Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-04-22 - 6:56 a.m.

Swim Day

Today was a weird hole in time, a summer day in April. Kids went to the public pool; they need new suits, not today, these will have to do. Where are the swim towels? Flip-flops? I threw on a summer dress and striped zoris. My hands smell of number 30 kids' sunblock. Now the girls, home and ravenous, have chlorine pinkeye and rasta pool-hair. They've gone outside to play at five o'clock - don't SIT, get those suits off and throw them in the tub. I can't believe this is a Sunday night, baths and dinner and backpacks and briefcases and lunch money, school and work tomorrow like any week. It feels like -- it feels like - I pick up one of the oversized tie-dye t-shirts they use as swim covers, and it's cool and damp, and I put it to my face and breathe it in - it feels like that.

This is how the summer will be, for us: poolside daily, after I finish work. The kids will be brown browner brownest, and swim like fish, flipping happily underwater, bickering over rafts and dive rings and who splashed who first. Prime years, these, where the occasional glance up from the novel will suffice - look at me, look at ME, watch this, Mom - no anxiety over deep-end horrors, not any more.

The girls will go to the park every morning, to the rec program because it is free, while I work. We HATE the park, Mom. I know you do. It's stupid. I know it is. They make us do the games even if we don't want to. Yes, I know they do. I have my job and you have yours: I work so we eat. You go to the park so I can work so we can eat. See? There are alternatives, you know.

If I worked full-time, I could afford different day care. We would not go to the pool in the afternoon. Or perhaps you would, accompanied by the rest of the day-care group. I wouldn't. I would not see you browning and flipping, nor watch you when you showed me you could somersault twice under water.

But I would take you and buy you the three swimsuits you need - two for home and one for your father's house - and new flip-flops and sunglasses and nice beach towels and beach bags and cool sunglasses. You would have the new goggles you want and the five dollars each for the ice cream and the sodas at the pool, and you would probably not miss me, but oh I would miss you.

I make that choice over and over again every day. Angrily, when the girls complain about the park program, or why I won't buy all the swimsuits NOW. Longingly, when I think about enough, just having enough again that I don't have to sweat and worry every month. Selfishly, when I watch them wet and sleek and beautiful, and think I could never give that up, not for any price. When I think give me one more summer, one more summer just like today. Please.

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