A Revelation

So my grandparents, whose house is equidistant and smack in between my parents' house and my aunt and uncle's house, had a swimming pool when we were growing up. This could be a minor detail, along the lines of, "The house also had a sun porch," or it could be what it is: The defining feature of my childhood summers. We spent almost every day at their house in the summertime, and approximately 87.75% of my childhood memories of summer involve this pool. I remember once, swayed by tales of cabin raids and hotdogs on sticks and champion-grade versions of "light as a feather, stiff as a board" I asked my mother if we could go to camp. I can still see her face, the wrinkled forehead, genuine puzzlement. "But you have the pool," she said. And so we did.

There were five of us, for the significant years, anyway, and there isn't more than 2 1/2 years between me and Brandon, the oldest and the youngest. We paired off by age with Brandon as a sort of swingman (which he is perfectly suited to by temperament: me and Andy, a month apart, Alison and Jacy, a month apart, and Brandon, almost a year and half behind them. This meant two things, our closeness in age: that we argued constantly, divisively and in ways that became so routine we wore patterns into the ground, and that we played together so harmoniously, inventively and joyfully that I sometimes feel I will spend the rest of my life trying to recapture snippets of this dynamic.

At the pool we played pool games: Marco Polo, something we called the "Colors" game, which was a variation on "Red Light, Green Light," if I remember correctly, had chicken fights (for the first time ever I am wondering why chicken fights are called chicken fights--is this offensive in some way?), raced, practiced dives and backflips, and just floated around, becoming who we were going to be. We did one thing I was telling Lily about the other day that seems funny to me--and possible sadomasochistic in a G-rated way--now. We would turn on the hose that was always screwed on for gardening purposes and ran icy cold. One of us would hold it up so it made an arc in the sky, and the others would, one by one, stand under the frigid stream for as long as he or she could stand it. Then, the shivering, partially blue child whose turn it was would sprint to the pool and jump in--the idea was to feel how much warmer the pool water seemed after the contrast of the hose water. Hmmm. For some reason I really think this was my idea. I will see if anybody remembers, which will lead to four tales of my being "bossy" and making everyone do something they didn't want to do. I can take it. (Once I hit 35 being the oldest didn't seem so hot anymore, as I suspect the rest of them--fresh-faced and with the added spring of at least a month and a day less of hard-living--gloat about behind my back.)

Anyway. This is a preamble for what started me thinking about our days at the pool. Among many powerful and vivid memories is one in particular--not of a specific incident but of a recurring motif, if you will. Picture one of us, any one of us, for we all did it (two perhaps more than the rest, but I won't name names), standing at the end of the diving board, shivering a little, perhaps goosebumped or slightly sunburned, hair plastered to head, hopping a little from one foot to the other in excitement, anticipation. Now picture the adults present: our parents, grandparents, other aunts and uncles, family friends, whoever was around on that particular day. It doesn't really matter--all you need to know is that were always a number of them, they were always drinking and eating and talking, they generally ignored us (not all of the time but as a pack, and we were all lifeguard quality swimmers, as they'd insisted, as well as unusually self-sufficient), and we thought of them in such situations not as a disparate group of adults but as The Audience.

Imagine this screamed, at the top of a healthy set of ten-year-old lungs: HEY!!! HEY YOU GUYS!!! WATCH THIS! ARE YOU WATCHING?! YOU WATCHED HER--I SAW YOU! YOU HAVE TO WATCH ME TOO! YOU'RE NOT WATCHING, AUNT LINNEA! ARE YOU ALL WATCHING NOW? SERIOUSLY, I'VE NEVER DONE THIS ONE BEFORE. OKAY, NOW I'M READY. WAAAAATTTTTTCCCCHHHH MEEEEEEEE!!!!!.

Wow. That even looks unpleasant in writing. Now imagine it shouted, with the slightest variation, over and over again, from as early in the morning as we could pedal over to as late in the day as we were allowed to remain. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that what the audience was supposed to watch was something along the lines of a jackknife, a bellyflop, occasionally a single flip, a backward dive. That's it. We could all do all of them, pretty much. Not that well; it's not like we were junior Olympians.

Here's my point. Is it possible that all everybody really needs, really, really needs to make life bearable, enjoyable, worth living, is a little more attention?