At the Park

I have always been pretty strategic in choosing the parks the girls and I go to.  The playground needs enough things for each to do, and I need to be able to see them all the time.

This park, though pretty small, is difficult to supervise both the H’s.  There’s a tall bridge in the back, that I can’t see them well in, the kids that play here are older, the part that Harper likes to play in is separated from the part Hadley likes to play in.

For awhile I tried to find one spot where I could stand and move my head back and forth to check on Hadley and Harper, but neither of them stayed in one place.  I think I was developing a twitch moving my head every which way to make sure nobody fell on her head.

I think I know how a lifeguard must feel, I thought.

And then I remembered the summer days I spent at our neighborhood pool.  There were days when it was so crowded I could see the suntan lotion on the top of the water from the kids swimming next to me.  I don’t remember thinking, It’s too crowded.  I could get hurt. I remember not wanting to get out, and being fascinated by the weightlessness of my body as I bobbed in the water.

My favorite thing to do were the gymnastics tricks I wasn’t all that great at on land.  Flip flops and forward flips, and handstands that I could hold for as long as my breath would last.

The worst part of swimming were the rest periods.  The lifeguards would stand on their chairs and blow their whistles as someone on the loud speaker would drone, “It is now time for a 10 minute rest period.”  We’d pull ourselves out of the pool and sit as close to the edge as we could without breaking the rule of actually being in the pool, and wait as the folks over the age of 18 swam laps.

Sometimes, we’d go to the snack shop during rest periods to buy super ropes and gummy bears. I liked the afternoons my friends and I would have a fireball contest.  We’d each buy one red ball the size of a small rock and see who could keep it in her mouth the longest.   It was a pretty painful game.  Several of us drooled red juice down our chins and onto our bathing suits.  One girl, who insisted that two parts of your body can’t hurt at the same time, would snap the straps of her suit so they’d land with a smack back onto her skin in order to deter from the pain in her mouth.  She usually won.

I walked home from the pool in the late afternoon, one hand around the towel that was around my waist, and the other holding a pack of Wint-o-green Lifesavers.  I always saved a quarter to buy them for the walk home.  My eyes stung from the chlorine so that when I’d look at the Chicago skyline it was blurry.

I always thought those lifeguards looked so bored sitting up there in their chairs with nothing to do but blow a whistle every so often to tell a wild child to get out of the pool.  Perhaps I was right: it can get a tad monotonous scanning the scene to make sure nobody’s in trouble.

I don’t remember the potential for trouble.  I only remember the happiness being at the pool brought me.

Hopefully that’ll be the case with my girls, too.