A Pool of One’s Own

the turtle pool, 1985ish

In the summer of 1988, a heatwave and drought hit the US, the worst since Dust Bowl times. There were heat advisories and stories of people having heat strokes, but that didn’t stop us from being outside every day. Our driveway rarely had a car parked in it because in the summer it became the epicenter of neighborhood activity. We used it as a makeshift roller rink, performance stage, Big Wheel racetrack, and whatever else we thought up. In the middle of all the kids playing, sitting there would often be my big sister Heather and her best friend Candy. After declaring they both looked like sickly pale ghosts, they would drag the fold up lounge chairs out of the garage and set them up in the middle of the driveway. The click click clicking of the rusty hinges was like a warning alarm that it was their territory now.

Sunscreen was never mentioned by anyone. I’m pretty sure that it didn’t touch my skin until I was in my early 20s. Instead they slathered on suntan lotion and if that ran out, baby oil was used in a pinch. Having a tan was something to be sought after and worked at, the ultimate summer achievement. If you were pale, you were probably sickly or just weird.

Getting a good tan didn’t happen fast, you had to make a day of it. And then plan for days of upkeep after that. Heather would run an extension cord out the front door to the boombox that held two tapes at once. They covered themselves in baby oil until they were so shiny I could almost see my reflection. One of them would be in charge of checking their watch to make sure they turned over every half hour for an even tan. When they got too hot, they misted themselves with a spray bottle full of water. When they got hungry, they ate sardines out of little tin cans, washed down with pop. I told them it was gross, but they didn’t listen or seem to mind the the smell of tanning oil mixing with the smell of sardines baking in the sun. They laid there for hours, only getting up to go inside to pee. When they did get up, the backs of their legs were crisscrossed with indents from the vinyl straps of the chairs.

When it was so hot it felt like the concrete would cook your feet, Dad would drag out the water hose and hook up the sprinkler. We ran through it for hours, not slowing down for stubbed toes. Sometimes we played in the creek, but we couldn’t go underwater. Partially because it usually wasn’t deep enough and partially because we weren’t sure if people were just trying to scare us when they said it was full of sewer. There was a public pool up the main road a little ways, but you had to be a member and we never had enough extra to pay to be members of anything. Plus, someone would have to take us there and sit all day and who had time for that.

Heather and Candy didn’t want the other kids around bugging them, but I was quiet, so they’d let me put lemon juice in my hair and lay on a towel beside them. Sometimes our cousin Kari would join them, she was a year older than Heather. I’d lie still and bake in the sun, listening to them talk about the boys who went by—the ones on bikes who stared and the older ones who revved their engines as they went past. The trash truck was what got the most reaction, since Kari had a crush on one of our garbage men. We’d hear their truck before it came around the curve and Kari would get ready to wave, as the sickly-sweet trash smell hit our noses. When I got too hot and felt like I could barely breathe from the heat, I’d go inside and wet a washrag with cold water. Then I’d go right back outside and swing on the swing set, with my head back and the cold rag over my face, while “Pour Some Sugar on Me” blared from Heather’s boombox.

As the summer and endless heat wore on, I asked if we could get a kiddie pool for the driveway. I used to have a tiny one, hard plastic and shaped like a green turtle. I wasn’t sure what happened to it, but I was too big for it now anyway, so it didn’t really matter. I wanted a four foot one, but I knew water above my knees was out of the question. Mom was terrified of water. Not for her personally, but she would worry herself to death about one of the kids drowning. Plus, the chlorine and chemicals were a lot of work. An in-ground pool was not real life. People just didn’t really have those around here. Well, except for the family who lived on top of the hill. They had one and I never even saw anyone in it. It just sat there shimmering in the sun, looking lonely.

The pool that I got came in a box and I couldn’t wait to open it. I loved the happy jungle animals and rainbows on the white bendy sides of it. The bottom of the pool was like a light blue plastic sheet and you could feel the bumpy concrete driveway through it, but somehow it didn’t get a hole in it. The box said it was six feet wide and eighteen inches deep and that was plenty deep enough for me to float.

