Backwards

 

“You know how I use the weights in front of me when I’m water walking?”

In the shower, Alice is talking. About the pool equipment of yellow and blue spongey looking weights used by the water walkers. The weights are attached at either end of a short white pole that the walker can grip. When walking, the weights can be moved back and forth under or on top of the water for an upper body workout.

            “Yeah,” I answer now, leaning back to rinse the shampoo out of my hair.

            “Well!” She cracks a guffaw. “I started using the weights lying on my back instead of walking and you know what? I went BACKWARDS!!!!”

            Here she really lets out a giant cackle. I join in. Remembering how when I was trying to teach my Gram how to swim in our pool in Hacienda Heights. My sisters and I in the bright sunshine of the blue tiled pool. Gram in the shallow end. We would instruct her to float and move her arms, like she was coming in for a plane landing with the cupped palms of hands, but every time she moved her arms, even if they were going forward in a freestyle stroke, she’d go backwards! “GRAM!” we’d holler, giggling. “You’re going backwards!”

            “Well, I know. Isn’t that something?”

            And we’d all laugh and laugh and laugh. It really was something. How did she move backwards when her arms were stroking forward?

            It was a mystery.

            So, today, when Alice tells me that she went backwards instead of forwards with her new in-the-water position, I wanted to share the story of Gram with her, but we were in the shower. There is only so much story sharing I can handle while trying to apply conditioner.

            Instead, I just nod and grin. This is plenty for Alice to continue. “I don’t understand it!” She laughs uproariously again.

            “It must have some deeper meaning,” I muse. And, I wonder what going backwards means when you want to go forwards. Both of these instances, my gram and Alice, involve old ladies. Do old ladies just want to go backwards instead of forwards? Is there nothing left to go forward to anymore? Time is running out. The future is so short. Isn’t it better to just go backwards to all that you’ve lived?

        

    Like that movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Brad Pitt lives backwards until he’s a baby again, instead of growing old and decrepit. Of course, there were disadvantages to this, too. I can’t remember what now. To me, going backwards in time is appealing. I could feel better physically, with more energy to write and swim. Perhaps I could even go back and relive specific situations and change them. Don’t we all have these? Times when you did something truly stupid and wish  you hadn’t.

            Do I divulge these situations now?

            Hell no. I am NOT going backward! It’s full steam ahead for me.

            Like I have a choice.

            Which simplifies the matter.

            Unless you’re in the pool, trying out a new swim routine, and you continue to go backwards.

            Alice turns off the shower, ambles out of the area, her gait stiff and painful. I could see why she might want to go backwards to a time when she could walk without pain. But she does get this in the healing floating of the water.

            Maybe instead of going backwards, we could all just go forward. In the water. With the fishes and the seals and the coots and the old ladies.

            Now, wouldn’t that make a great movie?

            I’ll ask Brad Pitt.

Black Kids at the Pool

 

“It’s gratifying to see so many Black kids in line for the pool!” S. nods at the tumbling, boisterous line of children in front of the Richmond Swim Center. On their way to Swim Camp.

            E. and I are sitting outside the facility, just downwind from the line of kids, chatting about how her daughter came down with COVID after going to a concert in San Francisco. Yes, COVID is still with us even after 5 years. S. has stopped to chat, too. She’s already told a story in the locker room about how she refrained from swearing at her husband that morning when he refused to take her to the gym. “I was so proud of myself when he went back on his promise! I didn’t use one single swear word. I just walked outta there and came to the pool!”

            Now, standing in front of us, her round black body pausing for a moment, her ample bosom straining at the Kamala Harris T-shirt, her comment about the black kids in line further ignites her narrative skills.

            “You know, black kids don’t grow up swimming. It started during Segregation. When Black folk weren’t even allowed in public pools.” E. and I nod. “And then,” she continues, “it gets passed on down generations as fear. First fear of the harms from segregation. Then fear of the water. My mama. She was afraid of the water. And she passed down this fear to me. Now, I swim.” She laughs loudly, shaking her head. “Well, I don’t really swim, but I look like I swim. I was thinking of taking swim lessons.”

            “They do give swim lessons here on Saturday mornings,” I interject.

            “They do? Well, that’s good to know. Maybe I’ll sign up. I’m not afraid of the water like my mama, but I never learned to swim because she was. And, after all these back surgeries. I’m not having any more. Thank you very much! The doctors said for me to swim. That this would be the best therapy for my back.”

            “It is!” E. and I both sing out.

We all laugh. “It’s true,” S. continues.

“If only we could be in the water all the time!” I exclaim.

