It was the longest day of the year after a week of 100 degree plus weather so we thought we would take the kids for a little night swimming at our community pool. It seemed harmless enough at the time . . .
Instead of swimming, I became obsessed with the way the light played on the water--like liquid gold. By the end of the evening I had many many lovely pictures of the light and almost zero of my children, at least few that were worth the paper they're printed on. Good thing it was a digital camera and no printing of bad photos was required. Sad to say, there are some posted here, as they help to tell my story . . .
Here is my family, having fun, not suspecting the horror that awaited them . . . no, it wasn't a shark but can't you almost hear that duh-duh, duh-duh, duhduhduhduhduhduh?
Here is one of my daughter helping my little guy out of the pool. Notice he is wearing a life vest. He is nearly seven and has had access to a pool his entire life. When other mothers at the pool look at me a bit askance, I say--what's the big deal, he has plenty of time to learn! I figure if we just keep throwing him in, eventually he will develop enough muscle to keep himself afloat. What can I say, he's a bookish child and will be what they call a bookish nerd if we don't get him into some kind of organized sports, and pronto. Anyway, I included this picture mostly to prove that I indeed did take pictures of my children, not just pics of the way the light played on the water--like liquid gold. Fascinated, no, I was obsessed!
The light didn't only play on the water in the pool, oh no! It also lit up patches of the cement along the edge of the pool and I was equally fascinated with that. As I was zoning into an altered state with my camera snapping away, I thought about something which I hadn't thought of in a long time. When I was a kid, my parents took us to a public pool. I don't know why, we had our own kidney shaped 8 1/2 foot deep jewel of a pool in our own backyard, complete with a slide and diving board. What interested me most about this pool (it was during the day so there was no liquid gold to obsess over) was a sign that read: Notice there is no "p" in our "ool". Please keep it that way. I thought it was so funny that chlorinated water snorted out of my nose, except I don't think water can actually snort. Let's just say that this water had a mind of its own and having had said mind, it could snort.
By this time, it was getting quite dark. We had planned to stay for another hour but something happened that changed our minds in a hurry. My daughter, while attempting to sweep a brown leaf out of the pool where it clearly did not belong (at least, not with all of that gorgeous liquid gold) she discovered something that made me think that there ought to be a sign at our pool (and every pool for that matter) which reads: Notice, there is no "poo" in our "l". Please keep it that way. Tragically, there is nothing too funny about that.
Here is my family making a hasty exit out of the contaminated water. Well, okay, this picture was taken earlier but I wasn't thinking about my camera once my daughter realized that the "leaf" had left a thick, smelly residue on her hand. She scrubbed it in the poolhouse bathroom and when we got home, she rubbed it all over with a sliced lemon, then splashed her father's after shave on it and went to bed with a sock covering the offensive odor.
And what is the moral of this story? Liquid gold can hide a lot of dirt. May you find only gold in your pool, at any hour of the day. Better yet, skip the whole thing. Take a shower instead.
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on Tuesday, June 24, 2008
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