The pool wobbled at the bottom of a cavernous, dark green hall. It was splotched with kids who shouted and sloshed in the waves. Probably a Minneapolis YMCA, definitely a long time ago. While Mom collected my brother from his swim lesson, I took in the slick skin, the damp air—the chlorine-sharp scent of freedom.
That feeling never faded, even after I got big enough to pull on my polka-dot suit, even after my family decamped for Palo Alto, where we dashed many times a day to the swim club behind our house.
Blue crests on top, black zigzags below, the pool let us jump, splash, bob. It steadied our handstands, padded our somersaults, caught our backflips. It kept the adults on the long chairs, stripes pressed into their legs, magazines pressed to their faces.
The pool gave us red eyes and green hair. It made us hungry. There was a window where you could trade a dime for a chocolate crown, two to a bright orange pack, and a cart, a scorching tiptoe across the cement, where I always chose the ice cream sandwich. It came wrapped in wax paper—smooth top, pleated bottom, vanilla-smudged sides.
I knew how to peel it in strips, how to bite cleanly so the powder-dry wafer didn’t scissor into the cold cream. I knew how to make the sandwich last through our exile on deck, across the endless minutes of adult swim, until the cool blue restored us to freedom.
