summer swimming

Listen to this. I'm a little blond girl in a tye-dyed blue one-piece dipping in and out of the pool like it's no ones business. Plunging deep into the eight feet with all that banana colored body hair going --woosh-- upon my tan skin. Mom's peering through the bay window in the kitchen and Eric's upstairs pumping Queen on the boom-box and there's nothing better than our big backyard hole with gallons and gallons of chlorinated liquid. I dive in from the edge of the deep end and I dive in from the mini-waterfall pouring from the spa. I jump into the side and swim across back and forth with no breaths. I stroke to the 3-foot shallow end, push my body down to the cement floor, and pretend to have an under-water tea party with my pinky up. I submerge my head beneath the glassy top of the pool and screammmmmm.

I can be anyone under the water. I can be a queen or a mermaid or a fish. I can be a professional diver or a synchronized swimmer or a cowgirl. I can be tall and short, bloated and thin, hearing and deaf.

But when I get out of the water and towel off enough so that I won't make a slip'n'slide of the pink tile inside Mom says I can't be a little girl with green hair.

So we go into the downstairs shower that only ghosts really use and she slivers open a can of tomato paste. The bloody insides of the aluminum cup are plopped wretchedly on my liming head. Tomato poop smears everywhere; it's in my armpits and ears, painting scary signs on the white tile walls. I squeal and cry and laugh and jiggle. This, Mom, is the goopiest, messiest, craziest situation we've ever gotten me into. She tells me to rinse and rinse and rinse some more but rinsing isn't cutting it against the red pasty paste so finally she fills a big bucket up to the brim and splashhhhhh.

Summer!