No Running Around The Pool

 No Running Around the Pool, a painting by my sister (denisebrookstudio.com), is ‘an homage to mom, who forever yelled those words at us while she sucked down vodkas and made us lunch.’ Such rife symbolism. The San Fernando valley is blazing hot in the summer. A swimming pool is a magical escape. Splashing and laughing with friends. Soaking in soothing, invigorating womb-temperature water. That forty-thousand gallons of clear liquid was space to go all out, stretch, scream, play. Then lemonade, sodas and melon under the shade of the patio overhang. The safest of places. And yet.

The pain is palpable in the room---twenty, thirty, forty years later. Talk of patriarchs turns to tales of parents. Eight of us sharing life over warm gooey chocolate chip cookies. Tales of father wounds rendered physically by hand, emotionally by absence. Parent betrayals. “You have to make space for forgiveness in your mind or it’ll eat you up.”

If my mom had a love language it was food. Watermelon slices and snacks in abundance after swimming. Showering us with Michelin star morsels from Sunset magazine recipes. So we had that. There was no hugging, no personal contact and we never heard, “I love you.” Not even years after I’d been softened enough to say it to her. As for the vodka drinking---that left other marks; some visible in cigarette burns on the linoleum.

Growing up I wanted everything black and white. Easier to hold to artificial absolutes in a childhood that didn’t have many. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” says Solzhenitsyn. As I see more gray in me, I realize this: the rule, no running around the pool, applies to everybody. It’s easy to slip and cause harm. Forgiveness is similar. A rule to heal us from harm against us. Freeing us to get back into the swim.

Swimming

We swim in an alien atmosphere. I remember early voyages. Passing through a white, steel gate; walking down a narrow corridor you smell it. Chlorine saturated water steams from wet cement. An adult beckons; parents push. The first step into clear blue water; foot feeling the tension as it breaks the surface, then the other.  Oh, the cold!

I’m not comfortable entering a pool.  My asthmatic lungs seize up with quick temperature change. I can barely breathe. I’m leaving the safety of air and firm footing. One step down; bathing suit gets wet and heavy. Two steps down then hold to the side, hold to the side! 

Grasping tight the pool’s edge over there is a pile of rectangles; like tops from Styrofoam ice-boxes. Bright colors; cherry red and cobalt blue with corners cut-off. For what purpose?

Inside the pool a line of children hold to the edge. An adult towers over us in a red bathing suit. “Pretend you’re in a big bathtub.  Face down and blow bubbles.” Easy. Each is given an ice-box cover. Trembling and terror, we leave the side. Grasping kick-boards we shove out across the shallow end a line of stick men without arms.

The new house has a pool. Neighbor girls hurl us into cold water. The sink-or-swim school. Dog paddles stave off drowning. Paddles turn to superior strokes. What was fearful now’s freedom.  Summer days spent swimming til cool water constricts blood vessels. We turn purple.

We swim in an alien atmosphere. The sink-or-swim school. Bright colors bid us leave the shallow end to the scary deep. Perhaps freedom awaits!