At the Pool

I shouldn't be out in the sun but here I am in the pool, my skin slimy from a thick layer of sunblock.  The tree above shades the pool so I'm not too concerned even though I know I should be.  People are too obsessed with reality, going through the motions is enough for me.

My cousin Erin spends her time trying to impress me with her water skills.  This is a big deal that she has all of my attention and she is not about to let it go to waste.  She doggy paddles to the other side of the round pool and dives to the bottom holding her breath and emerging victorious every time.  It sounds like simple skills but I am truly impressed with how her abilities have progressed in two months of swimming in this pool.  At the beginning of the summer she was a fearless three year old in water wings and now she is a four year old independent woman proud of her skills.  I'm genuinely proud, too.  Her fearlessness is what scares me.  When I was a lifeguard, we told the little kids that they were only allowed to go to a certain point.  If they went further, we let them sputter and choke for a few seconds before helping them out.  We didn't want to make them afraid of the water, just respect what it can do if they got in over their heads.

Erin tells me she is four but as I watch her swim I remember that her birthday isn't until November.  She commands me to watch her do another lap even though my eyes haven't left her and I have not been more than a foot away from her the entire time.  I agree to watch her and wonder how difficult it would be for B.F. Skinner to place her in his theory.

We do races from one side of the pool to the other -- at her suggestion of course.  It requires some finesse to let her win since stretched out I cover nearly the radius of the pool and with a good push off the side, I make it to the other side almost instantly.  Her need to control makes her very competitive.  She would rather win knowing I was purposely going slow, rather than having a legitamite win.

"Christ, Jimmy," I remind myself.  "She's only three.  Or four.  Give her a break."

I'm ashamed after the reprimand but can't help thinking of every time we play a game and I watch her cheat to win.  Still, I smile and shower her with smiles, rainbows, and sunshine and countdown for another race.

"No," she tells me not angrily but flatly and definitively.  "You don't count down, I do."

I smile and do not argue.  Her tiny fingers are out of the water as she concentrates to only allow the three middle fingers to come up.  Even though she holds onto the runner on the top of the pool I place my hand under her belly as a precaution.

"Let go of me," a little voice says with obvious irritance.  "1...2...3!"

She let's go and starts her journey to the other side.  I watch her and think of that small and high pitch voice that she wants so badly to sound commanding.  The result always makes me laugh.  When she is half way across, I begin so that she doesn't see me letting her win if she looks back.  We get to the other side where I let her catch her breath and the routine begins again.

I catch up to her a few times just to tease her.  Her doggy paddle become flustered and she takes a deep breath to plunge her head under water so she can do that awkward torpedo swim that beginning swimmers seem to excel at.  Despite her comical bicycle kick, she moves a lot faster.

"I win!" she says more triumphantly than usual as she grabs the side after the close race.

She knows I was there first but I don't argue and she thankfully decides to move onto another game.  A whirlpool isn't so much a game as her watching me make it.  Going around in circles beats going back and forth, trying to think of new ways to let her win.

I run backwards because it is less tiring on my feet to run backwards in water but also to let Erin know I'm watching, that she has 100% of my attention.  Whenever I babysit her, it is with her older brother and sister.  Having someone alone with her is good but having someone that her brother and sister both like spending time with just her makes her radiant with happiness.  I tow her in big circles around the pool with just my head sticking out of the water, all the while swinging her side to side behind me, pretending like I'm letting her go, and playing games with her.  She laughs and laughs as the water rushes past us.  My legs pump hard while I push by body faster and faster through resisting water, imagining myself as a high school lineman going through leg strengthening drills.  She feels us going faster and she laughs at the speed.

"Let go of me," she commands.  And I do.

The confident look she had on her face is immediately replaced by frustration when she realizes she can't keep up with me with her doggy paddle.  But the current is fast and she is lite, and even if she can't keep up with me, she goes faster than she can by herself.  I watch the gears turn in her head as she figures out that it would be faster to go hand over hand along the side right now.  Like I said, she is not afraid of the water and throws herself forward to ride the current.  I am impressed and wonder if I was that good at problem solving when I was her age.

Still, I am much faster than her and soon am about to lap her for the second time.

"Do you wanna try going the other way for a while?" I ask her without having to explain what will happen when we do that.

Without answering she turns around and tries to swim against the pretty strong current, while I stand still behind her, more interested in watching her struggle against it than breaking it myself.  Even though she swims furiously, doggy paddling and underwater torpedoing, she stays in the same place.  An episode involving her seven year old brother flashes in my mind.  Pat was still trying to get the hang of swimming while holding onto a kick board, but whenever he kicked he moved in reverse.  He was angry but I kept laughing because I never saw that before, and he started raging while still going in reverse.  But I shouldn't think of that.  She's here now and deserves my attention.