“Now, wouldn’t that be something?” S. muses. “I want a big water bubble surrounding me so when I’m walking around, I’m in the pool. 24/7!”

Didn’t I write about this idea before? A pool bubble? I think so. But back to the black kids standing in line today. The changes that have happened for them in order for them to be at the pool, at swim camp. I never had thought of segregation as being responsible for so few black swimmers. Of course, I’ve noticed that most swimmers are white. At this pool, there are a lot of old white ladies. But only a few old black ladies. And a couple young black swimmers: one is the underwater swimmer I was next to today. She wears long blue and green fins, dives deep under water, and blasts across the length of the pool, holding her breath until she gets to the other end. Amazing! So, obviously, there are a few black swimmers, but only a few.

            Now I know why. Racism and bigotry's long arms of oppression. And, still it goes on today. 

         “I gotta git home now and fix my husband lunch!” S. proclaims.

            “Haven’t you already done enough for him today by now swearing?” E. asks.

            We all laugh.

            “I think you deserve Wife of the Year!” I say.

            “Hah! You’re right. I do!”

            “And this coming from two single women without husbands,” E. says.

            “Maybe we’re the best judges of who is the Wife of the Year,” I offer, but not really knowing why this would be.

            They laugh at me in any case.

            The kids are hustled into the facility now.  Their noisy shouts and shoves gone inside, to the pool.

I am glad for the sudden quiet, but at the same time, I’m glad for their opportunity to swim. It’s the best thing in the world. For white kids. Black kids. Asian Kids. Latinx kids. All kids!

Swim swim swim swim!

           

 

 

Snake Stories

 

Brian Kristal of Reptile Wonders, photo by Doug Bishop

"Yesterday, we had snakes at the library,” Conditioner Woman says as she bustles around her stuff strewn all over the locker room bench. We’d both just gotten out of the pool here at Kennedy High and then the shower. She hadn’t asked me for conditioner today, but I’d kept it under wraps, taking it into the toilet with me to prevent theft.

            She’d asked me about teaching. If it was busy. I’d told her not yet. It’s just the first week. She then launched into her Snake Story.

            “Did the snakes read from the snake books?” I asked, laughing.

            She didn’t glance up at me but shook her head. “No, but that’s a funny idea. What happened was that this Snake Expert came into the library yesterday and brought with him four snakes that he told a bit about to the kids. One was a poisonous snake. One was harmless. One was very large. Etc.”

            I thought about how I had always liked snakes. And then remembered the time in Santa Cruz when Owen Hill and I lived across the street from the Fruit Factory and our cat, Gus, had caught a snake. We’d come home from somewhere and seen him in the driveway. Tossing something up into the air. The something writhing about and then falling. Then the cat picking it up and tossing it up again. When we’d gotten closer, we saw that it was a little green and yellow snake. “Looks like just a gardner snake,” Owen had commented.

            “Is it gardner or garter?” I’d asked.

            “Gardner, I think you know what a garter is.”

            I lifted my pants leg up, displaying a tan shapely calf, laughing.

            But what to do with the poor snake that the cat was playing with? Was it even still alive?

            “GUS!!!” I hollered, “STOP it!”

            He ignored me as only a cat can. I moved a little closer to see if I could tell if the snake were alive still or not. But part of me was a little creeped out. Snakes. They are inherently creepy, right? A Christian Cultural sinister devil.

            Owen shook his head as the cat stopped and started chewing on the snake, now lying lifeless on the driveway. “I think we’re too late.”

            “Should we take it away from him?” I asked. “I mean, will eating it make him sick?”

            “Nah, it’s protein. Let him have his dinner.”

            I had been dubious but then again, I didn’t want to pick up a dead snake either, so I’d followed Owen into the apartment to start our own dinner, snake free.

            Today, then, when Conditioner Woman mentioned the snakes and how much the kids liked them, I thought about how, yeah, this makes sense. Kids like creepy stuff.

            “The snake guy had a few of the kids volunteer to hold the snakes. And one kid, he had him close his eyes, and then he placed a huge, beautiful lizard in the kid’s arms.”

            I wanted to ask what the kid’s reaction was, but she had turned to announce the Snake Story to the next woman waiting in the wings: “Yesterday, we had snakes at the library.”
            “Snakes?”

            “Yes, snakes….”

            I dug around in my swim bag for my brush to tackle the tangles before it was time to leave. “Just to let you ladies know, KIDS ARE COMING INTO THE LOCKER ROOM SOON!” one of the lifeguards anounnced, stomping across the cement floor to check the showers for dead bodies.

            Or snakes?

            I once saw a snake coming out my shower, but hell, that’s another story.

