoir, Already Toast. Traveling to promote her book, she packs a swimsuit, towel and water shoes — always on the lookout for the chance to jump, dive or tiptoe into another beckoning water body. Of this time, Washington notes: “. . . the thought of promoting a book about caring for my husband while explaining that he wasn’t my husband anymore felt too embarrassing to contemplate.” She is candid about the discomfiting guilt of speaking at events and conferences for caregivers while knowing a separation and ultimate divorce from her husband was imminent and necessary.
In charting the slow demise of her marriage, Washington writes without rancor or blame. Like so many women, she married because, at the time, it seemed like what she was meant to do, the next logical, expected step. And, as for so many women, over years, what had once felt, if not amazing, then adequate, satisfactory, became less so. She and her husband go through counseling and attempt to close the intimacy and communication gap that has grown between them. Yet Washington knows the “problem” is something deeper, more fundamental. As she says, “I wanted to end our marriage because it didn’t feel like a partnership, and he had never given me the emotional support I craved . . .”
Many aspects of the slow dissolution of her marriage struck close to home. Rather than blame her husband, she reflects, “. . . it wasn’t his fault he didn’t know how to meet my needs and wants. I had made myself small, even to myself, since the earliest days of our relationship — really, since the earliest days of my life, having absorbed early-on that the best way to get love, or at least not to get criticized, was to demand little and be no bother.” I imagine many women have absorbed similar attitudes towards their own happiness and autonomy. In giving herself a directive, a goal, and permission to accomplish fifty swims before her next birthday, Washington learns to move beyond guilt at taking time for herself.
As a native Californian myself, and one who shares the author’s respect and love for natural spaces, I especially appreciated the way Washington uses water and watersheds, geology and the interconnectedness of land, water, weather and the influence of man, as a metaphor for the ebbs, flows and schisms in relationships and the individual psyche. At many points within the memoir, her journalistic skill and curiosity about environmental matters are evident. An example is the chapter titled “A Tale of Two Watersheds,” which weaves together her husband deciding to move out of the family home, painful reminiscences of her mother’s death by suicide (a time when she deeply felt her husband’s lack of empathy and understanding), and vivid depictions of two dunks. Of the plunge into the waters of Beale Falls, a spring-fed creek to a waterfall that plummets into a deep, wide hole, she writes:
“That bone-chilling dunk, and the events of that day, long wished for and long-feared, represented a watershed in my life — a sharp break, though a watershed itself is a connected territory, an area of land in which all the water drains to a common outlet.”
The location of her 50th swim, on the day of the author’s 50th birthday, is one she’d chosen from the start — the South Yuba, on Highway 49, a favorite stretch of river, accompanied by her two teenage daughters. With its smooth rock formations, deep pools, and frothy rapids, it’s a swimmer’s paradise (one of mine too). For the author, the area’s significance, and the timing of this final swim are multifaceted. It’s been a favorite spot for the family and having her daughters there enjoying it with her, brings a note of joy and peace following difficult months of adjusting to divorce and single parenthood.
As the author notes, the Yuba was once all-but decimated by hydraulic mining. While it will never be as it was before the arrival of white miners and settlers, over a century and with new environmental safeguards, it has returned to much of its former natural, rugged beauty. The author finds personal resonance in this environmental success story: “By the end of my forties, I felt like I had been hydraulically mined, exploited — unlike a river, with my own consent and by my own choice — for my emotional gold, all the care and support I could provide to others.”
Reflecting on the project, beginning with that first dunk in the Pacific Ocean at Dillon Beach and ending with her fiftieth, into the wild and wonderful Yuba River, she writes, “The pleasure and catharsis of water was my way of coming back to myself, but anyone whose streams have been diverted, who has stagnated, will find that redemption in their own way.”
With Midstream, Kate Washington invites the reader to experience the unique and specific route she chose to rediscover and reclaim her individuality and autonomy. Her candid, relatable and inspiring memoir also struck me as an invitation — to consider how I might challenge myself to shake up my own final quarter and spark new joy (I’m closer to 75 than 50).