Erin's large head barely bobs above water, so a little worried, I place my hand under her belly again to give her a little more buoyancy.

"I can swim myself!" she yells at me with a stern face.  "You don't have to hold me like a baby!"

My face feigns shock but a smile comes out and I laugh at her.  This makes her mad and she ignores me, focusing on swimming against the current, hovering above my hand that I keep below her without touching her.  When she does her torpedo swim, I can tell she is getting tired and lift her over my head growling like a monster.  She laughs.

"Wanna go the whirlpool way again?"  I ask her without knowing how else to put it.  I make my face excited and try to make it look like I'm waiting for the decider to make the decision.

"No, let's just make the whirlpool again the other way," she replies brushing her wet hair off of her forehead.

I think about this a second and decide that she said the same thing I did but in a way where she'd have control.  We spend the next hour making whirlpools and breaking them, all the while playing games and laughing.

"Let's play Zombies and Monsters," she tells me.

"Ok.  How do we play?"

"You're the Monster and you chase me to catch me.  If you catch me you have to throw me.  But you can't touch me when I'm here."

She is on the hollow plastic steps that lead out of the pool.  The explanation of the game gets repeated five or six times, changing a little every time when it looks like I understand the game.  In the end, it is the same game she originally described except that the entire wall of the pool is her safety zone.  I try a few times to get her when she lets go of the railing of the stairs for a second but she screams loudly and grabs it again, laughing at her triumph.  After doing this a few times I pretend to be not interested and she comes further out.  I don't go for her so she comes even further out until I can jump and grab her.  Lifting her up I toss her pretty high in the air and am surprised at how far I threw her.  Her head comes up out the water stunned but she quickly laughs again.  I threw her into the middle of the pool so she is not able to go anywhere and I grab her again and hold her for a second while she catches her breath then i throw her again.  We go through this routine four times before she starts complaining to me.

"You can't throw me that high," finishing up the last word in a whiny dipthong.  "You have to let me go to the side.  You can't just keep throwing me."

My face becomes pouty to match hers and she is annoyed.  I look at her but she refuses to look at me, so I pick her up from the middle of the pool and throw her to where the stairs are.  She doesn't complain and immediately stands on the stairs shaking her hips in a na-na-you-can't-get-me dance.  The whole thing irritates me so I charge to her despite her protests and grab her from the ladder as she screams and toss her high into the air.  She must really be irritating me because I notice that I threw her higher than before giving her some really good hang time while she contorts her body and lands on the upper part of her back.  It scares me and I bring her up right away.

"Throw me high like that again," she tells me.

Despite what the voice inside is telling me, I throw her again and again, higher and higher into the center of the pool.  As she hits the surface I look underwater to see how far down she is landing.  Every time, she almost hits the bottom so I make sure I throw her without any spin so that she always lands feet first.  She pleads with me to do it more and more but my arms are tired so I sit on the stairs with her following me.

"Let's play race to the bottom and see who gets the toy first," she says as she grabs a sinking pool toy.

I'm not in the mood but she throws it on the stairs and counts down.  Before she can get to it, I grab it and hide it underneath the hollow stairs.

"Where did you put it?" I ask her.

"I threw it right her but now it's gone," she says, genuinely perplexed.

It isn't the end of the game because she gets another toy and we repeat the process.  Again.  And Again.  I figure she is going to tire out but she doesn't and pretty soon every flipper, goggle, toy, and ball are sitting underneath the stairs.  Sometimes she tries to keep her foot on it to make sure it doesn't disappear but I am quick and disappear them every time.  Her original astonishment at the vanishing objects fades to acceptance only little kids are capable of.  She tells me they simply vanished, no explanation needed.

"What's on your back?" she asks me, trying to occupy her mind with something other than uselessly wondering about vanishing objects.

"A bug?" I ask her, craning my neck awkardly to look at my back.

"No those bumps."

"What bumps?" I play stupid.

"They look like owies."

She comes up to me and touches what she is talking about.

"Those are keloid scars," I tell her.  Technically they are hypertrophic but I'm sure she won't understand either one.

"Why do you have them?" she asks bluntly.

Normally, I don't tell the story to anyone but I figure it is ok to tell her because she won't understand or will forget right away.

"I had to have some moles removed from my back.  Some of them were cancer so they had to cut out parts of my back to make sure they had all of them."

It is a simple explanation and she understands enough where she doesn't feel like she has to ask questions anymore.  She simply touches the raised bumps on my back and arm to see what it feels like.  Satisfied, she goes on playing.

