middle class neighbourhood, (our house now had a basement) my dad would stand wistfully at the back door and say, "Someday I'm gonna put a pool in here. I'm gonna dig up the whole goddamn backyard." I would agree that this was a great idea. It was one of the few things we could agree upon.

Not long after that conversation my father died for the second time. I came across his swim trunks. They were the only pair I knew him to own and they must have been thirty years old. They were burgundy boxer type trunks with tiny little heraldry crests of gold and yellow, to make them look classy I guess. They were accompanied by a gay half robe with sash, the height of manly elegance circa 1966, not nearly as faded, or chlorine bleached as the trunks.

I pictured my dad coursing through the pool like it was his element and I truly couldn't remember ever seeing him as vibrant or alive as when he was effortlessly gliding through unnaturally blue highly chlorinated water.

 

"Yeah I died in the water. But I came back. So what?" He'd say wearily to my ten thousandth inquiry about his dramatic resurrection. He would flick away his Camel and then light another one, inhaling deeply as he slapped shut the waterproof metal cigarette lighter he carried with him in all conditions.  He would take another long drag on the cigarette, making the tip glow fiercely red, burning it down, and squinting at the water from behind the curled caul of smoke. Then all at once he would flick the burning cigarette violently into the grass and dive into the pool with almost no splash at all and swim the entire length beneath its surface like some kind of weird otter, emerging on the other side, blowing the smoke from his nose before contentedly jumping back in.

 

2.

It is July 4th and we are in the Marriott pool, a yearly treat for my birthday. It is one of those inside/outside pools where you have to swim under a rubber buffer to get from in to out. My six-year-old son is standing on the edge of the pool, coiled and tense, biting his lip in determination. He looks like some biblical character posing for a statue.

My wife sits on the deck, squinting into the sun. She hates the water.  I wave but

 

 

My Life In Pools     2

Michael K. White

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