'After all, there's nothing quite like summer.'
We see the orange slide first. Giant and serpentine, rising above the horizon and gleaming hotly, a day-glo advertisement for sunshine and fun. The beacon of. Beyond the slide, we know there promises a large zero-entry pool with a miniature water playground plunked at its base, a lap pool divided into seven lanes, and an aquatic basketball court where the teen boys throw their best shots, glancing over their shoulders to see if any of the bikini-clad girls have noticed.
At the community pool, the order of events is clear: we scan our passes, roam until we find a shaded spot, and apply heaps of sunscreen before running into the water, that beautiful oasis. And then it begins: the diving, the splashing, the hours of pretending to be sea creatures, living by the rhythms of water.
My daughter has her own language at the pool. She shouts “Mapparoo!” every time she catches one of her plastic diving squids. She breaks the surface, soggy-haired, brandishing the squid by the tentacles, as if she were Jacques Cousteau. No one knows where she got that word, and when we ask, she just shrugs. Another mystery of summer. We shrug too. As long as we have sunscreen and snacks, anything goes.roaming around. They wave, splashing water from their fingertips as they do.
Perhaps it’s the water, which makes us all so relaxed. With its gates and open design, the pool is created in such a way to mimic safety and order. Or maybe the ease is a product of time and experience. The moms of babies and toddlers, I notice, still clutch their babies close, shadowing them as they dip tentative toes into the water. But the moms of older kids, the ones who’ve mastered swimming, allow a little more freedom.
During a particularly brutal heatwave in our city, when a good portion of households were powerless — literally, without electricity or air conditioning for days — I saw pools opening their doors for free entry. They became so crowded that the pool administrators had to deny access, for fear of vaulting past occupancy regulations. At our pool, it costs $8 per day to attend if you are a resident — more, if you happen to live outside the small perimeter of our township.
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