Memorial

It’s Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend and for the first time, I feel like I actually DO have problems that even summer can’t solve. I’m not looking forward to summer the way I normally do. I’m not exactly dreading it but I’m not looking forward to it either. I kind of miss winter and if you know me you know that this is completely uncharacteristic and counter to all of my most dearly held beliefs and principles. 

Do you know how far gone I am? I almost hyphenated “dearly held.” A hyphen after an -ly adverb. Who am I? What is happening?

*****

It’s Sunday now. Yesterday was a more pleasant day than I expected it would be. It was sunshiny and bright after days of gloom. The sun and the warm temperatures are starting to dry things out a bit and it’s not so swampy anymore. That’s what it was like last week - swampy. I woke up early and walked in the slight chill of the early morning. Later in the morning, it was pleasant to be home with the sunlight streaming in through the windows, just writing and cleaning up and doing laundry and paying bills and catching up on life. 

And the pool opened yesterday, too. I didn’t feel like going, oddly enough, because I always feel like going. I also know that you don’t hyphenate an -ly adverb to form a compound modifier, but apparently, things change and I’m a different person altogether now. Still, after a morning and early afternoon of housekeeping and errands, I was hot and it seemed like it would have been a shame to miss the first day of the season, so I put on a suit, packed my pool bag, and rolled up to the pool.. 

My neighborhood pool is one of my favorite places on earth. During the winter, I think that it’s just the water that I miss, the water and the sunshine. But it's more than that. It's the roses and the sunflowers in the flower beds at the entrance. It's the makeshift lending library filled with paperbacks and magazines and picture books. It's the sweet teenage lifeguards at the front desk, all of them either my children or their friends. It's the old-fashioned pool house with its high wood framed windows for ventilation and its rustic summer camp-like showers. It's my neighbors and their families lounging on the blue and white striped deck chairs. And yes, it's the water and the sunshine, together. 

I breathed in the smell of roses and lilac and honeysuckle and lovely chlorine, found an empty chair next to a friend, and just like that, it was summer. But it still wasn't quite right. The pool deck was a riot of happy children, demanding the end of despised adult swim. They seemed unaware of the adults watching them, beaming at their beautiful faces. They probably wondered why no one was yelling at them to stop running and stop playing with the foot showers and stop making so much noise. Children can do anything they want right now. 

The water was cold but pristine, clear and sparking, free of leaves and debris and cicada carcasses.  I couldn't swim as fast or as far as I usually do but I'll get my speed and endurance back as the summer goes on. 

I swam on Sunday and Monday too. On Monday, I ran into my lovely elderly Russian neighbors, with whom I have been sharing swim lanes for 17 years. I said hello and waved as I always do, and they seemed happily surprised that I was still friendly toward them. I don't know them very well but I think they are Soviet-era Russian immigrants. In any event, they’ve been here for a very long time. They didn’t invade Ukraine. Putin isn’t their fault. 

It’s quite hot now, so the water is warming up a little bit every day. And just as it gets to be exactly the right temperature, the weather will change, and the water will get cold again. It’s OK. I’m not going to complain about cold water. 

In fact, I’m not going to complain about anything. I’m sad all the time and summer doesn’t feel like summer except during those precious few minutes that I’m in the water, and it doesn’t feel like anything will ever be right again. Maybe that’s OK too. Maybe nothing should ever feel right again. Maybe 19 children tore a hole in the universe when they succumbed to the gunfire last week and nothing will ever repair that hole until we are willing to do anything, give up anything at all, to make sure that nothing like that will ever happen again. Maybe I should stay out of the water and the sunshine and spend the long hot summer indoors, doing penance for a world that moves on when children die so violently. How can we move on?