Laps of Luxury

Musings of an Anxious Millennial Writer #18: My Summers in Pools

I’m writing this as my airplane is beginning its descent into New York, after a last-minute work trip to Los Angeles. I’m going from the sweet California sun into the humid, sticky, disgusting New York heat (and I wouldn’t want it any other way). But after a quick dip in a rooftop pool overlooking the Hollywood Hills and seeing all the underutilized in-ground pools that mark the winding terrain of LA, my biggest dream starts tugging on my heartstrings once more: to have a pool of my own.

Summer in the City

For as long as I can remember, it’s been my dream to have my own pool, a dream shared by my mother and her mother before her. I’ve never traced my ancestry, so my lineage (at least on my grandma’s side) from my understanding, really only traces back to NYC, with large families moving from cramped apartment to cramped apartment. The closest we came to heaven was when my grandmother’s sister, Irene, had a condo in the early ‘90s that had a shared pool and a private boardwalk. When I need to transport myself back to a happy place or envision the type of home I’d want in my future, that Carol St. condo on City Island immediately springs to mind.

Things differed a bit on my grandfather’s side, as their journey brought them from the Bronx, to the sunny shores of Long Island, including a house with a pool. This pool would not exist when I was born, so I never experienced this luxury. My childhood trips to Long Island were marked by boredom and an excess of pasta, the latter of which I didn’t appreciate nearly as much as I would have in adulthood. As such, I grew to despise all of Long Island, a feeling I would carry well into adulthood.

Boardwalk Towns

My grandmother’s side, however, made for memorable family trips and vacations. Sometime in middle school, when I was around 7 or 8, we started taking trips to my aunt Muriel’s house in Keansburg, a lesser-known New Jersey boardwalk and beach town. At this point in time, my mother was petrified to drive more than 20 miles from home, so we’d have her brother, my uncle Ray, who lived in New Jersey escort us across those state lines. I was used to spending time in his house, so this didn’t seem too unusual for me. Except this time we’d only be spending a day or two with my uncle Ray and aunt Kathy before they’d drop us off at Muriel’s house for the rest of the week. A perk of going to Keansburg wasn’t just the fact that it was a chance to get away, nor was it the fact that she had a granddaughter my age, which gave me a summer buddy and increased my wardrobe as we’d often swap clothes during the time spent together.

She also had a pool.

Aunt Muriel’s pool was my first experience, outside of a blow up kiddie pool—including one instance of my mom caving and filling a baby pool up for me in the living room of our fully carpeted, two-bedroom apartment (this had far less serious implications than you’d think), of getting to dip my toes in the water of a private pool. It wasn’t anything too fancy, but it was a perfect suburban above-ground pool, complete with a full wraparound deck. I’d spend many hot July days bobbing around the water, wearing my bright orange arm band swimmies, refreshed while basking in the warm summer sun.

These summers were my equivalent of most kids’ memories of summer camps, minus the excess bug bites and inevitable trauma. My family didn’t have much money to do many vacations and definitely couldn’t afford to ship me off for a pricey camp stay, so these two week New Jersey stays spent watching cartoons in the morning and MST3K at night with my cousin Gina, getting pruny all over from spending the whole day in the pool, eavesdropping on the hilarious stories of my older family members, and spending nights eating funnel cake while walking the Boardwalk (this last part was a common occurrence until some guy decided to fatally tombstone another dude right on the boardwalk from what I can only assume was rage-fueled claw machine incident. I wouldn’t return to the Keansburg boardwalk until I was in college many years later.)

But true luxury was just lurking a few towns over.

On one of our summer sojourns to my aunt’s house, we received an invite to her son’s for a large family reunion (this was not something my family would do often, so it seemed especially important to attend). What I would learn is that my cousin not only had a mansion, and that mansion not only had an in ground pool, it was a lagoon-style pool, complete with a mini waterfall and an adjacent hot tub. I didn’t know then how good I had it, as I playfully bobbed around with my swimmies keeping me afloat. I’d kill to be back in that pool now, sipping on a refreshing adult beverage while lounging in a float or swimming laps back and forth across the great expanse.

As much as I loved swimming from a very young age, I didn’t actually learn how to swim until I was about 10.

In an odd turn of events during these boardwalk town summers of my youth (which, in hindsight, may have only been three summers but they felt like most of my childhood), my grandmother’s sisters began a feud (or perhaps picked one up from their younger years) that involved my grandmother being used as bait. Her oldest sister, (what I can only assume was out of jealousy from the newly reinstated bond between her, Muriel, and Irene), offered to host us for a month one summer. My grandmother, attempting to regain closeness with all her siblings, accepted the offer. She and her daughter lured us in with promises of daily swimming, late nights, and barbecues. This sister also had a granddaughter my age, and so I figured I’d be in for more of the same.

This would turn out to be one of the worst summers of my life.

