Pool of sweat

Six Degrees from Galesburg

Friday, July 21, 2006

When I found out my parents had bought a pool, I was ready to throw a fit. Kind of like I did when they bought a satellite dish-the day I left for college-after I'd spent my youth complaining about missing out on MTV.

Then I saw the thing and calmed down a little.

It was one of those blue puffy-looking ones that have started cropping up in so many back yards over the last year or two. It was an adult baby pool.

I wrinkled my nose at it.

"Is it even a real pool?" I asked my mom. "I mean, does it even have chlorine?" This was my euphemistic way of saying, "am I going to get your germs?" (Never mind that I came out of this woman's body.)

"It's got chemicals in it, yes," Mom said.

Still, I was reluctant to get in the thing.

Until the first hot day of summer. I called home with the intention of inviting myself over.

"You in that pool yet?" I said.

"No, it's not warm enough," Mom said. "The water needs to warm up."

"Excuse me?" I said. "I thought the whole point of a pool was that the water in it is cool."

"You'd be surprised how cold it is," Mom said. "The pool came with a solar cover to put on top, and you have to wait for the sun to heat it up a little bit."

This sounded suspicious to me. How, I wanted to know, would the pool cool back off once it got warmed up? I wondered if the designers of these solar-covered pools had ever spent a July or August in Illinois.

The next time I saw my parents, I was disturbed to notice a large bandage on Mom's ankle.

"What happened?" I said.

Mom looked away and pretended not to have heard me.

"Your mother scraped her foot on the pool ladder," Dad said. "So when you get in it, make to use the ladder VERY carefully. You don't want to let your foot linger on the step. ..."

"Excuse me?" I said. "I thought the whole point of a ladder was to ... oh, never mind."

I had no intention of going near the thing anyway.

But last Saturday when I went home for a visit, I gave in. It was sweltering. And Mom, my sister, and my nephew were all going to get in. So I donned my suit and headed outside, where Dad was already in the water.

"Now, just so you know, it's a little warm," Dad said as I started to climb the ladder, being careful not to use any of the rungs for their intended purpose.

I plopped in and let out a yowl.

"DAD!" I screamed. "This isn't a pool, this is a hot tub!" I felt like I'd just dunked myself into a vat of chili soup. The water felt was as warm as, if not warmer than, the muggy 90-degree air.

"We had the solar cover on to keep the leaves and bugs out. ..."

My sister then arrived poolside. She set my nephew in his little inflatable boat and then stepped into the pool herself. "Jeeze!" she cried. "This thing is like a sauna!"

Soon Mom stepped in, and all of us sat there, sweltering, up to our chins in hot water.

But we were together. And it was worth staying in and sweating it out, I decided, once I saw how cute my nephew looked in his little inflatable boat, never mind that the thing was melting.

Alison McGaughey lives in Galesburg and works at Western Illinois University. Contact her at alison.sixdegrees@gmail.com.