Dirty pool: Just deja vu again

Once upon a time I owned a built-in pool. It was so pretty: turquoise lining, wide white stairs at the shallow end. Glorious elms, oaks, and aspens bounded the area near the pool fence. The pool was set far back from the house and street and was a peaceful escape from work, responsibility, and of course hot, sticky summer.  The only thing I hated about the pool was maintaining it. I did everything humanly possible to avoid vacuuming my own house, and here I was cleaning an entire pool – sides, bottom, stairs, deck -- a couple of times a week. 

The only thing I hated more than maintaining the pool was opening it. 

Opening the pool meant cleaning off the cover first, a job I would wish only on my worst enemy. By spring, the cover was usually so full of waterlogged leaves that it sunk several feet in the middle. In order to get the cover off, I had to first remove all the leaves and water. To remove the water, I used a small electric pump, which slurped up the filthy wet and sent it through a long garden hose that snaked out the width of the yard and emptied into the street. Once enough water was gone and I could see the leaves, I’d scoop them out, using a big basket attached to a telescoping silver pole. I’d dump the leaves into a wheelbarrow then empty the contents in the backyard. 

Once the leaves were pretty much gone, I’d begin the tedious process of getting the last remaining bits of water off the cover. A tiny bit of water over a large area adds up to a ton – okay a little less – of weight. Once everything was off the cover, my kids and I would peel it back, in much the same way you might take a sheet off your bed, if your bed is the size of a small house and your sheet is filthy with dead bugs and decaying muck. We’d stand at either side of the deep end and walk toward the shallow part, lifting the cover, folding it over, lifting, folding. If we’d gotten almost all the water off, this process went so smoothly that we’d be able to transition the cover, which by then looked like a monstrous piece of rolled pastry and smelled like a swamp, from the pool area to the back yard. 

If we didn’t get all the water off the cover, the cover always ended up in the pool. It would just be too heavy and one of us would drop an end. Then we’d have to tug and drag the darn thing out of the water, and there would be yelling and swearing and crying, but mostly swearing. And that would be coming from me. All the muddy guck still sticking to the cover -- the transparent zombie leaves, the occasional frog carcass, headless chipmunks (I had a cat who liked to hunt), and whole families of spaghetti worms – would slide into the pool water. And guess who would get to clean all that? The pool boy I mean pool mother. Me.

Needless to say, I’d gotten pretty expert at getting that cover nearly Martha Stewart perfect. You spend a couple of days fishing dead stuff out of a pool, you figure out ways to avoid having to do that in the future. 

Over the twenty-four years or so that we had the pool, I’d worked out this system. As the pump slurped up the last drops of water from the middle, I’d lift up the pool cover at one corner, and make a little slope. The water from that end of the pool would slide down to the pump and get sucked up into the hose. I would keep going from corner to corner until I was satisfied that there was no way I could get the cover any drier. My fingers would bloody from scraping the rough tarp, and my knees would get bruised, but the pristine pool water was worth it. 

And then one day, the unexpected occurred.

  

It was about seven years ago, on an unseasonably cold May day. They were predicting a hot June, so I was working hard to get the pool ready, even though the weather this particular day was most definitely not anywhere near summery. I was wearing a wool sweater, jeans, and an old pair of running shoes. It was a cloudy day to start with and dusk was coming on fast. One child was away at college. The other was studying somewhere deep inside the house. It was a quiet night. No one was out and about. I was alone and obsessively doing my thing. 

  

I’d removed most of the long, balloon-like water weights that held the cover to the cement pool deck. I’d untied the twine that ran from the pool fence to the grommets at the corners of the cover. My fingers were stinging from the scraping of the tarp as I directed the water to the pump sucking away in the middle.

I was kneeling at one of the deep end corners when it happened. One minute I was holding the cover, and the next I was under water, choking. I’d been kneeling on part of the cover instead of on the solid pool deck. The cover gave way under my weight. I’d toppled over, then hit the water head first.

I was upside down in about six feet of nearly freezing water.  My legs were tangled in the pool cover. My clothes were weighing me down. The harder I tried to kick myself free, the more trapped I became.  My heart beat was out of control. I was swallowing water. I was inhaling water. I thought I was going to die.

Then out of nowhere, it hit me. I’d been in a situation somewhat similar to this twice before, minus the pool cover.

 

I’m a good swimmer. I won’t ever win awards for speed, but I can swim a smooth, slow mile. A few summers before this incident, I’d even done two triathlons. Sprint-sized: swim a half mile, bike twelve or so miles, finish up with a three mile run. At sign up time, I remember thinking it sounded like a lot of fun. 

And it would have been, if I'd been able to handle the swim portion. In a regular pool, I was just fine. I could paddle along in my lane like a happy little labrador. But in competition, I got massive panic attacks, probably the end result of a few things: the shock of cold lake water, the suffocating crowds, the random kicks to body parts. Tri one: panic attack, rapid heartbeat, inhaling water.  I thought maybe it was a fluke. A newbie thing. Nope. Tri two was just as bad. Both times, in order to bring myself to sanity, I had to swim off to the side and allow the crowds to pass me, then tread water until I calmed down.  

People told me I should get a wet suit. It would warm up my body. They said that the panicked breathing, the swallowing of water has a lot to do with the shock of the cold. It’s pretty common, they said.  I never bought the wet suit. While the idea of doing triathlons was fun, I’d had enough of that kind of fun anyhow. I decided to stick with plain old running. I’ve yet to get kicked in the face on a run. 

So, I’m in the cold pool, gagging on God only knows what, when suddenly I knew what to do because it was déjà vu all over again. I did the same thing I did during the swimming portion of the two tris. I stopped. I let my body loosen up. When I relaxed, the cover slid away from me. I rose to the surface. I spit out all the water I hadn’t swallowed. I went in the house. My daughter laughed at me. 

Today I was supposed to do a long run and some other things too. Instead, I was driving one of my parents to the ER. This time it wasn’t anything super serious. There was no drama. There was no life-death ruminating. It was something minor that involved a big band aid, lots of gauze, and a tetanus shot.

I’ll get what I need another day. I used to have to rearrange my schedule all the time when my kids were younger. I remember how to do it. It’s like riding a bike, running a couple of miles, or falling under a pool cover.