Tag Archives: pool

Letting the Air Out

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swimming pool fartsMy late husband, Richard, taught me how to float in the summer of 2002.  Even though I have been able to swim since childhood, I had somehow lost the ability to float.  I couldn’t relax the right way in the water so my long legs sank like marble pillars as soon as I tried to float.  I had lost that limber trust in the water.  I didn’t want to rely on it to hold me up.

One afternoon at his parents’ place, we went down to the pool.  They live in a very nice condominium complex, not exactly a starter home kind of joint, so we were the youngest people at the pool by a good 30 years.  We waded out into the shallow end for my lesson.

“Just relax your body,” he said.  Oh, OK.  Gosh, I didn’t know it was that simple.  I stretched out my legs and stuck out my arms but as soon as I dipped my head back towards the surface of the water, my legs dropped like a lever.

Richard was a born teacher–he taught skiing to tourists, he taught canoeing to campers, he taught finance to business majors.  He tried to break it down into pieces.  I held the side of the pool and let my legs float.  No problem.  Then he held my legs–not in a racy fashion since we were being observed by about 30 Nanas, Bubbies, and Pop Pops.  I tried to tip my head into the water but began to thrash as soon as the water touched my head.

Clearly, my head was the problem (this is where my therapist would probably raise her eyebrow and say, “AS USUAL!”).  So he promised that he wouldn’t let my head sink.  He held me under the shoulders and I stretched out into the cool blue water.

“Now take a breath in.  See how you float up?”  It worked!

“Now let that breath out and feel your body sink.”  I exhaled and felt the water climb higher around me.  I started to wiggle in panic.  Quickly, Richard said, “Breathe in!”

I floated right back up to the top of the water with a triumphant grin.  And a little knot in my neck dissolved.  I had learned that I could loosen up a little and the water would catch me.  “Now let it out…”  He held me while I practiced letting go of my breath and slowly taking it back in.  My head still lay on the valley of his forearms, high and dry.  

“You’re going to have to let the water get in your ears if you want to float.  It will be OK.”  He let his hands drop slowly from beneath my shoulders.  I felt the cold water tingle up the back of my scalp and pour into my ears.  I took a deep breath to bob back to the surface.  It wasn’t so bad.  I let the breath go and just like that…I was floating.  On my own.  

Straight above me stretched the clear blue sky.  To my right, the open stretch of the Potomac River, with a jet following the path of the water on its descent to National.  I floated in a perfectly round and perfectly blue and perfectly cool pool next to a man who loved to show me all I could do.  If I just let my brain get out of the way.  

I stood up to see the world from vertical again.  I gave him a chaste little kiss and said, “Thank you.  I’m proud of myself.”  

He grinned and said, “Next I’ll show you how to do THIS!”  He curled up into a tight ball, squeezing his knees to his chest, and with a long slow exhale of bubbles, he sank to the bottom of the pool.  It was one of his favorite tricks.   

As I stood there waiting for him to bob back up when he got tired of holding his breath, one of the residents joined us in the pool.  Well, she came as far as the third step.  In her black maillot and swim cap, she stood in the water up to her thighs, splashing a little water up onto her arms.  

And she farted.

I don’t mean “toot toot” like you think a Nana might fart.  I mean “BRAAAAAAAAPPPPPHHH!”  Like someone stepped on a duck.  

Since I had been raised right, I pretended not to notice.  We all suffer a little slip now and then and pools can make for confusing acoustics.  Who am I to judge?  

Richard erupted from the water with a splash and a gasp.  “I’m losing my form.  I used to be able to stay down a lot longer.”  

At that very moment, the woman beside us let fly again.  “BUH-WONK!”  Richard’s eyebrows shot up and he–having also been raised right–looked ever so casually around to see who had stepped on a duck.  It was just us and her in the water.  Everyone else chatted on lounge chairs in the shade of the pergola.  He turned back to me and gave the straight face double eyebrow raise.  

We tried to be nonchalant about it, but we started making our way to the deep end as she continued to toot her own horn.  Once we were a safe distance away, I said, “Do you think she thinks she under water and no one can hear?”

Richard said, “No, I think she’s lived long enough that she just doesn’t give a shit.”  

One Full Summer

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summer pool partyThere’s a moment in every pool party at our house when I find myself alone in the kitchen for some reason.  Maybe it’s to fetch a trash bag, or a cold bottle of wine or to light the candles on a birthday cake.  I take a second to look out the kitchen window and say “thank you” to Richard for picking out this house and for giving it to me.

He was a summer kind of person.  He loved water of any kind–ocean, river, creek, hose, rain, pool.  We were looking at another house in this neighborhood when we happened to drive past this one for sale.  “Why isn’t that one on our list of possibles?” he asked.  I figured it was out of the price range I was searching.  Richard turned the car around and drove by again, slowly.  “I think that house is on the river…”  The wheels were already turning in his head and here I sit almost 10 years later, looking out over the river that flows through the backyard.  Once he figured out there was water nearby, buying this house was a done deal.

He was so excited about owning a pool that he took a pair of swim trunks to the lawyer’s office (well, he left them in the car while we signed the papers!).  We bought the house in late October of 2003.  Even though the pool was a mite chilly by then, he dove in about an hour after closing.   As I was laughing at his freezing ass, he made a vow to get in the pool every month of the year, at least once.  And he did it.  November, December, January, February–he did a cannonball off the diving board then made a hasty retreat out the nearest side, straight into the hot tub.  March, he swam to the shallow end.  April and May, he swam a couple of lengths.

Then came June.  He hadn’t been feeling well for a month, no energy and a bad cough, but the doctor blamed it on bronchitis.  His legs were covered in bruises but he attributed them to skiing in March, yard work in April, house work in May.  It never dawned on us that they weren’t going away.  One June morning, he dove into the pool as I watched from the kitchen window.  He swam to the shallow end then stopped to lean against the wall instead of doing an underwater turn and swimming right back.  He eventually swam to the deep end, pulled himself out and lay down on the diving board in the sun.  All while I watched from the kitchen window.  Never guessing.

By June 30th, he was diagnosed with leukemia.  By July 1st, he was on a plane back to Baltimore, this time to Johns Hopkins.  After all that excitement, Richard didn’t get to enjoy a full summer with a pool.  So I try to keep it filled with people as a way of showing appreciation for the simple gift of being able to spend a day in the water.  And I pause at that kitchen window to say thank you to the person who gave me and my family this joyful home.