Easily the most heartbreaking photographs I’ve taken this year (and being that this is the year of our Lord 2020, that is saying quite a bit) here is Andy opining the present pool situation. I sent it to a few friends, who agreed it was the saddest thing they had seen in a while. Everyone knows how much Andy loves the pool – well, maybe not everyone, so I’ll bring the stragglers up to speed.
Given his back issues, Andy’s favorite time of the year is when the pool is open. He can go in the warm water every day and obliterate the hurt and ache of gravity on his back, and simply float and exist in a relief that he doesn’t get the rest of the year. The pool was probably the main selling point of our home, and he takes pride in and care of its maintenance.
Having grown up with a pool, and the turmoil and stress of opening it as a twelve-year-old with just my parents and eleven-year-old brother to help, I didn’t need a pool as an adult, but I was open to it, and I’m glad. It’s become a place of respite and escape in the oppressive and humid summers of the Northeast. In fact, I’ve grown to love a pool again, finally embracing the peace of floating on some silly piece of inflated plastic while music plays in the background and I do my best not to wet the pages of a book in my hands. Yet as much as I love the pool, and miss it now that it’s out of commission, my pain and sorrow is minor compared to Andy’s. So when I looked out the window the other day and found him dangling his legs over the side into the open space where water once rippled, it broke my heart.
Thankfully, hope is on the horizon. Since we needed to replace the liner (part of the delay this year) we decided to add some steps. Both of us are getting a little old to be bounding in and out by way of ladder or cannonball, so a trio of steps have been installed, which is why this post has a hopeful, if not happy, ending. More to come…