We both exit into our minds and even though we are only a couple feet away from each other, we could not be further apart.  Her imagination runs wild as she sees things that aren't there and plays games that make sense only in her world.  Sounds come out of her mouth but they are muted, as they are intended as narration for her play and only meant for whoever is in her world to hear.

I brood over my last year.  It felt funny telling someone about my cancer.  She doesn't know enough to give me the pitiful look adults give me when they find out I am 24 with multiple spots of cancer already found on my body.  I watch Erin and sink further away as I replay the last few years of my life in my mind.  Some people say that cancers tend to appear after something traumatic happens to people.  It's like their immune systems shut down and let bad stuff take them over.  Sometimes I wish the cancer would have taken me over so that I wouldn't have to replay everything again and again in my mind.  I think of the child I almost had and the woman I loved.  I think about my stupid decisions and, like always, come to the conclusion that it was all my fault.  I decide once again, never to get my cancer looked at again.

I sit in silence, watching this little girl with a brand new body and brand new mind ready for her own brand new experiences, and I can't help but feel envious or jealous or something I shouldn't feel.

Without thinking, I take a toy out from behind the stairs and leave it in plain view under the water.  Erin is astonished to find that it came back.

"Did you put it there?" I ask her.

"NO!" she says defensively.  "It just appeared there."

When she turns around another toy is there.  Then another.  And another.

"How do you think these are coming back?" I ask her.

"They are just appearing."

She says it so matter-of-factly and definitively that I envy the blind acceptance children have.  But only for a second.  I press the matter but her mind is made up that something magical is going on.  A couple times she asks me if I am doing it but, of course, I flat out deny everything.  She searches around me and the stairs for signs of the toys but can't find anything.  Soon everything is back and even though she accepts what just happened, she is still in awe.  It looks like it has something to do with her make-believe world which she promptly re-enters.

"Erin, I want to tell you something."

"What?"

"Remember how those toys all came back?"

"Yes."

Her face shows that she knows what is coming but that her mind hasn't accepted it yet.  There is no way I could lie to her and betray her like that.

"I hid them all from you and put them back one by one.  They didn't just disappear.  I did it."

It takes a while but she finally understands and is furious at me.  I thought she'd laugh or be a little angry but she is really mad.  I laugh at her anger which boils her up even more.

"Don't laugh!  It's not FUNNY!"

"Yes it is," I correct her.  "It was very funny."

"No it wasn't!"

"Yes it was."

She is furious.

"Where were they?" she asks me.

I still want to preserve a little bit of her wonder so I tell her that it was magic and I hid them magically.  She doesn't believe me and we continue to argue about whether or not it was funny as I laugh at her.  Fed up, she storms out of the pool to go play in the yard and so that she can ignore me more effectively.  I lock up the pool and lay in the sun to dry, keeping an eye on her.

My aunt pulls up in her aptly named Suburban.  Her belly is big even though she is only six months along.  There are problems with the pregnancy and she needs to go to see doctors once a week.

"How did it go?" I ask her.

"Fine.  Sorry it took so long."

"Don't worry about it.  We had fun."

Erin is still a little pouty so I explain what happened and my aunt Maggie laughs.  We are sitting at the table and she keeps rubbing her belly.

"I'll bet you can't wait until the baby is out and you are back to yourself again.  No more doctor's appointments and being tired all day."

"Know what, Jimmy?  I don't mind it at all.  He can stay in as long as he likes."

"Is it a boy?"

"We don't know yet.  I'm waiting until he is born to find out."

We sit in silence for a long time and watch summer play out in her yard.  I don't know exactly what the problem is but I know that there is a risk of her dying in labor.  This doesn't seem to bother her.

We watch Erin play and I wonder aloud how she'll take not being the baby anymore.  Aunt Maggie tells me that Erin never acted like the baby of the family anyways.  I think whole predisposition of numbered children is a bunch of nonsense but don't tell her that.  Instead, I get up and grab my bike.

"Are you nuts?" she says.  "It's 98 degress out right now.  You can't ride home in this."

"It's not that bad."

It is.  My body can't handle heat and I'm afraid of collapsing on the way home.

"Put your bike in the trunk and I'll drive you home," she says while beginning the standing process.

"Really, I'm fine.  Don't worry about it.  I need the exercise."

She is reaching in her purse for money but I'm already in the driveway.

"Wait.  Take this."

She has money cupped in her hand.  Her and my uncle do pretty good for themselves so I don't mind getting paid by them.  But I never accept the money.  It doesn't seem right and I know I have to start doing the right things.

"Get out of here," I say as I mount my bike.

She is too worn out to argue and let's me go.

"Thanks pal," she says to me as I pedal away.