When I am finally in full summer mode after teaching from September to June, my first “Hooray!” is for my daily swim. During the busy school year, I am lucky to swim once a week at the Y down in Connecticut.
But come summer, I am in the water somewhere every day. My grandfather rushed into the Atlantic Ocean every Jan. 1 during the 1920s and 30s as one of those crazy “polar bears” of Coney Island in New York, and I have inherited his passion for the water (but not at 40 degrees).
In his famous short-story “The Swimmer” (whose movie version stars Burt Lancaster), John Cheever describes a New York suburban man’s dream of “swimming” home from a boring party, pool-by-pool over his neighbors’ backyards. At each stop, The Swimmer muses about the people who own the pool and splash in its water – their daily lives, circumstances and problems.
More happily than Cheever’s swimmer, I “pool-hop” from the reservoir in Leeds (“Musante Beach”) to the D.A.R. State Forest in Goshen (“The Goshen Ocean”) to Puffer’s Pond in Amherst and even to my generous neighbors’ outdoor hot tub.
And like The Swimmer, I muse at each stop about those around me, both in and out of the water: the harried but doting grandparents trying to convince 3-year-old Ayah to put on the life-jacket, the older man limping with chair and newspaper to his favorite shady spot, the couple on a date hurrying to inflate “Paradise Island” and the dozing woman soaking her feet at the water’s edge with her Corgie nestled beside her.
I imagine the small, stifling apartments left behind, the family tensions relaxed, lunch and dinner noshed all afternoon, naps indulged … and no need for baths at bedtime. The water has cooled and soothed more than hot brows and aching feet.
Others “Swimmers” know the water’s charms, too: the great blue heron at Puffer’s Pond that darts his beak at the fish below, the bald eagle that circles over the Leeds reservoir, the brazen mother mallard at “The Goshen Ocean” that rummages through untended picnic-bags. Parents take their children’s hands and point – to watch, admire and laugh.
When visiting my grandmother and grandfather (the same “polar bear”) as a child during the summers, my two sisters and I literally had to swim for our supper. My grandfather, of course, built a swimming pool in his backyard in suburban New York and filled it with salt water (more “invigorating,” he said, than fresh) and kept it at a cool 68 degrees.
We granddaughters had to at least get in it – if only for a quick splash – every day, or risk a long, sad face from Papa, whom we adored. “It will make you strong and healthy,” he admonished us, and he was right.
Cancer finally beat Papa when he was 78, but the doctor believed that Papa’s faithful swimming (even when he was sick) gave him at least 10 extra years.
At a young and spry 62, I don’t swim in the fast lane anymore. But I know that my summer pool hopping across the Valley — if only for a quick splash every day – will, as my grandfather admonished, make me strong and healthy, or at least keep me out of trouble.
Lucy Ashton Van Atta lives during the summer in Northampton.