My roommate daughter carefully assembled a small wading pool on the front lawn of our house and filled it with water. The pool was purposely placed within my sightline from my “keeper of the community, watcher of the world” position on the front porch. When the pool was full, Lauren stepped onto the porch and handed me a hang tag labeled, “Water Watcher.” The tag cautioned me to “keep a constant watch on all children in and around the water.” I chuckled, remembering my children and water.
I learned to swim by surviving water combat in the public pool on the Hill District of Pittsburgh. The rules were loose, the guards were lax, and you were made stronger by having survived being plunged into the depths by a collision with a leaping human. I went on to survive a similar near tragedy in high school and joined the swim team, where I competed in the 50-yard freestyle, and 4×50 relay. I loved to swim, and my first bride and I introduced our daughter to the water via a “diaper dip” swimming program; she was 6 months old. By the time that she was four, Lisa had a pool in her back yard, a neighborhood novelty that earned her a score of new friends. Kids would show up alone at the back gate, saying that their parents were OK with letting them swim. I went for the okey-doke at first, but after one frantic head-counting session — a ritual I went through to make sure all the kids in the pool were accounted for — I told the next batch of kids that they could swim any time Lisa was in the pool, provided that they were accompanied by a parent. Traffic was considerably reduced.
Head counting was easier with my second two children, who would come from Mooresville, Indiana to visit me in St Louis, where I lived in an apartment building that had a pool on the roof. Chris wanted to get in the pool all the time, and when we three were there, would want to leave Lauren in the wading section and venture to the middle of the pool. He most enjoyed my improvised “dolphin rides,” where I would have them hold on to my neck while I submerged and swam underwater for a few feet. I did not lose even one of them in the water; when we broke the surface and shook the water from our eyes, my child was always around my neck, with the sibling sitting in the shallows, having patiently waited for us to rise from the deep.
When my third grandchild woke from her nap, a sun-warmed pool was waiting for her after her afternoon snack. I changed her into swimming attire, and she went into the deep (the shallow). She demanded that her grandfather come closer to the pool, and she cupped handfuls of water to splash onto him. “CLOP!” she cried out. “I got you!” And I — the grandfather code-named “Clop” — returned the splash, to Myah’s delight. When I was not splashing and re-splashing, I sat on the steps and watched her delight in the water. I spent no time looking at a screen or mobile device, for there was nothing more important to me in those moments than my little girl in her pool.
I have been to pools and beaches with my three children and three grandchildren; I’ve not lost one of them to the waters. I have been a “Water Watcher” for more than four decades and don’t need a hang tag to remind me of my duty.
cjon3acd@att.net