I have lived in California for 46 years, so has my husband, and our ancestors have been here collectively for 300 years and neither of us has ever owned a swimming pool. It seems impossible. If you search overhead maps of San Marino, Visalia and La Canada backyards I think eight out of 10 homes have a pool. Maybe nine out of 10. Whether by choice or by chance we have never had a pool and I feel totally cheated.
I learned to swim at the College of Sequoias pool in Visalia. My dad taught English at this community college and he would take us to the pool during the summer. It always felt crowded and the concrete deck burned my tiny feet and mean lifeguards in towers constantly yelled at kids to stop running. But it had a bouncy low dive and a scary high dive and the coldest, most refreshing water on 100 degree summer days. My friend Susan’s parents built a backyard pool when we were little. I knew they were rich because they drove a Cadillac, owned their own butcher shop and had a built-in pool. But Susan controlled very tight access, and only now and again extended invitations to me and my pool-less friends. I used to beg my dad to build us a pool too. “Why? We’ve got the best pool in town?” he would say. Susan and I went to summer camp together after 4th grade and had to pass a swim test in order to access deeper water and the diving raft. I confidently zipped through my test. My “swim buddy” Susan panicked, failed the test, and as a result saddled me to her at the boring shore. A lot of good Susan’s pool did for her. Lucky for me my best friend Lori got a pool at her house across the street and I had easy access for the rest of my childhood.
I joined a summer recreation swim team when I was nine years old. Twice a day during the summer I rode my bike five miles round trip to swim practice at Recreation Park. We swam in crowded lanes usually with no lane lines. We called it the ocean; and I loved it. On the way home from evening practices I always stopped at the Little League field to buy a snow cone or at Steve’s Git N Go to buy candy. Apparently, I learned how to reward myself very early on. We had swim meets on weeknights in neighboring towns. The Sanger pool was on the edge of town adjacent to a walnut orchard, not uncommon in the San Joaquin Valley, and under the night lights I had to swim through grasshoppers floating and sloshing around in the lanes.
Mom and Dad were both teachers, so we all had summers off. When I was about six years old they bought two sailboats. We camped and sailed for weeks at a time on Huntington Lake in the Sierras. From early on I was fearless in lake water – diving off the boat, dragging behind the boat holding onto a rope, capsizing the boat just for fun. I remember one day at Millerton Lake when authorities told us to be on the lookout for the body of a man drowned the day before. Even that couldn’t make me fearful in the water.
I got older and went to college where I continued my swim career, met my husband who was continuing his water polo career, got married, had kids… and bought a house without a swimming pool. Tim hung up his speedo ages ago, but I still get my laps in down at the Rose Bowl pool. Lap swimming doesn’t quite inspire the joy and freedom that swimming has always brought me. It’s exercise. It’s boring. It can be hard. It’s not the youthful fun of a swim team. I treat myself to my favorite childhood game of spaceman when I get to the end of a workout. I go to the middle of the lane in the deepest part of the dive pool, dive down about five feet and suspend myself in watery space and do summersaults and dolphin dives. It’s heaven.
I miss the joy of childhood free time around a pool. I always fought for a way to get in the water. My kids have never been so motivated. They do not crave the pool games, the late night swims, the pool parties, the plastic rafts. They will not look back on their childhoods as time spent in the water. I think they have been cheated too. Our decision to not build a pool has to do with the expense and safety, and though I’m sure we have saved ourselves a lot of headaches, I do keep wondering – why don’t I have a swimming pool?