Finishing the detanglining procedure, I threw my brush back in my bag and gathered up all my stuff to throw in too.

            “I bet the kids loved the snakes….” echoed in the room.

            Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I hurried out of the locker room. Outside the facility kids were swarming for summer pool camp.

            I thought about snakes at the pool. How much fun that would be. Throwing them in the water and letting them chase all the kids. The fear. The screaming. The hilarity.

            Maybe next summer.

            Snakes at the Pool.

            Now that would be a story!

Survival

 

“I heard you say a couple of times that you’d survived….” a round, pasty middle-aged woman pauses on her way out of the locker room, her beady blue eyes questioning.

I’m at the mirror post swim and shower, trying to yank the tangles out of my hair. I glance over at her, my brush caught mid tangle, “Yeah… it was a battle out there in the pool today.”

She stares at me. Stupidly. She has no clue what I’m talking about. What was her swim like? I guess it wasn’t a battle. Or, she was one of the Clueless Ones. You know, those folks who jump into a lane without any idea how to swim, let alone circle swim.

This is what had happened to me today. I’m swimming along, in a nice rhythm, crowds all around me but so far, I’ve got my own lane. Then, turning at the wall, I stop to survey the family of 3 standing on deck staring down at me.

Damn! Do they all want to get into my lane?

“What’s going on?” I ask them.

Dad answers, “I think I can swim medium if I push it.” Oh, they’re reading the useless speed signs in front of each lane. No one pays attention to these. But I suppose if this is your first time here at Kennedy High Pool, you’d start with the sign in front of the lane.

I stare at him, then take in the wife and the teenager. “Are you all getting in this lane?”

“Yes,” he says, his goatee and gold earring belying his swimming ability. I am not sure why. He just doesn’t look like a swimmer. And, as it turns out, I was right.

“Well, then we need to circle swim,” I say, not asking if they know what this means. Everyone stays to the right side of the black line on the bottom of the pool, circling around it, letting faster swimmers pass at the wall.

“That sounds good,” he says, jumping in and starting a lazy sidestroke.

Shit, I think.

Then the wife gets in and starts a head out of the water breaststroke. She’s alone, in a warm lake. In the San Gabriel Mountains. The scenery is green and distracting. Jays flying overhead, the sun gentle on the water.

She is NOT in a crowded pool in Richmond!

I put on my fins and zoom past her, trying to splash her tranquility, but she is completely clueless, lost in a dream.

Now, when You Survived Woman queries me, I think of all the things I have survived: Adolescence, Cancer, Layoffs, Heartbreaks. Is today’s pool mayhem on par with these?

It feels like it. Or felt like it.

Laughing, I turn back to my brush, attempt to parse the wet strands from its teeth. “It was just a joke,” I say to her. “My swim was a bit crazy.”

“Well, all of the pools are closed around here. So, it is more crowded,” she offers, but her heart isn’t in it. I can tell that her swim was just hunky dory.

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” I agree, wishing she’d move on and stop staring at me like I had some secret story to divulge.

But I don’t. I was just voicing my frustration to my friends in the shower. They both knew what I was talking about, one laughing and nodding in agreement, the other rolling her eyes and sighing loudly.

Survival of the fittest? Darwin’s theory is common knowledge now. Am I going to survive the summer at the Richmond pools? Am I That Fit?

Only time will tell, in the meantime, Gloria Gaynor inspires me with her wailing refrain:

“I will SURVIVE!”

Gloria Gaynor, I Will Survive

Trumpers?

 

“Are they Trumpers over there? They don’t want to admit when they make a mistake?” Jess lathers up more suds as the shower pounds down on her back. The issue?

            A discrepancy in the summer pool schedule for the Richmond Swim Center. Evidently, the website says one time and the printed-out schedule says another. An hour’s difference. Which, of course, is huge when the hours are already so limited.

            “The website says that the pool will be open till 12 on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Alice continues, dragging her big comb through her wet hair, “but the printed-out schedule says they’re only going to be open till 11.”

            “Can’t they fix that?” Jess asks?

            “You would think so,” Alice says. “But evidently the new management has their head up their asses!”

            We all crack up. And, I think, doesn’t management always have their head up their asses? I remember working at Woo Woo U under the management of Q, whose ineptitude and insanity was legendary. My colleague, J, would see her coming down the hall, juggling piles of files in her arms, car keys dangling from one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. J would whisper to me, “Look out! Her hair is on fire!”

            And it was. All red, oranges, bronzes standing atop her head, looking like the flames of hell.

