Summer is over for me, no matter what my calendar says.
Oh sure, Labor Day is seven days away, and the first day of fall, not to mention the autumnal equinox, are weeks hence, but I've thrown in the beach towel. The Community Pool closed for the season yesterday at 6 p.m.
No matter that we are expecting a hot, sunny week with temperatures in the 90's; I'll be cooling off in the shower. As of this moment, the aforementioned towels, my bathing suits, and cover-ups are tumbling in the washer, soon to be packed away.
Time was, Labor Day Weekend was the pool's swan dive, but since many of the lifeguards are college students who are already heading back to campus and the few high school staffers are athletes whose fall practice sessions have begun, there's nobody left to mind the swimmers.
If I am desperate for a swim in the coming months, I am not totally without resources: the town rec department has a Friday night family swim at the middle school pool from September to December, but face it, at my age I'd rather be going out for a fish fry between 6 and 8:30 on Friday night. My knowledge of the venue, besides, leads me to believe I'd be dodging screeching, cannonballing tweens in a cavernous, echoing space half the size of the outdoor pool.
Also at the middle school pool I can take twice-weekly water aerobics classes taught by the same instructor who led the sessions I never missed at the Community Pool. I took a similar class a few years ago, and while the initial classes in the fall weren't so bad, I didn't crave the scent of chlorine enough to throw sweats over a bathing suit at 4:30 on a dark winter afternoon and slog home afterward with wet hair tucked up under my ski hat.
Alternatively, I can join the Southtowns "Y," a 20-minute drive away. My HMO, in fact, will pick up the tab for my senior membership, which includes pool privileges. As above, however, few circumstances make me feel less like swimming than a brisk westerly wind bearing snow showers. I am a summer swimmer, a sunshine paddler. Anything else is too much like deliberate exercise.
For me, who was sent to camp and spent family vacations at cabins in the Berkshires, dawdled away teen-aged afternoons at the Canoe Club pool, and earned tuition with babysitting gigs at the shore, going into the water is something you do for fun and to cool off. I swim for comfort, not for speed.
Back in the days of our mountain lake vacations, swimming and otherwise fooling around in the water was the reason we were there, the be-all and the end-all of our days. We swam in the morning, as soon as we could get in the water without incurring blue extremities, and stayed till lunchtime, never changing out of our drying suits. Why bother? After the obligatory hour hiatus---an old wives' tale, but who knew?---we'd be down at the water again, usually with books and magazines for the long afternoon haul. Parents arriving from the sweltering city in the early evening had no trouble coaxing us in once more.
We swam in the the rain, wondering at how warm the lake waters could be and how thrilling, when storm winds churned them into real waves. We swam in the dark, guided only by the stars, a sickle moon, and our sonar-like familiarity with the more prominent rocks.
There was always something to do in the water: find a good diving rock, take turns diving through a chorus line of legs, take out the rowboat to jump off of, see how far across the little cove we could swim in one go, master front and back somersaults, attempt a solo handstand, play Monkey-in-the-Middle with a tennis ball, see who could stay underwater the longest, catch minnows in the shallows and throw them back. If we brought along a bar of Ivory soap, we could have a shampoo and a bath and wash our underwear. Not a minute nor a drop was wasted. Savored, yes; wasted, never!
These days, without a lake at my disposal, the Community Pool is my summer oasis, although I'm not much for Monkey-in-the-Middle anymore---or Marco Polo either. Shaded by huge maples, surrounded by vine-covered fencing, and scented with pine, chlorine, and shampoo from the women's showers, it's a haven in a hot and hectic world, just five minutes from home.
I favor the 5 to 6 p.m. slot, when mothers are rounding up the kids to go home for dinner and the staff haven't yet cordoned off the diving area for the lap swimmers. To me, laps are the aquatic equivalent of calisthenics, maybe good for you, but ultimately mind-numbing. I prefer the meditative approach: a quick, not especially stylish dive into the deep end, then half an hour or so of Zen freestyling, mindful of the water and the body's hole in it, doing a lackadaisical crawl, a languid breaststroke, an indolent surface dive just from the solitude of it. It is as contemplative as yoga.
Getting out is Phase Two of the experience: the warm towel, the book waiting in my pool bag, enough sun left to dry my miracle-fiber swimsuit almost instantaneously. Now I will read until thoughts of dinner ingredients and white wine chilling in the fridge lure me home. (Back in my smoking days, the best cigarette of a summer day was the first one after a swim. These days, a few chapters of a good detective story is an almost-substitute---and better for my underwater endurance.)
But I'm hanging up my pool bag for the season, leaving inside the packet of tissues, the comb, the shampoo, the tube of sunblock. The towels are dry and folded and put away on the bottom shelf of the linen closet. It's been a glorious summer; for me, it's over.