Cruel Summer

It turns out my grandmother wasn’t so much a guest as she was a caretaker and cook against her will. The late nights they promised were 11 PM sharps, there was one small TV in the living room, and worst of all… no pool.

Actually, it was worse than no pool. It was only a pool at the country club they attended.

Growing up a poor kid going to school in a rich town meant I got to be an interloper of many a country club (ok three in total) and they’re not that bad, just not-as crowded public pools with a lot of rules. This country club took that last part to heart more than any other. It was like the opposite of the Outback Steakhouse: all rules. Just wrong.

I didn’t know how going to swim could be unenjoyable but this country club made that so. The lifeguards were all on power trips. We’d have to wake up at 8 am every day to get there before they opened, waiting outside, shivering in the cool morning air while the staff mocked us for our punctuality. It was an unseasonably cool summer, and the water was like an ice bath. Worst of all, my cousin insisted on trying to teach me how to swim, which mostly consisted of her shaming me for not knowing how to and then putting me in situations where drowning seemed likely. In resistance, I resolved to never learn; you’d have to pry my orange swimmies from my cold, dead arms.

After a week of emotional abuse, my grandmother and I stowed away in the phone booth at the country club, calling everyone we had in our phone book to come rescue us. Finally, Aunt Muriel sent her grandson in his jeep as our knight in shining armor. We cut our month long vacation short and enjoyed a week at my fun aunt’s instead. There would be some sibling fall out from this later, but we’d mostly leave what happened those few weeks in the past, unsure of what happened or why. I guess, after all, I did get a little taste of the summer camp experience.

On my return to Aunt Muriel’s pool after that harrowing experience, I ditched the swimmies for good and never looked back. I taught myself how to swim and you couldn’t get me out of the water after that.

I didn’t realize it until I was much older, but the sudden want to spend extended time at Aunt Muriel’s was likely due to her recent breast cancer diagnosis, and my grandmother’s desire to spend more time with her older sister. Muriel’s vibrant personality, infectious laughter, and bright red hair that she perfectly replicated in wig form never let on how serious her condition was. I was never shielded much from the harsh realities of life, but my grandmother did a good job of not overstating her own fears of her older siblings mortalities at this time. These people were new to me and made an impact, but their stays would not be long. By the time I turned 11, I’d had attended more funerals than most of my peers. Aunt Muriel’s was one I didn’t grasp the sadness of until sometime later, and really until writing this now I don’t think I grieved it enough. I miss her and I miss those summers.

Eventually, my Uncle Ray and Aunt Kathy would get their own in-ground pool which would become my mom (now conquering her fear of longer drives), grandmother, and close friends’ summer home away from home until they moved just a few years ago. I didn’t take for granted these moments either, though I am now once again without a private pool to plan my summers around.

In Defense of Public Pools

But I didn’t cut my teeth on private pools. I’m a lower middle class kid from just outside NYC, my summers were designed by public and county pools and, for the first time last year, I got my very own park pass.

When it comes to swimming, I’m not choosy. I’ll find my peace in the smallest section of an overcrowded public pool, dodging errant limbs from cannon-balling adolescents. Maybe it’s my Piscean nature, but to water I belong, no matter in what form it may be. And there’s nothing quite like the inviting scent that is the mix of coconut suntan lotion with boiled hot dogs. There’s no greater feeling than that first toe dipping into the too-cold water as the rest of your body gets splashed by diving kids who will get inevitably whistled at. No better music to my ears than the sound of lifeguards yelling “no running!” or “off the shoulders!” for the fiftieth time.

The public pool will forever hold a special place in my heart, from my earliest memories of being a toddler, attempting to save my tiny feet from the lava hot rocks that paved the walkway by carefully scampering on the painted yellow lines, as if that really made a difference, to the present day, when I go to that very same pool (now a water park complete with a lazy river, reconstructed long after I was the age to enjoy it), with my mother to enjoy a middle-aged ladies water aerobics class.

And let’s not forget the divine dining experience that is the pool concession stand. Your hot dogs and hamburgers are classic fare, but there’s nothing quite like the crunch of perfectly breaded chicken fingers by the pool. Fighting off seagulls for French fries is its own summer Olympic sport that makes every bite of potato-ey goodness even better, and the cross between personal pan pizza/Elio’s could rival a perfect New York slice in a way that only Boardwalk pizza comes close. Outside of these particular settings these pizzas would be no better than Domino’s, but the cheese pull mixed with the overbearing scent of chlorine elevates the experience. I’d wax poetic about the ice cream options, but I’m still in a state of mourning over the loss of my beloved Toasted Almond and Nestle Candy Center Crunch bars.

Private pools may still be the definition of luxury to me, but give me any body of water on a hot day and my serotonin will be boosted for at least 48 hours. And I’ve swam in the Hudson, so clearly laps matter more than luxury to me.