One for the Shelf

A few weeks ago, my son Michael called me. He was working in Mountain Lake Park that day in his summertime construction job, and was hot and tired. He said he was going over to my Mom’s to jump in her pool and did I want to come along? Of course I did. Who turns down an invite like that in July? So I dropped whatever it was I was doing and headed out to my childhood home. Michael was there already, fairly covered in dirt and sweat, having a talk with Mom through his mask. He was careful about Mom the whole time he was home. And he was only home because of the pandemic. A grad student at the University of Kentucky, he was teaching some writing classes. They were thrown online-only in March and his office was closed. There was no real point to staying in Kentucky when he could teach online, so he headed home for spring break with the understanding that he would not be back there for at least a few weeks. Of course those few weeks turned into months, and I have been grateful to have him here as we navigate this weird and unprecedented time in our history.

We met on the porch where Mom spends most of her days reading and dozing and visiting with people who come by. After a long yak with her, Michael and I ambled out to the pool. My dad built that pool when I was 2. Throughout my childhood it was the focal point of every summer. I would oftentimes get out of bed and just pull on my bathing suit, knowing I was going to spend the day bobbing around in the water, walking off the wall into it over and over, sitting on its floor and pretending to have a tea party, swimming laps and having races to see who was fastest, and then lying around on the concrete, letting the sun dry every drop on my tanning skin.

Just as Michael and I were finally to get in, we saw the telltale ripples on the surface. Rain. We had lingered so long in our talking that the clouds had been given the chance to really pile up and start throwing it down. We tossed our towels into the bathhouse and got in anyway. The rain fell harder. We giggled and remembered what it was like to swim in the rain. When I was a kid, getting to do that was a treat. If we actually had rain without lightning — that deadly, terrifying, “get out of the pool or you will be electrocuted” lightning — then we would rush to get our swim suits and beg Mom or Dad to let us go in the rain. Inevitably Dad would peer up over his book or newspaper and say, ever so dryly, “But you might get wet….” Hilarious, Dad, come on, can we go? Sure, he would say. Or maybe more often, “Ask your mother.” If we were given the green light, off we would fly, giddy with glee.

Michael and I sunk down so just our heads were out, and we squinted as the rain flicked pool water into our eyes. Each drop, falling from such a height, pierced the surface with a pop, making a fleeting bubble each time. The number of drops picked up, harder and harder, making us laugh just because it was so loud, pounding on our wet heads with a “pap, pap, pap, pap” and chopping the pool water into white splashes. As the rain cooled things a little, we experienced the next phenomenon of rain-swimming, which is the difference in temperature between the air and the water. Suddenly it was warmer in the water than out, and we hunkered down farther to be wrapped in those 80 degrees as the air dropped into the 70s. We stood up and let ourselves get chilled, and then dunked down again, enveloped in what seemed warmer with each dunk. As the rain kept coming, we went under to listen. We held our breath and immersed our ears into the popping drops as they struck the surface. It was like being in a vat of ginger ale. So many memories of doing this very thing flooded my brain. Images of friends laughing and squealing, like Tish Crowe and Nancy Sluss and Pam Bittinger and of course my sister Kathryn. Swimming in the rain is one of those experiences of life that seems to bring us directly into nature, allowing us to take part in something so simple yet so satisfying and different. Different is really good. We need different, especially these days.

Even though the sky was full of stacked, gray clouds, the rain began to slow, and we were hearing rumbling in the distance. We didn’t say anything at first. Sometimes if you ignore thunder, it goes away. But the rumbling got decidedly louder.

“Was that thunder?” I asked casually.

“Yeah,” Michael replied. “But it’s far away.”

The mother light came on in my brain and reminded me, with no reservation, about unsuspecting people being struck by lightning from miles and miles away. As my mind loves to do, it rapidly conjured up the narrative of how we would both be cooked like chickens in a pot, and there would be so much wailing. I mean, really. There would. But I ignored the rumbling, too, because I wanted to stay in. I wanted to keep giggling with Michael and recalling times with his brothers in that pool over the years, telling stories that we both know but love to hear again anyway. We even talked about what it would be like if we did get hit with lightning in there, if people would know it right away, would it be loud, would it hurt. These are things one casually discusses while swimming in the rain. It’s natural.

When the thunder became more insistent, we did decide we should get out. I climbed up the ladder and was reintroduced to gravity, as one is when exiting the lovely buoyancy of water. The light was subdued and a little sad as the clouds shifted about, with the wispy layers almost close enough to touch, and the heavy, tall thunderheads pushing into one another, sluggish and bossy. Lightning zipped down, not as brilliantly as in the night, but somehow more insidious in its challenge to the daylight. The time for swimming was definitely past. One doesn’t taunt lightning.

Michael and I wrapped up in our towels and walked barefoot to the screened porch. Mom said what I thought she would, that it was good that we had gotten out because there was lightning. Yes, we said. We saw it. So we got out.

We stood with our arms folded, each holding our towel tight against our damp skin. The rainy air wasn’t taking any more moisture back, so the towels hung heavy and cold. We knew it was time to peel ourselves out of all things damp and get back into our clothes, but we lingered a bit longer anyway. It’s hard to move on from a time like that, to say goodbye to another moment and move it to the shelf for remembering, not doing. But that’s what life is, right? Moments. Times. And remembering.

Now that Michael has loaded up his car and gone back to Lexington, leaving us and home again, and like his brothers facing that invisible and deadly virus on his own, I have our swim in the rain for remembering. It’s on the shelf along with so many others, for which I am grateful. I’m glad he called me, and I’m glad I went. I will keep seeking these moments for doing and for remembering because there’s always more room on the shelf. I will never stop wishing for yet another time, for another swim in the rain, with those precious ones who hold my heart.