Taking me back to where I once belonged

My daughter's return to swimming has been for me a walk through the past.  Darcy joining the high school varsity swim team has lured me back into the swimming world where I spent more than half my life as a swimmer, a teacher, and a coach.  I loved my job.  It was one of the things I was really good at, earning awards and the satisfaction when any of my students continued in the sport.  I didn't know how much I missed it until I began ferrying Darcy to her practices and meets.

When I was working back in the day we use to have patrons tell us about their times as lifeguards, coaches, and swimmers.  We were all college graduates in a job that didn't pay well because we believed in what we were doing saving lives and teaching important skills so we listened, but not really.  The old-timers were mostly talking about summer positions that lasted two or three years and we were in this job for the long haul like Sam Elliot in the movie Lifeguard.  This was our LIFE, not just a summer job.

I think back on that now as I sit in the bleachers and watch these kids swim.  More than half of them need my expertise.  All of them need starts and turns work.  I have a full sheet of all of the things the coaches could be doing to be better organized, and only one swim meet had lifeguards in attendance and that certainly needs to be addressed with the school board.  I know that I could be of help in dealing with all of these things, but then I think about the old timers that we use to blow off and I hang my head.  No one wants to listen to a has been.  Everything is about now.

The pool that I worked at for 6 years was home to the city's high school swim team.  It also was used by two other high school teams.  I worked the night shift at the pool so I was there for practices and all home meets.  I got to know the swim coaches, the dive coaches, and eventually, I was coerced into judging the diving competitions at meets.  The dive coach for the high school, TS, also coached diving for the city's high school.  We were one of the few pools in the area that still had diving boards.  Dave came every day during swim season to coach.  Sometimes he brought his 4-year-old son with him when his wife was working.  The kid had no fear and could perform dives the high school kids would stand and gape at. 

One night as Dave ran around getting ready for the diving portion of the swim meet he needed another judge.  He looked up at me in the guard stand, signaled for me to get down, shook his head when I protested, and said, "You sit there every day watching diving.  You know this."  I judged every meet after that, despite not knowing a damn thing about diving.

Diving Dave (and Veronica) back in the day

Darcy's second swim meet was against TS and low and behold there was Dave still coaching the diving, 17 years later.  He looked the same, only grayer.  I went up to him after the meet and he did his signature stance of throwing his arms out and opening his mouth like a fish.  "A blast from the past!" he shouted.  We stood and talked for awhile and he told me he was still coaching diving for the city's team as well as the TS team.  He couldn't believe I had a kid old enough to be in high school.  I couldn't believe his kid was out of college.  We finally parted ways, but I felt a lightness inside that I hadn't felt in years.  I use to be somebody, back in the day before I was a mother.

A few weeks later Darcy's swim meet was at my old pool of employment.  I felt a lot of things driving up there to watch her swim from trepidation to nostalgia.  The plan back when I worked there was for me to eventually run the facility.  When my last manager moved to Oklahoma I became the interim manager and ran the pool for nine months.  The recreation head thought I would go for the job, and I most certainly thought about it, but by then Tom and I were talking about starting a family and we both agreed that we wanted a parent to be at home raising the child.  He made more money so I was the logical choice, although he would have gladly taken that role and responsibility.  I felt obligated to not go for the manager position knowing I wouldn't be staying if I got pregnant.  I loved the job that much.

Me back in the day

When I arrived at the pool to watch Darcy and her team I sat in the parking lot for a few moments.  Even it had changed.  There were more lights, something my co-worker Sharon and I lobbied to get for years since we worked the night shift and had to walk to our cars in the dark. The lot was now paved and not gravel as it was in my day. The tree where I use to park my car to keep it out of the sun (my shift was 1-9:30 pm) was long gone, as was the trailer where the recreation head honchos worked.  A splash facility had been added outside the building between the pool and the city's tennis courts.  The building itself had been repainted.  Gone was the ugly peach and green paint that I fought against when the building was remodeled. In its place, a bold navy blue, a much better color.

Old sign (before ugly peach and green color)

New sign

I paid my fee and wandered slowly through the facility.  The bathroom hadn't changed, nor had they repainted it.  I thought about the time our recreation leader, Veronica, walked into the bathroom door and broke her front tooth.  I thought about the many showers Sharon and I stood in to get warm between lessons.  I thought about the time I showed a male co-worker how to use a tampon (yes, he was interested and no, he saw nothing inappropriate).  I used the same bathroom stall that I used when I first found out I was pregnant with Madison after Tom brought me a test late one night.  Lots of memories flooded me.  I peeked into the guard room.  Much had changed there and much hadn't.

It had been repainted with the blue color.  Gone were the lockers that had once been red.

Old locker room

And then were changed to pink.

The temporary locker room in the trailer while the building was remodeled

And eventually ended up painted green.

Lockers in back of sleeping lifeguard (on break)

The pool itself had been redone as well.  The tiles were now the navy blue.  The starting blocks were now in the deep end behind the diving boards and new lanes had been painted to go with the starting blocks.  Gone was the starting block that I had once had to climb over to rescue a swim team member who had passed out and sunk to the bottom of the pool.  Umbrellas and seating areas had been added.  The building that had been built to house the bubble that covered the pool in the winter was painted and is now an exercise room.  Slides were added where the main lifeguard stand once stood.

Back then, lifeguard stand to the right

Now

It looked good, and while the swim meet was going on lifeguards were on duty.  The only pool to do so during dual meets.  I sat down and thought about all the people that I had meet while working there.  People who I taught.  People who came to swim.  Co-workers.  Many of them became my friends.  A few have died.  Some of them have found me through social media and reconnected.  Some I have no idea what happened to them.

My buddy Bill

My water walker friend Nancy

My co-worker Mickey and my buddy Murphy; both gone

Then I noticed that the official running the swim meet was a woman whose three kids I taught how to swim and then recommended for our USS swim team.  In her forties, she got pregnant with her fourth child the same time I was pregnant with Madison.  She saw me and took a step back.  "This is going back," she said.  "Waaayyy back."  Which I thought was a little extreme as 17 years isn't the 1800s.

We talked some after the meet and she caught me up.  Her oldest is now in her late twenties which did make me feel old as I have a picture of her in my head tall, skinny, and twelve years old with pigtails.  I tried to tell Darcy all of this as she asked why I was talking to the "mean" official who had disqualified so many swimmers.  "I use to be somebody," I told her.  "Once upon a time." 

But that was before her and so it didn't mean anything.  How could it?  She knows me as her mother, the woman who feeds her, loves her, and drives her where she needs to go.  The woman who takes her to and from swim practice and swim meets and cheers her on.

I walked back to the car with her after that swim meet, a little lighter, a little sad, but glad that I had been able to take this walk down memory lane, hook up with people that I haven't seen in years and who think of me as more than what I am now. 

We all have a past.  I'm just getting to live mine through my daughter. And that is a little extra special, I think.