            Her ineptitude running the Writing Center was beyond my credulity. A meeting with staff would devolve into actual shouting matches between instructors and Q. “I refuse to show up for a workshop at 10:00 am on a Saturday in fuckin Campbell when I have no guarantee that there will be any students there!” one of my colleagues had screeched. Q had dug her heels in. “You must show up, Dana. It’s your job!”

            Dana stood up from the table, fury steaming out of her ears and march out of the room.

            I couldn’t believe it! But then again, I could. Management is always so out of touch with the reality of what their staff, students, or patrons actually are doing or need.

            So, today, when the discrepancy about the pool schedule came up in the showers, I just shook my head, thinking, Trumpers? Maybe. I knew that Q NEVER admitted when she made a mistake or EVER changed her mind even when confronted with irrefutable evidence to the contrary of her position or directive.

            And Trump? Anyone with a brain knows that he is a lying, cheating, conniving crook. Would he admit that he made a mistake with dismantling the Dept of Education? That this is necessary to further the educational needs of students? Or that his choice of a Health Secretary in Kennedy is egregiously wrong. How can someone be in charge of the health of citizens without any medical background? Who believes that vaccines are the devil?

            Nope, Trump would never walk back any of these decisions. And these are just the tip of the iceberg as the saying goes. I could write a book about his ‘mistakes’ and still not be able to cover them all.

            So, today, when the pool schedule discrepancy arises, I am not surprised.

            This schedule’s shorter hours have been the hot topic all week. Everyone is writing letters of complaint to the management. They’re up in arms about who the management even is. It’s a revolution if such a thing could happen at the pool.

            And, yes, I too, have written a letter of protest, citing a recent non-interaction with the new pool manager when I ran into him after swimming at the Plunge this week. “Hi,” I’d smiled. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with me, let alone acknowledge me in any human way, mumbling a surly ‘hello’ before heading into the building.

            Is this guy a Trumper? Who knows. I suppose anything is possible even though this is the Bay Area and Trumpers are rare. Will the discrepancy in the pool schedule be fixed? We’ll have to wait and see.

            “It doesn’t seem like such a big deal to fix the discrepancy,” I comment to Jess after the shower as we’re throwing on our clothes.

            Shaking her head, she sighs, rolls her eyes. “No, it doesn’t. Or reverse it. Keep the schedule as it is. Not closing an hour earlier.”

            “That would be nice,” I agree. But think to myself. Would Q have reversed her decision to make her instructors drive all the way to Campbell, an hour plus drive from Unpleasant Hill campus, for a workshop that may not have any students?

            No.

            It never happened.

            And, I don’t like to be such a pessimist, but the reality is, no one in power wants to admit they made a mistake. Not Q. Not the Pool manager. And esp., not Donald Trump.

            Jess finishes dressing, calling out, “Goodbye Ladies!”

            I follow her, shrugging on my sweater and heaving my swim bag over my shoulder.

            Outside the facility, the day is windy and cold. Typical June. I spy LS at her bike and head over to chat.

            “Did you know that there’s a discrepancy between the schedule in the website and….”

            A gull screeches overhead. My wet hair blows in my face. The words tumble out.

            It’s another day at the pool.

The Red Bra

 

“I have a funny story about a time they had to use the PA system at the pool,” Alice announces as she bends her head under the stream of hot water, piles of suds covering her face.

          “I didn’t even know they had a PA system,” I comment, leaning back to just let the water soak my aching neck. The pool had been crowded again. Sharing a lane is okay, but not my first preference. At least I shared with Jess, a known entity, and I wasn’t in the Man Splash Sandwich like the day before yesterday. I had been sharing a lane with a slow equipment man that took over the entire lane, flinging wide arms and oblivious to all. Everytime he took a stroke and I had to pass him, I was afraid he was going to slice me with his hard plastic hand paddles. Then next to me had been three men, circle swimming. So much tidal wave action. I was rocking back and forth, gulping water instead of air.

          “I think usually,” Jess offers, “they use…. what’s that called when they yell through that cone?”

          “Megaphone?” I suggest.

          “Yes, that’s it, megaphone.”

          “Well, this was over the PA system for all to hear,” Alice starts chuckling as she drags a big toothed comb through her wet hair. “I had put all of my clothes in one of the green hanging bags, and little did I know, there was a Red Bra already in the bag!”

          She laughs and shakes her head at the memory. “I didn’t see it when I threw my stuff on top of it. It was this beautiful, lacy RED bra, that belonged to Suzanne, you remember her, Jess?”

          “Suzanne? Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Red head, a little on the plump side.”

