More swimming stuff

My childhood neighbours had a pool. Not just any backyard pool. It had a diving board, an expanse of lawn leading toward a view of the river, custom mini tiled murals along the water line. It had its own cabana forchristsake, with two bedrooms and a kitchenette. It had been owned by some wealthy Americans who, each summer, travelled a few miles from Detroit to their Canadian summer home. It was visited by Sammy Davis Jr! It was pretty fancy.

When the Americans moved, they sold it to a family that had almost as many kids as we did, and almost the exact same ages. So we had a couple of summers of almost unlimited pool time. But then the family decided to open a restaurant and private marina, and I guess the rich boaters didn’t feel like seeing townies in their saggy, hand me down bathing suits having cannonball competitions, so we didn’t get to go there anymore. We only swam in the small community pool or the river.

One cold day, my uncle and his family invited me to go into the city, to the indoor pool at the big rec centre. Any opportunity to be in water was great by me, and was never an option in the winter, so I went with my mean aunt, my weird uncle, their sullen kids, and drove into the city with them. 

Once in the pool, I went off on my own, creating worlds of adventure and heroism in the deep end, diving for clues and treasures, allowing my mermaid self to emerge. 

I made a friend. Another girl, about my age, and we played in our imaginary world. 

At one point, she was staring at me. I stared back, wondering what she saw. 

Then she said it, three words I had never ever ever never heard in my life. 

“You’re so pretty.”

I didn’t know what to do with that. I couldn’t even recognize it as a compliment. I couldn’t thank her. I couldn’t argue with her. I could maybe try to explain that I wasn’t what she thought I was. 

“I wear glasses” I said. 

Like that would obviously negate any prettiness that might have existed. 

“Oh” was all she said. 

Oh. 

Like - Oh well, what difference would that make? 

Or was it like, Oh! Oh god! Oh! How horrid!

Maybe it was - Oh?? Interesting. Whatever. 

I really don’t know. It was so much not one way or the other, I really couldn’t tell. We kept playing, way past when I was supposed to have gotten out of the pool, but - without my glasses, I couldn’t see the time on the clock. 

One of my cousins came to get me, already dressed, the family in the car. I went into the change room and got lost. So many lockers, the numbers too small to see without my glasses…. Eventually I made it out to the car, the entire family pissed off at me for making them wait. 

The icicles in my hair melted in the warm and crowded car, dripping down the back of my neck. My glasses steamed up, and I didn’t bother trying to wipe them. The temporary blindness was more cocoon than cage. Squeezed between cousins, I could more easily ignore the rest of them and sit quietly with my thoughts.

‘You’re so pretty.’

‘I wear glasses.’

I realized so many things in that moment. Other people saw me differently than I saw myself, which is not uncommon. But I also realized that strangers were able to see things my family couldn’t. That felt weird. How come no one else ever saw that in me? Was it because they only saw what was on me? Did they only see the chunky glasses, the crowded teeth, the bad haircuts? Years would go by before my eyes corrected, the orthodontist finished his magic, my hair grew long and gorgeous. 

In my adulthood, I would be treated like a beautiful young woman, but my inner awkward kid would respond, not trusting, not believing, that they could see the real me, that that could be the real me. 

‘I wear glasses’. 

Translation: ‘There is something about me that you don’t know, something that would make you rethink how you see me, something that would make you see me the way I see me.’ 

So who’s vision was distorted?

Theirs, for not seeing the real me, the awkward, unsure, untrusting me?

Or mine, for not believing her? 

Why do we spend years drowning in the pool of our own distortions, when we could float in the comfort of our own acceptance?