The Pool of My Youth

On the joys of playing in a swimming pool 💦

As I balanced atop the lime green Styrofoam pool noodle like one would a horse, I felt a child-like impulse bubbling up from within.

Instinctively, almost without thinking, I submerged both ends of the noodle underwater, filling it with the pool’s liquid. Then, I brought both ends back above the surface and pointed the tail towards the sky. I leaned down to blow air through the front, causing the water inside to erupt through the back end like a whale’s blowhole. Again and again I refilled my noodle and blew, giggling every time as the water cannon went off.

Whether I was doing it for my own entertainment or for my friends’, I couldn’t be sure. But they laughed right along with me, commenting on the funniest part of the scene being my reaction to it.

That’s just it—I was in fact giggling. Not laughing my normal adult laugh like one might share at a dinner party. But a full-on belly noise, like I hear toddlers do when they are getting pure joy out of something unexpectedly amusing.

I thought back to my youth, growing up as an Arizona kid and how many collective hours I’d spent in the swimming pool.

Ever since moving to the Pacific Northwest when I was 12, I’ve spent less and less time in the swimming pool, let alone a warm one. The playful pools of my youth have been replaced by lakes, rivers, and oceans (whenever the weather permits). Their currents automatically warrant a level of risk-awareness that isn’t the same in a swimming pool. You can’t let your guard down in a lively body of water, no matter how calm it may seem.

A backyard swimming pool, on the other hand, is a safe haven. It’s a shore-like respite, a cocoon where you can safely float the day away, the biggest worry being how not to get your book wet while floating in an inner tube.

A swimming pool, unlike natural bodies of water, is permanently bound, its perimeter a hard line that doesn't change with the seasons. Growing up in the desert, we spent the entirety of our summers either in the pool or inside in the air conditioning because it was too hot to do otherwise. One might think you run the risk of getting bored of the same old pool, day after day, year after year. But we never did.

The pool is where my imagination ran wild. It’s almost as if its fixed boundaries necessitated thinking outside the box.

A popular game I’d play with my friends was underwater tea parties, which consisted of swimming down to the bottom of the pool and sitting there cross-legged in a circle, miming the action of sipping a cup of tea as we nodded and smiled at one another.

Ever the older sibling, I convinced my brother to play mermaid and merman with me after watching the Disney Channel original movie, The Thirteenth Year, the premise of which is a teenage boy who turns into a merman once he hits puberty. I can’t recall details of how this game worked, other than we’d swim around the pool for hours pretending to have a tail for legs. I told my mom we couldn’t get out of the pool at dinnertime because we were confined to our aquamarine habitat. (Pretty smart kid, eh?)

There were skill-like games too, like diving for rings. My nanny Mary would toss a set of five neon-colored rings the size of small salad plates, each with a number, into the pool for us. On her count to “go!”, we’d take separate turns jumping into the pool and swimming around in a zig zag to collect the rings in their numerical order. My dad loves recalling when he came home from work one day and was met with a performance of this new trick. “You swam like a fish!" he’d say, so impressed by our swimming abilities.

For as many pool memories as I have, it took a little while to experience one of our own. For reasons I can only assume were related to finances, my parents did not buy a house with a pool. As I aged from my kindergarten to elementary school years and starting spending time at friends’ houses, I observed this was a stark difference between my home and theirs. We were the only ones who didn’t have a built-in backyard pool.

I vaguely remember the above-ground swimming pool we had for sometime, sitting atop a swath of green lawn that browned as you got closer to the pool’s hard plastic edges. My parents were no fools—the need for a cool-down mechanism in the Sonoran summer heat was undeniable. But it wasn’t the same thing as a “real” pool.

At some point my brother and I must’ve asked my parents about it, or maybe they were plotting it all along once their savings permitted it. The day my dad told us he was (finally) putting in a swimming pool felt like this scene in Christmas Vacation, when Clark announces he’s using his holiday bonus check to install a swimming pool. *cue applause and shrieks of joy from the family*

Now mind you, this wasn’t just any pool. My dad had a hand in designing it I seem to recall, his excitement contagious when he showed us architectural drawings of the backyard beauty. The best feature was the rock waterfall, which naturally morphed from a cannon ball platform to a sunbathing mermaid rock. One of my favorite photographs from my childhood is one in which me, my brother, and our chocolate lab Mocha are posing atop the waterfall. This image encapsulates so much of my upbringing and childhood happiness.

The evolution in our family’s swimming pool journey taught me an early, valuable lesson in not taking things for granted and the importance of delayed gratification. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I was old enough to recognize there was something notable about being the kid who got to watch the swimming pool being dug and built, a dream turning into reality.

I spent the bulk of this past week vacationing in Palm Springs with some friends. Given the 90+ degree temps, we opted to spend the majority of our five days there poolside.

The $1.99 pool noodle brought me enough nostalgia to carry me through the week. Then a few days later, an inflatable volleyball net and beach ball entered the scene.

Something about jumping around, causing splashes as I dove to hit the ball before it touched the water’s surface, again unleashed my inner child. It was only a matter of time though before the ball got popped by the spines of a yucca plant adorning the yard (my fault because I think I was subconsciously trying to embody my inner Greg Focker). But for the short time it lasted, I had so much fun.

I took as many opportunities as I could throughout the week to fully submerge myself in the water, taking care to notice the feeling of my hair flowing around me. Just like pool games, it immediately brings me back to my childhood.

The sensation of being underwater beckons the feeling of being young and free, once again just a girl in a swimming pool without a worry in the world. 🧜‍♀️