There is something sacred about swimming. Swimming pools. It was never an option for me, my sisters, or my cousins, not to learn how to swim. It was almost like it was a must do on our “To Do” list of childhood. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, never learned how to swim. Being one of eight children, it was never made priority in my grandmother’s upbringing to learn how to swim. Therefore, it was her mission in life to make sure that her children and grandchildren all knew how to swim. We all had to learn, we all had to attend swimming lessons, and at some point in our teen years, we all had to become a swim counselor or lifeguard. We would all grow up to become proficient and avid swimmers.
When my grandmother was forty-seven years old, she and my grandfather made the key decision to put and build a pool on their property. Looking back now, it was that pool that made all the difference.
I grew up hearing stories of my mother and her siblings attending swimming lessons at the Fish and Game Club in Cherry Valley, New York. She would tell me how they would get on the school bus at the old school, singing songs like “99 bottles of beer on the wall,” and “Found a Peanut,” the whole 5-minute drive up to the tiny pond on Fish and Game Club Road. Upon arrival at the pond, all the children would race off the bus and run toward the crescent shaped row of Adirondack Chairs, throwing their towels over the chairs to claim their spots for lunch. Not every child was lucky enough to reserve a chair, but my mother was one of the fast ones, and she was always ready to save her spot. Their swimming lessons would take place in the shallow fishing pond. Something I always found fascinating and classic, as my swimming lessons, years later, would be given inside a Sports Center. Swimming levels would be decided by each swimmer’s skills. After the 90-minute session, and after hosing off their legs, removing any blood suckers they would find on their small bodies, my mother said they would then eat their bagged lunches brought from home on their fought after Adirondack chair. Some days she would even go into the Club House and purchase an orange soda for 25 cents; the only time she remembers drinking soda as a child. She said it was one of her fondest childhood memories and based on the number of times she would retell me her swimming lesson stories, it almost felt like I was right there with her, swimming in that lily padded and blood sucker filled pond.
I cannot say I remember learning how to swim. There was no “Ah ha!” moment of it clicking for me. Of me no longer swimming with my little blow-up arm swimmies. My Gramma stored the swimmies on the legs of the plastic chairs that lined her pool deck. After we used them, she would slide them up the chair legs, so they wouldn’t blow away with the Cherry Valley wind. Gramma’s pool was like our meeting place. The destination my mom would take us to on hot and humid summer days, the place we would all go. My first swimming buddies were my cousins Tiffany and Chad. During the summer months, when my mother would be off work from school, she would watch Tiffany and Chad, while my Aunt Kim still had to work every day. Every morning, Aunt Kim would drop Tiffany and Chad down at our house, early, and I would be there waiting for them, my little buddies. Having two grown sisters, almost a decade in age difference, Tiffany and Chad were more like a brother and sister to me, than just my cousins. From the time we were around 7 or 8 years old, to our early pre-teen years, the three of us spent our entire summers together. Many of those sweet summer days were spent in Gramma’s pool.
Not only did Gramma have swimmies for us, but she also had and saved up lots of fun things for us to play with in the pool. She had a couple pairs of goggles, noodles, and this big, old blow-up Whale floatie. Nothing too crazy or too much. I can remember each time she got something new for the pool, it being a special occasion. She didn’t have a treasure chest full of pool goodies; she had just a few things that we cousins used over and over again. She let the pool be the pool, and our imaginations would run wild with what we wanted to do in it. We played countless rounds of games like Movies and Marco Polo, made hundreds of whirlpools, and one of Chad’s favorite games was to dive for the rings. Gramma had this set of four rings. There was a red one, blue one, yellow one, and green one. One person would stand on the deck and throw the rings into the pool and another person, usually Chad, would dive into the pool and try to collect them as fast as he could. He always succeeded, scooping up the rings, one after another, and returning them to the pool deck. The blue one always being the hardest ring to find. Once he dropped them, he would always say, “Toss them again!” and we would.
Like how all things evolve in life, so did the swimming pool and how we spent our time in it. When we were young, it was once our playground, the foundation for learning how to swim. Our place to become comfortable with the water and the act of swimming itself. As we grew older, it became our chance to cool down after picking vegetables for hours in the scalding sun. My grandparents owned and operated a Vegetable Stand for 30 years. With their house being located along the bustling Route 20 that ran through Central New York, it became the perfect location for a successful vegetable stand, with vacationers and visitors coming up from New York City always in want of fresh vegetables. A delicacy to them, compared to the store bought and pesticide filled produce they were used to. Luckily, my grandparents were blessed with seven strong, hard-working grandchildren who during the summer months became their vegetable pickers and stand workers.