          “That’s her! So, when I inadvertently absconded with her Red Bra, she was beside herself. Went and told the lifeguards. And then, all of a sudden, blaring over the PA system was: “HAS ANYONE SEEN A RED BRA? A RED BRA IS MISSING. PLEASE RETURN IT IF YOU HAVE SEEN IT!”  

          “Well,” Alice continues, shaking the water out of her comb, “I had no idea that I was the culprit until I got back into the locker room and was getting dressed and what do I find at the bottom of my green bag?”

          “A RED BRA!” Jess and I yell.

          “Exactly! I was mortified,” Alice admitted. “But looking back on it now, it was hilarious to hear the male lifeguard announce over the PA system about a missing Red Bra!Y ou could tell he was embarrassed....he could barely get the words out!

          We all laughed, and I remember how just last night, Ian and I had watched an episode of Seinfeld where George interviews for a job as a Bra Salesman. He pompously tells his perspective boss about his knowledge of this most intimate of women’s garments: “The bra has two cups in the front, in sizes A through D--A being the smallest breast capacity and D being the largest--and two hooks in the back and is available in a variety of pleasing fabrics, colors and designs.”

          Bras. I haven’t worn one in years. I’m lucky that way, being of the B cup variety. Or maybe even A at this point. Yet, I’m in the minority. Bras are a big deal for the women here at the Kennedy High Pool. I watch in fascination as women take a seat on the wide bench, then slowly go through the machinations to get the bra on. Hooking it in front. Shifting the hooked side to the back. Heaving their huge melon breasts into the cups.

          It’s a process!

          But so far, I haven’t witnessed the putting on of a sexy red bra. For, what could be sexier than red?

          “Has anyone seen my bra?” Alice jokes now, out of the shower, at the bra stage of getting dresses.

          We all laugh. “Is it red?” I ask.

          She grins, “Of course!”

          Jess waves goodbye as she bounds out of the locker room. I toss my stuff into my swim bag and follow her out, thinking that maybe it’s time I bought myself a sexy red bra!

Everybody Plays the Fool

 

“Eveeryboody plaays the foooool…” Singing Woman belts out into the locker room,  rocking to the beat, her half-dressed body swaying back and forth, ass leading the way.

            Two other women, besides me, are still in the locker room here at the Kennedy High Pool. They’re both sitting on the benches chatting away while slowly putting their belongings in various bags and purses. They’re African American too, like Singing woman, and a knowing smile comes over their faces as Singing Woman continues to croon.

            One of them nods, then a loud sigh of agreement, “Ummmmmmm.” Her friend nods too, and then they both start in on the song too. The locker room fills with their sweet harmonies: “Everybooody plaaayss the fool!” they chorus.

            No one glances at me. I want to join in, but wonder if I’d be intruding. I know the song. Not all the words of course, but the opening refrain and melody. I used to spend Saturday mornings watching Soul Train as a teenager in Irvine. I loved the dancing. The music. The exuberance. It was so far from the classical music I studied. Chopin. Debussy. Rachmaninoff.

            Yet, whenever I watched Soul Train, I was swept away. I would dance along to the music. The Temptations. Sly and the Family Stone. Tina Turner.

            All black artists.

            I didn’t know any black people growing up in Irvine. All of my friends were white, middle class, suburban kids of the 70’s. I didn’t know anything different. Was my enchantment with Soul Train a longing for a culture I didn’t know? How could that be?

            Today, I live in the Bay Area, specifically, Richmond, where diversity is taken for granted. My neighborhood has people of all races: Latino, Black, Asian, and of course, White.

            I like the variety of people. I’m learning Spanish so that I can talk to my neighbors. Sometimes I get an opportunity to do this, but it’s elementary, like a five-year-old.  “Hola, Como esta? ¿Muy bien, y tú? ¿Como esta su perro? Él es viejo. ¡Yo también!”

            But that’s about it.

            Yet, with these women today, I feel like I’m part of their group because of the pool. We are all here swimming together, showering together, dressing together.

            So, why don’t I join in with their song?

            I’m not sure. Maybe it was cuz I felt shy. Or didn’t want to intrude on their shared cultural experience. Yet, I imagine, they would have been fine with my joining in.

            I guess I’ll never know.

            Unless Singing Woman takes up another Soul Train Greatest Hit. Then, I’ll join in. Maybe next time, she’ll sing another R&B classic, like Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” or “Dancing Machine” by the Jackson 5.

            Yet, I hope Everybody Plays a Fool comes up again. Lord knows, I’ve played the fool enough times to sing about it. But that’s a story for another day.

In the meantime, enjoy The Main Ingredient:

Everybody Plays the Fool