Mom could check on me from the kitchen window, so I was allowed in the pool by myself, as long as her or Dad was home. Any day that it wasn’t thundering and lightning, that’s where I was. I could float for hours. Anyone watching would’ve thought I was the best floater they ever saw. I liked how it felt like I didn’t weigh a thing and was just part of the water. I’d stare at the sky while I floated and sometimes forget where I was or that I was even a person. I liked when the water covered my ears and made the sound of everything softer, but still close by. My hair looked shimmery and alive under the water, like Daryl Hannah’s in Splash. I wished I was a mermaid and never had to get out of the pool.

mermaid dreaming with my sister Holly, 1988

I learned how to open my eyes under water and practiced swimming underwater. My brother Heath said there was no way I was actually swimming in a pool that small, but I knew I was doing it. He didn’t even get in the pool, so what did he know anyway. Once in a while, Mom would bring my little sisters outside to splash around a little, but they didn’t stay long. Then I’d go back to the quiet.

Sometimes other people would be outside. I’d splash around while Heather and Candy soaked up the sun. If they needed a break from the heat, they’d sit in the pool with me for a few minutes. Sometimes Dad would surprise me by getting in the pool, jean cutoffs and all. If he wanted to stretch out, he had to prop his feet up on the side, bending the wall and spilling water onto the driveway. We would take turns timing to see who could stay underwater the longest. He always won. Sometimes it felt like he’d been under there so long he might’ve died and I’d shake him and he’d pop up with a big grin on his face.

I stayed in the pool so long that any scabs I had turned white and fell away except for a few stubborn hard pieces in the middle of the new pink skin. My fingers and toes got wrinkly on the underside. My hair got lighter and my skin got so brown that one day at Foodland someone asked Mom if I was “Mexican”. I stayed in the pool even when the little water bugs showed up. At first, I thought they were pebbles, until I tried to pick them up and they’d run from me. Catching them was a new game. I stayed in the pool even when the water started turning green and the bottom got slimy like the rocks in the creek. After a few summers, I got too big for 18 inches of water and that was the end of having my own pool, but I was (and still am) always on the lookout for a chance to swim.

The only other time I had a pool all to myself was when it was a perk of one of my nanny jobs in Louisville. During and after college, nannying was always a job I could fall back on. Being one of six children, I knew how to take care of kids of all ages, do housework, and make mac and cheese. Nannying was an unpredictable mix of hard work and leisure time. The first half of the day you might be watching The Aristocats for the hundredth time and the second half of the day you might end up with actual shit under your fingernails. But still, it beat the soul crushing cubicle monotony of some of the other jobs I’d had and I liked being able to spend a good part of the day outside.

The last family that I nannied for lived next to an elderly woman that we called Miss Jenny. She lived alone and had a pristine inground pool that she said she rarely used anymore. It had a slide, fountains around it, and a full pool house for changing, with bathrooms. Miss Jenny loved the three-year-old that I watched and invited us to use her pool whenever we wanted, so we were there most days. Occasionally she’d walk outside carrying her tiny dog to say hi on her way to a doctor’s appointment, but for the most part we didn’t see much of her. I’d play in the pool with the three-year-old, teaching her to float and to not be scared of the slide. When she was busy entertaining herself in the shallow end, I’d sit in the sun and read. After a few weeks of swimming at Miss Jenny’s, I started getting nosebleeds. My nasal cavities couldn’t handle the opulence of chlorine. I started carrying saline spray and didn’t let it stop my pool time.

These days, now that I’m back in West Virginia, I mainly swim in lakes, rivers, and swimming holes in covert locations. I have a friend who manages a private pool and very generously lets me hang there when I have time. I can’t complain. As long as it’s deep enough to float, I’m good.