Carpe Chlorine
My parents recently relocated and semi-retired to a brand new home on a golf course in a Delaware beach town. They have furnished the second floor of this home as a grandchild paradise, complete with the toy room filled with toys, books, and movies, the cousin sleepover room with two sets of bunk beds, and the TV room with a huge sectional sofa that my daughter says twenty people could sit on at once. However, right now the big draw of a visit to grandma and grandpa’s house is not in the house, but two blocks away at the golf course club house. I am referring, of course, to the indoor swimming pool. I am not a huge fan of swimming in the winter time, partly because I like my swimsuit season clearly defined by the three months considered summer and partly because I think it is a bad idea to spend an hour in 85 degree water and then head back out into the cold. However, I can definitely understand why my kids think that every opportunity to go swimming must be seized, because a long time ago when I was a kid, I felt the exact same way.
The first swimming pool that I remember is the one that was in my grandfather’s back yard in New Jersey. It was a four foot tall aboveground pool with metal on the outside and a rough vinyl lining on the inside. To enter the pool, you first stepped into a Rubbermaid bucket full of water to clean the sand off of your feet (this particular part of south Jersey has rather sandy soil) and then climbed the metal step ladder that had been shoved up against the side of the pool. At the top you turned around, lowered yourself in, and then lunged for the side of the pool, because it was much too deep for the average child to stand. And for years, that was all we did. My brothers and sisters and I would hang on to the edge of the pool and work our way around and around. Occasionally we would venture onto an inflatable raft or into an inflatable floaty, but there were never enough for all of the cousins, so everyone had to do time clinging to the side of the pool. This was not easy on your fingers or on your feet, but every day we badgered our mom or our aunt or any adult who would listen until they would agree to come out and sit by the pool so we could have a “swim.”
Every summer also included a visit to my Uncle Jack in Massachusetts who had a huge in ground swimming pool in his backyard. It had a shallow end marked off by a rope, and a diving board over what seemed to be an excessively deep deep end. You could sit on the edge of the pool for as long as you liked, getting used to the water and ready for a dip (given that the pool was in Massachusetts, this acclimation was more than necessary because the water was always freezing cold). Once you were ready, you could jump in, or jump off the diving board, or slowly walk in on the steps. We loved visiting Uncle Jack and swimming in his pool, but it never really occurred to us that his pool was better than my grandfather’s pool. In our minds, both households were far superior to ours, because we had no pool of any kind.
We lobbied for years and years to get our parents to install a pool for us. Looking back now, a house on a corner lot on a bus route in Washington, DC, is probably not the ideal location for a swimming pool. Also complicating matters was the yard, which was on the side of the house, not the back. It had a distinct slope, so distinct in fact that the walk out basement door in the back of the house was still two steps above the yard. Unbeknownst to us, my parents did actually discuss whether it would be possible to install a pool in the side yard, but given the small size of the lot and the stockade fence that would have been necessary to keep the pool hoppers out, they concluded it couldn’t be done without making our house look like a colonial fort. Instead, they bought a membership in a pool club about 30 minutes from the house.
Almost every weekday of the summer my mom would pack a cooler and drive us out to the pool club where we would spend hours in the water. The club included a baby pool, a lap pool, and an entire pool that ranged from 2 ½ to 3 ½ feet deep, perfect for short little splashers like us. The pool provided a good escape for my mom too, since we usually only bothered her when we were hungry. Sometimes we would bring our school friends as guests, and sometimes we would run into other members that we knew, but a lot of the time, we were the only kids in the pool, and we were happy. My dad was never a big fan of sitting by the pool, but I’m sure he liked our membership too, since we would arrive home every evening exhausted, ready to eat dinner and go to bed without complaining.
The only private pool that I swam in that did not make me jealous was an experimental pool installed by another uncle. He was in the precast concrete business, and from what I can remember, he decided to install swimming pools by pouring a concrete form and then dropping in a liner. This might be something that would work; I’ll leave that determination to the engineers. However, he installed a rectangular pool that was six feet deep from end to end. Along the rim of the pool was a half pipe of hard plastic, that I believe, in theory, was supposed to join the edge of the pool to the concrete deck. Unfortunately, my uncle never built the concrete deck. Instead his pool sat like a crown on a mountain of mud, with the pool edge about 18 inches higher than the dirt surrounding it. Once you were in, there was nothing to hold onto but this hard plastic edge which was so painful, that you immediately let go to tread water until you were ready for another few seconds holding the rim. The liner inside the pool was so slick that you couldn’t even cling to it with your toes to take a little weight off your poor suffering fingers. What he had created was not so much a pool as a water-filled pit of despair. Thankfully my mother must have noted how little fun we were having, because we only spent one harrowing afternoon in the experimental pool.
My brothers and sisters and I were not the sissy kind of kids who spent their week at the beach swimming in the hotel pool. We were willing to brave the ocean, even though it required much more effort and always ended with one of us face down in the surf. We swam in some extremely questionable lakes and state parks over the years without wondering why the water was brown and/or what exactly was spewing from that pipe further down the beach. But I guess we have always loved pools (other than Uncle Joe’s) because they are so predictable. You don’t need to keep an eye out for rogue waves, you don’t end up with sand in your suit, and except for the occasional confused frog, you don’t encounter any wildlife or aquatic friends that you don’t know.