At one point in time, we all worked on the vegetable stand. My sisters, Celia and Bethany, and then the cousins Tiffany and Chad, Stephanie and Lauren, and of course myself. That pool kept us cool all summer long. There were days we would jump in multiple times, just to cool off from the long, hot hours of picking potatoes or berries or anything out in the blazing sun. Some days even, we would turn on the slide. Gramma had this 1970’s Florida blue slide, that she ran a rubber hose up to. Once the hose was turned on, we would then have to stand on both sides of the slide, rubbing the water over the slide’s fiber glass surface, to make the slide more slippery and to provide for a faster slide down it. I remember watching the slide’s color change from a light blue to dark blue, as the hoses’ water became mixed in with the surface. I can still remember the way the slide felt starch-like under my bare, wet legs. Sometimes we would even go down the slide on our stomachs, something Gramma didn’t always like us to do. We would have contests of sliding down the slide, then quickly getting out of the pool, running around to the slide, climbing up its ladder, to simply slide down it again. We would do this over and over again, laughing the whole time, never getting tired, as the water gave us the energy and endurance to simply play after a day of hard work.
During my high school years, and amid training for the Fall soccer seasons, I would take an early morning run on the tracks that laid below Gramma and Grampa’s house and then swim. Pick raspberries for a couple hours and swim. Eat lunch and then go pick corn or potatoes, and swim. In the evenings, when my sister Bethany was off work, we would head up to the tracks together to run. We would grab the blue quart sized containers and stash them by the raspberry bushes, returning to pick for an hour or so, after our runs. Those sunset stained nights down on the tracks, and along the raspberry bushes, felt like heaven to me. Like a dream. It was the way the light shone through the hedges that lined the vegetable fields, and how sometimes there would be a haze across the openness of the gardens from the July humidity. Bethany and I would walk back up to the vegetable stand from the raspberry bushes, our quart containers always flowing over with plump red berries, with the pool coming into view, along with Gramma and Grampa’s little cabin. We would end our summer evenings with a jump in the pool, swimming in just our underwear and sports bras, never wearing a perfectly matched bathing suit. We would do a couple laps around the pool, with Gramma always coming out to talk to us, inquiring about how many pints of berries we picked. We would float on our backs, gazing up at the pink stained sky and name the clouds. Pointing out which ones resembled cotton candy or zig zagged mountains. We would dry off on the pool deck, lying our towels down on the hard wooden boards, and stretch out. We would work on our abs, perfect our planks and eventually become dry. We would wrap Gramma’s old and tattered towels around our bodies and head into the house to bid our grandparents goodbye and give them each a good night kiss. Whenever I think of summer, I think of nights like this. How they were so perfect and peaceful. How we had our whole life just waiting before our eyes, but how we were so content in simply living in these moments. These sun kissed moments, by the tracks, in the raspberry bushes, around the pool.
After college and my stretch of time spent in Florida, I returned to Cherry Valley and Gramma’s pool. Just how I began to age, along with Gramma, the pool felt as if it was aging too. With Gramma slowing down, I remember my mother training me on how to hook up the pool vacuum and walk around the perimeter of the pool, cleaning the blue plastic lining and its sides. Something I never remembered as a child, was watching my grandmother clean and get the pool ready for us. Now, it was our turn to get the pool ready for her. How responsibilities had switched, the tides had turned. Year after year, Gramma had taken the time and put in the work to get the pool all clean and ready. Now, it was our turn to carry the load. My mother and I went up to the pool every day, cleaning, inspecting, filling the pool with hose water until the level was just right. Swimming that summer felt so rewarding, knowing that Mom and I had put in the work to get the pool up and running, for maybe just one last time. The pool remained open for the next few years, eventually being torn down once both Gramma and Grampa passed. It was a sad sight to see when the pool went away. There became a void in the ground that once held and made up so much of my happy childhood.
Today, my mother and I both have our own pools. The act, the joy of swimming, we were never fully able to let go of. Every time I step down my pool steps, I am taken back to being a child in my grandmother’s pool. The initial sting of the cool water hitting my toes, then my shins, then my thighs, and eventually my waist. Once half emerged in the water, I then let go of the ladder and take my dive into the pool. Hands stretched out, legs expanded like a frog mid jump. Eyes closed and my hair swirling around me. The feeling is always the same. This feeling of shock, of excitement for finally jumping in, of freedom for breaking through the water and gasping back into the air. The tingle of chlorine and how the smell always sticks to my skin reminds me that no matter what pool I swim in, no matter where it might be, I will always think back to the pool where swimming first started for me.