Two Times Pool Side Charm--

Summer has finally settled in around here at approximately the right time for summer to do such a thing. The start of June on the west coast always marks the beginning of hot weather season. Thankfully, the first week of June almost always seems to contain some pretty hot days, which will lead to a cooling period, and then a gradual warming to a hot and dry and fabulous summer.

I say thankfully, because west coast school boys never really get over the first week of June. From about the seventh grade onward, the first week of June is when the temperatures rise so much that nobody is comfortable wearing much of anything. And since it is still the first week of June, school is still in session so you can see where I am headed.

A whole school full of girls will show up to school in some pretty skimpy things. Shorts. “Cotton tops”. Often times, the bras are stuffed in hand bags after second period.

The first week in June is really the start of everything after that. Mortgages. Kids. Backyard sprinkler systems. All that stuff.

I’ve seen it happen.

The first week of June gives those young and still-learning school boys, “ideas”.

I’ve experienced it first-hand myself.

One minute, you have these ideas. The next minute, you are sitting in a movie theatre watching a movie about “love” and stuff.

There are amazing powers at work, I swear. The first week of June was a stroke of genius.

I put this swimming pool up almost a month ago. I filled it up and then noticed all the water trying to flow out of one end. The darn thing was leaning, and I couldn’t fix it. I emptied it, completely, and then rolled the low half onto the high half. This way, I could bring a truck load of dirt in, and solve the problem. I filled the pool again.

The low side was still low, but not as bad. I shrugged and thought it might just work. It was, after all, simply a bag full of water.

All the water fell out of the pool one night, and flooded our lawn. The floating devices had all been washed up against the wire fence I pulled around it to keep the dogs from clawing the vinyl.

There was nothing to be done except empty it, completely, again, and bring in more dirt.

We have a pool now, of sorts. To cool off in, in the first week of June.

If it were just me, I’d simply head across the highway and drive a few miles up a small and windy road. The road leads to a great watering hole, and sometimes hippie girls.

But I’ve got Mum to think about. The pool is for her.

Today was the first day she got in the pool and used it like a pool. She floated around on the rafts I blew up. She giggled because it was cold. I had to help her in by giving her someone strong to hold on to while she swung her legs over the 30 inch sides. One leg over. Steady… OK. Now the other leg.

“Ooooweeee! That’s cold!” Momma squealed.

I filled it only yesterday the last time. The water comes from two wells we have. One is a shallow well that pumps out of a creek bed. The other is a deep well and the water comes out at 48 degrees.

“Oooooweee! That’s cold!”

Mum and I floated around for over an hour. I thought about work and how I didn’t miss it. I watched my Momma trying to find the strength to keep her balance, and had flashbacks to when she was laying in the hospital, trying to rip a respirator mask off her face in the ICU, yelling- “I can’t breath! I can’t breath! I can’t breath!”

The mask was trying to help her breathe.

I remember getting on my knees (I’m tall) and taking over the “holding on the mask” detail from some frustrated nurse. I talked to my Momma and soothed her and convinced her to accept the mask. The drugs they gave her for her raging infection changed her mind, truly, and I was having to discover who my Momma had become, reintroducing myself to her as her son.

“Momma. It’s me. You need to trust me and listen to me.”

There were times when she called me a stranger and an asshole and the meanest human being she had ever met.

“Momma. It’s me. You need to trust me and listen to me.”

Those days passed well over a year ago.

It’s the first week of June. I’m older now, and am carrying around a few extra pounds. My hair is graying and I have felt myself slowing down for a few years now. But the hot weather still triggers an impulse inside of me, to go where they gather. It is too hot for clothes, and it is the first week of June.

Momma is still with us, and she squeals when she gets in the pool. She knows who I am now. I am her single son. The traveler who has come back and settled in, to take care of her and give her the gift of a cold swimming pool on a hot day in the first week of June.