The pool found its demise 20 years after, but while it was there, it was the great uniter of many - a leisure I will miss forever.
The Sunlight of Summer
~b.r.crandall
I still look from my childhood window in want of summer,
that rectangular view of life, fenced with elm trees & a pool
that became my zen garden, the chlorinated car wash for my ten-mile runs,
the Carrier Dome for splashing and jumping into silly aquatic games,
the spur-of-the-moment picnics, always with great company,
and Dad luring strangers out back, to look at his lawn.
Now, there are variants of stitched-green where he rides his lawnmower -
new shades of fern have moved to hunter, forest and army - summering
is no longer the liquid obstacle course it once was with neighbors and good company.
Blades of grass wave with winds and memories for their pool…
the grilled chicken, hotdogs, burgers…the vegetables snapped from the garden game
of glory and the gatherings that kept them going, loving, being. All of us, then, on the run
in humid traditions. The first somersault was best — the way those butterflies ran
across the stomach before popping toward the blue sky like a sea-lion, toward the lawn.
We were in our twenties, older, when they built it. We still played Loch Lebanon games,
though, as if eternal children holding out for childhood….forever summers.
We traded sunfish, ducks, and seaweed for volleyball and the rejuvenation of a pool.
My sisters and I, older now, who brought home friends and children, sharing company
with mom and dad on the back patio, their umbrella of love and companionship.
Water will always be respite for Aquarians like me on the run -
A hiatus, the teaching truce…the restoration of oxygen that comes from a pool -
a mini-vacation from Kentucky where toes stretched deep across a CNY lawn
and where I could wrap myself in youth once again. The innocence of summer
with family, inflatable toys, and invention for childish games.
Bonnie and her lasagna. Dad and his Karl. Mokie with her tennis ball game
of doing laps in hopes we’d join her - wanting company
as a testimony to the dog days of summer….
foam noodles, blow-up spirals — the weightlessness of it all. Who’d run
to Price Chopper for more Labatts Blue? Corn hole. spreading towels across the lawn…
A watershed of wonder. Our ecosystem of existence. All around a pool.
Four years ago they called. “We need your help taking down the pool,”
I always knew a giant hole would one day need to be filled. It’s the game.
I drove from Connecticut and pulled rocks from fill that was dumped on the lawn.
Mom thinks like I do. “Remember when we used to have company?”
she asks when I visit now. The salads. The fruit. The mojitos. All that running
up and down stairs for something forgotten. The rituals of summer.
I remember them. How days pulled us together with good company…
how we taught grandchildren our games. There’s not much running
any more….just dad mowing the lawn. The sunlight of summer.