My best childhood friend continues to fill in the gaps for me. Where I can't conjure up the happy stuff... she does. She sent me an email a while back with our fun times at the YMCA pool, and I have been saving it, savoring it, really. It's nice to look back and feel the sunny days like these. Especially since I will be visiting home this weekend.

Thanks again, Jenny.

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Our moms would take turns driving us to and from the pool. They could drop us off right after lunch and pick us up before dinner. First we would change into our swimsuits and "zories" (flip flops) and grab our towels. The "little ones" [our younger sisters] would usually sit in the front seat together. You and I would spread out one of our towels out across the backseat and both sit on it because when we got in the car the plastic seats would be too hot to sit on, and it wasn't worth air conditioning the car for a four minute ride to the YMCA pool. We would get dropped off right outside, our moms would watch to make sure we got in safely and then drive off. If it was early in the year, the big bubble would still be on over the pool and neither of our moms wanted to go sit in the hot humid bubble, but once it came off, sometimes they might stay a little while with us and sit in the sun and watch us swim. We would go inside and get a locker key from Miss Frieda, (and we would snitch her peppermints from the dish on her desk all the time) and then go put our stuff in a locker, and put the key on it's little strap around our ankle. The locker key was always fun because they sank well and were just the right size for throwing in the deep end, 9 feet, and then diving in after, we would resurface with the key clutched in a little fist and wave it triumphantly over our heads. We didn't need two lockers to fit hardly any stuff, but we always got two, just so we could play with the keys.

There were two diving boards in the deep end, and when we were really little, we would be so anxious for the time when we were allowed to dive like the big kids. I remember sitting by the side of the pool with you during the 10 minutes per hour of "adult swim" every hour, swinging our legs in the water, yearning to be back in, but we were not allowed in unless we were 18 for those ten minutes. It was forever! We gazed longingly at the nearly empty pool while the grown ups swam lazy laps, side by side, talking together. They would do the crawl stroke on the side so they could face each other and talk. Sometimes my mom, if there were no other moms around to talk to, would do a bunch of laps really fast and actually put her head under water, messing up her hair, really speeding along. I remember thinking that was so un-mom like. (What did she think a pool was for, exercise? Any 8 year old knew a pool was for PLAY.) Your mom had these cool little swim dresses and I thought that they were very elegant, a swimsuit with a skirt! Wow.

We wore swim goggles to protect our eyes form the chlorine, all those diving games when you open your eyes under water take their toll by the end of the day. This caused us to have some very funny tan lines, I remember looking at your raccoon face, tan all over but with major tan/red half moons under the eyes from the reflection of the goggles, and thinking, she looks just like me. No wonder I have had so many skin cancers removed! Our moms would slather us up in the mornings before we left, but five hours in the pool will wash off just about anything. I remember us comparing tan lines, and I remember Karrie had one swimsuit that had a design on it, it was big patches of color, and one patch was white. She tanned right through that white patch and it gave her a really funny design on her skin. I wore lots of your hand me down clothes, but none of our swimsuits ever made it more than a couple months, we lived in the water, and that was hard on the material. You would get the new clothes, and then when you got too tall for them they would fit me, and then usually my sister Sarah next, she was always pretty tall, and then poor Karrie got them last. Sometimes your mom would sew things or alter things so that at least one of us could wear them longer.

We played Marco Polo, hide and seek in the water, we raced each other in the pool, and when the life guards weren't looking we played games with the lane dividers, remember those big plastic things with the red rings? We had contests to see who could hold breath the longest, swim farthest without coming up for air, and that made our moms crazy to see us both go under and not come up for so long. (Years later I would take lung capacity tests and amaze my doctor. You and I had great training.) I remember racing you from the shallow end to the deep end of the pool. You and I were pretty evenly matched in the water. You were so tall with such long fast arms and legs, but I was wiry. We were both lean and brown and healthy from all that play. Anyway, I remember one time we raced from the deep to shallow end and you had the lead that day and right as you were almost to beat me, I was underwater, I grabbed your ankle and pulled you straight backward just as you were reaching for the edge. You came up spluttering and I was laughing so hard I still couldn't make it to the edge, we were in a giggle fit, and then we were both near the edge and it occurred to you that neither of us had yet actually touched the wall, so you slapped it, and you said, "And I STILL win!"

I remember once we got there early in the day and the lifeguard was just testing the water with a little kit. He took a sample and mixed some things together. We asked him what he was doing and he said he was making sure it was okay for us to swim in. We stared at each other in horror. I still remember the look on your face, you had long French braids that day. We waited silently, riveted and solemn, for a few seconds and he said, "it's fine, you can get in." It had never occurred to us we might not be able to get in. From then on whenever a life guard took small vial of water out of the pool we waited breathless for a few minutes, fearful we might be asked to all get out.

I remember when we had enough swim classes under our belts and were old enough to finally use the diving board. We had first learned how to dive by holding each other's feet. One of us would stand up on the rim of the pool, the other in the water holding onto the diver's ankles. This forced the head down before the rest of the body as it arced through the air, and prevented the painful and dreaded belly flop. So eventually we got to use the diving boards - whoo hoo! You were great at the special dives, the forward flips, double flips, etc. I was better at the back flips. I always felt like I was going to hit the board on the way back down but backwards, I couldn't see it, so I didn't care. My mom said we were both fearless. I remember one time I was mad my mom was not watching us and we were doing some really cool stuff, but she kept talking to another mom and not looking right when we would do our dive. I was like, "Mom, you keep missing my back flips!" She said, "Honey, I can hardly stand to watch either of you, it is so scary."

When we were totally exhausted we would lie on our towels in the grass, panting in the sun, and dry off, and some days, when the pool had just been filled, to warm up. It was warm enough in the water, but when you were out the air was cold early in the year but we would stay in until our lips turned blue. Our moms would drive up to the fence and honk and we would race out, because we were supposed to be meeting them outside in the first place at a certain time. Your mom had a yellow car, and that one was easy to see coming. Do you remember how you would get home from the pool and hang your suit on the line in the backyard? Sometimes we would forget and then we'd have to put on a damp, cold suit the next day- ick!

We would eat dinner at our respective houses most of the time, sometimes at each other's houses, but then after dinner we were allowed to play outside until the street lights came on. You usually finished dinner first, and my family always ate dinner on the porch, so you would ride your bike over and sort of hover outside on the sidewalk, and I would see you, and ask to be excused, run outside, and then we would ride around the neighborhood. Unless you had a German lesson after dinner, in which case I would sit on your porch while you did German in the kitchen, and I would wait for you to switch back into English, and then I knew you were almost done and would be out any second.

Ah, the good old days... I wish just for one day we could do it all again. No purse, no cell phone, no worries, just, how can we stay in the water as long as possible and how can we stay outside as long as possible and then how can we stay up as late as possible, and let's do it all again tomorrow.

I hope that will tide you over for a little while?

Love,
Jen