In the end, we got our pool. I believe I was 24 when my parents bought their first beach house (another demand we made on a regular basis as kids), a townhouse in a development with a community pool. Every summer when we visited, we could walk over to the pool and swim, or sit and have a beer, and pretend the pool was our own. Granted, it was not right out the back door, but it was close enough. And now, my parents’ new home has both an indoor and outdoor pool ready and waiting for the grandkids every time they visit. Some day, probably sooner than I’d like to think, I can take my kids to the pool, pull up a chair, open a beer, and sit and read while they have fun. But for now, they are all too short. They all cling to the side of the pool like we used to, and have a great time as the cement edges scrape their little fingertips. I know how much fun they are having, so from now on, the bathing suits will not get packed away with the summer clothes. In Delaware, the pool will always be open.
The first swimming pool that I remember is the one that was in my grandfather’s back yard in New Jersey. It was a four foot tall aboveground pool with metal on the outside and a rough vinyl lining on the inside. To enter the pool, you first stepped into a Rubbermaid bucket full of water to clean the sand off of your feet (this particular part of south Jersey has rather sandy soil) and then climbed the metal step ladder that had been shoved up against the side of the pool. At the top you turned around, lowered yourself in, and then lunged for the side of the pool, because it was much too deep for the average child to stand. And for years, that was all we did. My brothers and sisters and I would hang on to the edge of the pool and work our way around and around. Occasionally we would venture onto an inflatable raft or into an inflatable floaty, but there were never enough for all of the cousins, so everyone had to do time clinging to the side of the pool. This was not easy on your fingers or on your feet, but every day we badgered our mom or our aunt or any adult who would listen until they would agree to come out and sit by the pool so we could have a “swim.”
Every summer also included a visit to my Uncle Jack in Massachusetts who had a huge in ground swimming pool in his backyard. It had a shallow end marked off by a rope, and a diving board over what seemed to be an excessively deep deep end. You could sit on the edge of the pool for as long as you liked, getting used to the water and ready for a dip (given that the pool was in Massachusetts, this acclimation was more than necessary because the water was always freezing cold). Once you were ready, you could jump in, or jump off the diving board, or slowly walk in on the steps. We loved visiting Uncle Jack and swimming in his pool, but it never really occurred to us that his pool was better than my grandfather’s pool. In our minds, both households were far superior to ours, because we had no pool of any kind.
We lobbied for years and years to get our parents to install a pool for us. Looking back now, a house on a corner lot on a bus route in Washington, DC, is probably not the ideal location for a swimming pool. Also complicating matters was the yard, which was on the side of the house, not the back. It had a distinct slope, so distinct in fact that the walk out basement door in the back of the house was still two steps above the yard. Unbeknownst to us, my parents did actually discuss whether it would be possible to install a pool in the side yard, but given the small size of the lot and the stockade fence that would have been necessary to keep the pool hoppers out, they concluded it couldn’t be done without making our house look like a colonial fort. Instead, they bought a membership in a pool club about 30 minutes from the house.
Almost every weekday of the summer my mom would pack a cooler and drive us out to the pool club where we would spend hours in the water. The club included a baby pool, a lap pool, and an entire pool that ranged from 2 ½ to 3 ½ feet deep, perfect for short little splashers like us. The pool provided a good escape for my mom too, since we usually only bothered her when we were hungry. Sometimes we would bring our school friends as guests, and sometimes we would run into other members that we knew, but a lot of the time, we were the only kids in the pool, and we were happy. My dad was never a big fan of sitting by the pool, but I’m sure he liked our membership too, since we would arrive home every evening exhausted, ready to eat dinner and go to bed without complaining.
The only private pool that I swam in that did not make me jealous was an experimental pool installed by another uncle. He was in the precast concrete business, and from what I can remember, he decided to install swimming pools by pouring a concrete form and then dropping in a liner. This might be something that would work; I’ll leave that determination to the engineers. However, he installed a rectangular pool that was six feet deep from end to end. Along the rim of the pool was a half pipe of hard plastic, that I believe, in theory, was supposed to join the edge of the pool to the concrete deck. Unfortunately, my uncle never built the concrete deck. Instead his pool sat like a crown on a mountain of mud, with the pool edge about 18 inches higher than the dirt surrounding it. Once you were in, there was nothing to hold onto but this hard plastic edge which was so painful, that you immediately let go to tread water until you were ready for another few seconds holding the rim. The liner inside the pool was so slick that you couldn’t even cling to it with your toes to take a little weight off your poor suffering fingers. What he had created was not so much a pool as a water-filled pit of despair. Thankfully my mother must have noted how little fun we were having, because we only spent one harrowing afternoon in the experimental pool.
My brothers and sisters and I were not the sissy kind of kids who spent their week at the beach swimming in the hotel pool. We were willing to brave the ocean, even though it required much more effort and always ended with one of us face down in the surf. We swam in some extremely questionable lakes and state parks over the years without wondering why the water was brown and/or what exactly was spewing from that pipe further down the beach. But I guess we have always loved pools (other than Uncle Joe’s) because they are so predictable. You don’t need to keep an eye out for rogue waves, you don’t end up with sand in your suit, and except for the occasional confused frog, you don’t encounter any wildlife or aquatic friends that you don’t know.
In the end, we got our pool. I believe I was 24 when my parents bought their first beach house (another demand we made on a regular basis as kids), a townhouse in a development with a community pool. Every summer when we visited, we could walk over to the pool and swim, or sit and have a beer, and pretend the pool was our own. Granted, it was not right out the back door, but it was close enough. And now, my parents’ new home has both an indoor and outdoor pool ready and waiting for the grandkids every time they visit. Some day, probably sooner than I’d like to think, I can take my kids to the pool, pull up a chair, open a beer, and sit and read while they have fun. But for now, they are all too short. They all cling to the side of the pool like we used to, and have a great time as the cement edges scrape their little fingertips. I know how much fun they are having, so from now on, the bathing suits will not get packed away with the summer clothes. In Delaware, the pool will always be open.
posted by Shannon at 9:45 PM
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