Sacred Pool

Pools are central to some of the best memories I have of being a kid.  The indoor pool at Anna Hiss Gymnasium at UT with its tile wall mosaic of goldfish and seaweed was my first church.  Floating on my back near the bottom of Northwest Pool and looking up through my goggles at the pebbled surface of the water under a sudden summer shower is the closest I've ever gotten to complete, other-worldly peace.  The pool was an escape from heat and gravity and the long, boring stretches of summer afternoons, and underwater I felt like I shed the too-tight skin of awkward childhood and became a perfect expression of light, sound, and movement.  Because of this, dirty or otherwise unpleasant pool experiences offend me on an almost religious level.  They are blasphemous, and I leave them feeling indignant and more than a little hurt.

Yesterday was such an experience.  The lap pool at the base is lovely and long, one end lying in the shade of an awning in the late afternoon and the other stretching out toward the arched green glass of the gym's panoramic windows.  Its water is most often clear and cool, the better to watch all the elaborate tattoos slice by on the muscled backs of sailors preparing for their swim qualifications.

But lately the air has been a dirty, woolen brown from wildfires in other parts of the state, and since the Central Valley sits low between two mountain ranges everything settles here like silt at the bottom of an ashtray.  Usually Pants and I leave the bedroom window open at night to let in the cool desert breeze, but we've had to stop this month because now the nights are hot and the mornings smell like a cheap, roadside motel.  I had hoped that the pool would provide some relief from this overwhelming sense of suffocation.  Instead, I found myself sliding into a tepid, cloudy greenness that felt exactly like the air, only flabbier.  Beneath the surface, I saw nothing with clarity except the motes in my eyes and the fog collecting beneath my goggle lenses, and back on the surface I found myself coated in a greasy film of sunscreen and muck.  Fat red wasps lighted on the surface of my lane as I paddled back and forth, trying to get up some speed so that at least the air would cool me when my head and arms popped up.

That's when the little boy hopping in and out of the first lap lane trying to learn to dive caught my attention.  He was summer brown, gangly, and had light blond hair buzzed close to his over-sized head like velvet, and he was afraid.  His mom sat in the shade of a table umbrella nearby and his sisters, two brunettes, one older and one younger, leapt in and out of the water in rotation with him, except they both dove straight and beautiful from the racing platform and he tipped stiffly and hesitantly from the concrete.  Soon, mom and the girls were ready to go, but the boy wailed from the pool's side that he wanted to stay until he could dive.  I stopped my laps and lounged with Pants at the shady shallow end of our lane for a while and when I started swimming again, I noticed that mom and the girls were gone and now a giant man with a blond buzz cut stood on the shore behind the boy with his hands on his hips.  He looked like his shirt was stuffed with couch cushions, and the green glaze of the pool reflected from his steel-framed glasses.  

"Oh my God!" he shouted, "What is the problem here?  Just put your head down and jump!" 

I slowed my pace and watched.  In between dips beneath the surface and the roar of bubbles, I caught more of the one-sided exchange.

Man: Jump!

Boy: [arms pointed overhead]...

Man: JUMP!

Boy: ...

Man: I've had a long day here and I'm tired and I'm in no mood to play games, so let's go!  Come on!

Boy: ...

Man: CHRIST!  It's not hard.  There's nothing to be afraid of.  Do I need to hang you over the water by your ankles to show you that?

Boy: [tentative, creaking jump, more of a belly flop]

Man: No!  That's not a dive!  You have to jump out first.  Do it again!

Boy: I'm scared.

Man: Why?

Boy: I don't know.

At this point I've pulled up short at the pool's opposite end again and stopped Pants to watch the exchange.  He has a sense of shame and privacy and is less the voyeur, and so quickly resumes swimming, but I stand and watch.

Man: If you're really scared you should be able to tell me clearly what you're afraid of.  You should have the words for that.  'I don't know' isn't good enough.  'I don't know' [high, sissy voice] isn't an answer!

Boy: [on the bank again, head hanging, continuously wiping his face] ...

Man: God.  We're going to be here all night.

Boy: ...

Man: Go on!  You've got to learn this! You're not going to split your head open!  You could dive all the way straight down and you'd never hit your head.  Go!

Boy: [tentative jump, curved belly flop.]

The Boy continues to dive at least ten more times, each time the same jump, each time the same loud criticism.  Finally:

Man: JESUS!  Let's go.  C'mon, get out.  This is useless. [Man stomps over to table and grabs Boy's towel and returns to throw it over boy's head, covering his face completely as he comes out of the pool.  Boy stands for a long moment covered by the towel and Man stomps off.  My heart breaks.]

All this time I've been thinking about having kids and making tiny little plans in a secret room in my mind about what I'll name them and what nicknames I'll come up with for those names and stories I'll tell them and places I'll try to take them on vacation.  I know the last thing an exasperated parent wants to hear is advice or criticism from the childless, but I wanted so much to erase that whole scene, to call the boy "kiddo" and give him a hug and tell him it's OK not to learn it all in one day, that leaping headfirst off something is scary because it's an evolutionary thing-- people wouldn't have been around long if that felt natural and fun right away.  I guess I could see the man's twisted little point too-- kids need to learn to be tough, or face their fears or something.  But how he thought screaming and bullying was going to do it is beyond me.  

Mostly I saw that exchange and worried for my future kids.  Pants and I have our weaknesses--though not screaming asshole bullies, we are pretty high-achieving stressed out people.  We're perfectionists.  He sees it more clearly in me than himself, and I see it more in him, but we'll both agree it's there.  I know we'll try very hard not to pressure our kids, or get all hyper-involved in their development and activities, but nobody's perfect and patterns tend to repeat.

I just don't want to ruin the pool for my kid.  That at least should be sacred.