I was born loving the water. Many of my earliest memories center around playing in the irrigation in our front yard, learning to swim at Rendezvous Park, and trying to make my own swimming pool out of dad's wheelbarrow, coiling up the hose on our driveway, or any other means I could devise to retain water. None of them worked, though.
Perhaps a love of water comes with growing up on the desert. Mom didn't particularly enjoy swimming, but she was born and raised in Utah. Moe isn't all that fond of it, either, and he was raised in Oregon. But I loved swimming, and so do all of my children.
Sadly, although I love swimming, I've never owned a pool. I suspect that's also due to the fact that it wasn't a priority for mom, when I was growing up, and it isn't a priority for Moe, now that we have our own house. That hasn't stopped me from dreaming, though.
One spring break I had all of my nieces and nephews help me make a home movie. We called it “The Mystery of the Lost Treasure.” The last scene centered around a swimming pool, (the treasure had finally been discovered and was used to build a pool. Kind of lame, yes, but the kids thought it was cool.)
Our neighbors graciously agreed to let us use their swimming pool to film that part of the movie. Although it was only the middle of March, the weather was hot, so it felt good to put on swimming suits.
My sixteen year old daughter, Alyssa, played the part of the grandmother in our movie. At the end, she hobbled down to the deep end of the pool, pulled off her housecoat (she was wearing a suit under it), climbed onto the diving board, and jumped in, to the accompaniment of gasps and shouts of warning from her pretend grandchildren.
It was a lot of fun to film that scene, and even more fun to see her face as she surfaced, grinning and freezing at the same time. It may have been warm outside, but the water was still cold. Once she jumped in, it was impossible to keep the other kids from trying it out. The smart ones just sat on the side and danged their feet, but a some of the kids actually went swimming.
We were having a good time, laughing and enjoying the fun when my six year old nephew, Jeffrey, decided to jump off the diving board. I didn't think anything of it, if his mom didn't mind him swimming it was fine with me, but that was because I assumed Jeff knew how to swim. He didn't. He'd lived in Utah until the previous summer. When they moved back to The Valley his mom tried to teach him how to swim, but he hadn't enjoyed it very much, and she hadn't pushed him. Now, here he was, running down the diving board and jumping in! Jeff came up gasping for air, flinging his arms all around him, with a look of surprise and panic on his face. Quickly some of the older boys swam over and pulled him to the side of the pool, where he could climb out.
“Jeff, what did you think you were you doing?” his mom asked later. “Why did you jump into the swimming pool?”
Jeff looked at her with a hurt, confused look on his face. “All the other kids were going swimming,” he said.
“Yes, but all the other kids know how to swim,” his mother scolded.
“But I thought I could, too,” Jeffery replied.
“Why would you think you could swim?” his mother asked in surprise. “You tried last summer and you couldn't do it.”
“But I had my birthday,” Jeffrey told her indignantly. “So I thought I would know how!”
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