The Summer We Built a Pool

This summer I went swimming. This summer I might have drown… But I held my breath and I kicked my feet, and I moved my arms around.

Loudon Wainwright the 3rd

To fully accept myself as a queer person I could no longer ignore the significance of my star sign. I’m a religious person so I would never tell anyone who believes in astrology that this is not a useful tool. Astrology and religion are tools to enrich and connect in this first life. Last summer I could no longer deny the fact that as a cancer sign, one of the only things that calms me down is a large body of water. I’ll take anything… pool, lake, river, but show me the ocean. God, I love the ocean. And I only made it to see her once last year.

I figured out I could bike to Coney Island from my Brooklyn apartment if we got to the point where New Yorkers could no longer take the train. We got to that point. I biked out there and stared at her all day, hoping that my life would eventually emulate the ebb and flow of the water. Suddenly the trash would be sucked back and the water would clear and the ragged glass in the sand would turn to gem stones and I would realize life, like the ocean, is so big that even if it’s a little tainted, it mostly isn’t.

Last summer was the first summer I had spent in Virginia since I was 16, biding my time there until I felt safe enough to go back to the city. I’ll remember it forever for reasons obvious and not. My Mom stopped bickering with my Step Dad, not all the way but about about one thing in particular. She just went for it and he was finally resigned. I guess a pandemic will do that, help you pick and choose your battles. Finally, the world had given my Mom sound reasoning to demand a pool on her five acre lot with the electrical wires running in the sun overhead out in Gordonsville, Virginia.

My Brother and my Mom went to Costco and bought the largest above ground pool they could afford (I’m told around $300?), not realizing that the model picked would be the least expensive part of the pool building endeavor: there was the sand to level the clumpy clay underneath the pool, and the fence mandated by the county to keep drunk intruders or children from sneaking in and drowning, and, of course, the water to fill the pool. To save money my Mom thought we might just throw the hose in and fill the pool, but thankfully my Step Dad reminded her that we’re on a well… 500 gallons would set us back a few showers. My Mom and Brother built the pool the day after she got out of school. COVID had made it a rough year for all of us, but my Mom particularly. She was teaching at a deeply under resourced school where the students and teachers were given no protections or flexibility by their administrators in their time of greatest need. Using the stress and anxiety building in her body, she erected the pool frame totally alone in less than 24 hours.

Step Dad got assigned the water sourcing task in an effort to save the well water. Four days later, Jimmy, the pool guy who came highly recommended by the internet, arrived to deliver alkaline water. I didn’t meet him but apparently my Brother got a weird vibe from his too long pinky nails and extended periods of fidgeting. Our Step Dad laughed it off.

“He sells water for a living. A little weird… but his price was good.”

That was how we felt at Walmart too when we realized you could buy chlorine in bulk, weaving double masked in and out of the aisles to stay very far away from the many Gordonsville residents who did not recognize the need for masks or fear the global pandemic. Mom was afraid the dog might eat the bulk chlorine if the container was left open, so we got the more expensive tablets in the double sealed container.

When the pool was deeply chlorinated and full of water my Brother rigged up a pump and a filter with Step Dad supervision, but there was still a long way to go. Mom had hastily levelled the sand under the pool making ‘level’ a generous word to describe its grade.

“One cannonball,” our stepdad cajoled as he surveyed the sloping plastic barriers, “and the living room will look like the beach.”

Ah, the beach… not the same as the home grown pool, no fence required because it cannot be contained. We couldn’t get to the beach so we were very thankful even if the cost of fun was also the threat of flooding the house. It hadn’t been a banner year at Gordonsville Manor (a.k.a. my Mom’s house). A tree fell on the house in the earliest and scariest part of the pandemic. The house was the fullest it had been since we were children with five of us there, but never before did we all have a full day of meetings to take, bobbing and weaving in and out of every corner to find the best wifi signal. The pool was paradise even with a sloping floor and an army of water skeeters.

The hardest part of building the pool was the part I was drafted into, the building of the county mandated safety fence. There was much discussion: should we do it cheap, slat picket fence, or latice stapled to thin poles, or just chicken wire and fallen branches? Nothing met the designated saftey standards so it was my truly excellent idea to splurge on pre-made fence panels, 10 feet high, 6 feet wide. The price of lumber had gone up dramatically, but this was a worthwhile investment especially for us young people as we were sometimes called, who would be digging the holes and placing the fence.

For the next five Saturdays, when my brother wasn’t studying for his masters and I wasn’t administering senior center photography classes on my laptop, we were challenged with putting the fence up around the pool. This was the job that most reinforced the pool as a necessity. We would be dig four foot deep post holes and move the 10 foot panels in 90 degree heat with 90 percent humidity. We would dig, place the post, pack the dirt to fill the rest of the hole, try some semblance of relevelling around the fence in towards the pool. The rocky, fallow clay made this the hardest part, but once things were stable we would drill the fence to the post at three critical places.

We did this, like so many signature tasks of our childhood, over and over again. We would dig and sweat and drill and when we couldn’t take it any more we would throw our bodies in the pool, and get back out and go right back to it. As someone who spends a good amount of time writing, a task that can feel like there is no definite ending point, it felt pretty great to see such progress and reap the benefits immediately.

A few friends who came to see the pool, to experience it six feet apart and masked were not enamored with its handmade charm. Some wondered if we felt we needed more mosquitos on our property, as the pool would surely attract hoards. We quickly realized the pool wouldn’t be the main attraction for the mosquitos, that the pool in attracting the mosquitos would be the main attraction for a flock of bats.

We discovered this reclining against the stable side of the pool watching a cotton candy sunset, my brother, his girlfriend, and I. Quick flashes of black at first made me feel like I had some kind of floater in my eye, but my brother confirmed that I wasn’t seeing things. Bats three to five inches big were dive bombing the pool, almost invisible at dusk, just skimming the water and our shoulders to bite the mosquitos before they could bite us. Though I was tempted to stay, my Brother’s Girlfriend cautioned we should get out. Bats are fantastic, but they also have rabies sometimes?

The pool remains a sanctuary and I haven’t been there since I returned to New York last September, but I can’t wait to see it again, to tell its story, one of communal triumph and impulse buying. My Mom sends me pictures sometimes of the metallic bugs that she finds floating on the surface or if the water is particularly green, when there’s a lapse in chlorine infusion. My Brother went on to build a changing room (he also got his first ever full time job and finished his masters degree)and he has plans for a tiki bar once the price of lumber goes down. If it ever does.

“Do we really need that?” I asked him one night on the phone.

“We need to spend as much time outside as we can.”

While I’m not sure the bar is a need, he’s right. Outside. We need to be present outside in our bat and mosquito filled ecosystem as much as we can. We need to experience the healing property of the water. Having something to look forward to is a need. Observing the richness of the forest and vastness of the sky, the renewed appreciation I felt for any and every outdoor space will be with me forever. I will carry this gratitude with me out of the pandemic year. Together with people that I can effectively communicate with (seventy percent of the time) we have the ability to build things from the ground up. It would be easy to hold shame around the pool’s imperfections, the many adjustments that will need to be made as the ground around continues to shift. Adjusting we can now recognize as another necessity, even if it is sometimes an unfortunate one.

I have never been so thankful for green water and I can’t wait to get in it, even if it’s a little tainted, it mostly isn’t and it’s ours to use and share.