It’s Sunday morning, 6 am and I head over to the community pool. Thankfully, it’s all mine and I spend the next 33 minutes walking around the perimeter. The water is warm, yet cool enough to feel refreshing.
There isn’t a cloud in the entire sky. Baby blue everywhere I look. And of course, the Rocky Mountains loom large in their royal presence.
I return later, with my two roommates in tow.
At 10 am, a menagerie of children with their parents splash into the water like nobody’s business. Time for me to soak in the Colorado unforgiving sun on a lounger, to people watch.
I notice these things…a little girl is asking to get into the pool by the stairs. Her father tells her, “Stairs? No, that’s borrrring.” I don’t watch where they end up submerging themselves.
Another little girl is splashing water on a lounger that sits at the edge of the pool. Her father watches, then splashes pool water on her head. She appears startled, eyes wide, looking hurt and open mouth.
A tiny baby is put into a floatee. The baby is not very happy (the water temperature is most probably too cool for her tiny, barely emerging-as-a-human body) and cries for the next 30 minutes, at least. Curiously, the parents insist on keeping her in the floatee, even snapping a hood shade for her.
She doesn’t give a fuck about the hood shade, the floatee or sitting in the blow-up contraption because the water is just too fucking cold for her.
The mom, who looks like an old-fashioned version of a hippie–she has that sort of “vibe” to her–stands a foot away from her newborn, as if she is contagious. As if she didn’t recognize her as her own baby.
As if she wished she were in another life, another lifetime. As if she felt terribly uncomfortable and didn’t believe she is worthy of breathing the same air as everyone else.
The parents look young yet enlightened.
And they don’t get it.
I want to go over and pick her up and hold her, to calm her. Someone nearby (I believe it’s her older sister) cries out, “Shut up!” A bit strange; I wonder who she picked that up from?
Finally, I look up to see a father and daughter team, smiling away and he has all eyes on her, as they play together.
My judgmental self feels better, now, reassured. Some parents are loving and let their offspring know that they truly care about them.
And I wonder: what if every parent were like that? What if every parent gave their children their undivided attention and unconditional love?
Would we have peaceful communities and friendlier, more joyous neighbors?...
...Sometimes I reminisce about the 60s, a time when I was growing up. We knew every single neighbor on our block of 4 townhouses in a row, directly connected with a sidewalk, across the way, with 8 more on the other side of the square block. (Blocks are a little bigger in Illinois, or at least it has always felt that way.)
Skokie, Illiniois. Where my first best friend (other than my first cousin) awakened me from a dead sleep by standing on the sidewalk in front of our house, crying out, “Roooootie! Roooootie!” She and her sister, brother and mother had just arrived from Cuba and her heavy accent belied her Spanish origins.
Hortensia would stand on the sidewalk below my bedroom window at the front of our townhouse, viewing the neighbors’ front room windows, kind of like Alfred Hitchcock’s movie, “Rear Window.”
Hortensia’s sweet yet booming honeyed voice echoed up to the second floor and my bedroom window. I raced down the stairs and out the door in less than 3 minutes. All I had to do was throw on my shorts and top and I was ready. More than ready.
Summer was beginning and all I wanted to do was to be outside.
The two of us, Hortensia and I, went all around the circumference of the block (there were 8 other townhomes, so 16 total in the square block). We were 5.
There was never any talk about kidnappers. We all left our doors open and unlocked and Calvin, who was physically and mentally challenged and whose only words were, “Meh-Meh,” would walk into all of our homes, his purse/bag perched on the crook of his arm.
We never knew when to expect him. We could never predict when the front door would open wide and he would casually enter our homes, as if he belonged in each home.
And maybe that was the point: He was around to teach us that every spirit was welcome. Everyone’s spirit was already alive in us, too: The collective consciousness.
A very sweet, non-threatening kid (his smile bore 2 teeth, I believe); still, my fear of him was very much alive. I mean, why did his lips curl as in a wide snarl and why was the skin beneath his nose indented and curly?
What we can’t explain, we fear.
Because I didn’t understand him or the reason he only loudly asked, “Meh-Meh?” as if he was looking for his mother in every home and his head was terribly, oddly shaped, I feared him.
Even though I knew, intuitively, that he wouldn’t have hurt a flea. (Although I don’t know anyone who could be so entirely fast to find, capture and hurt a flea.)
And Calvin was no exception to that.
Still, we kept our doors unlocked.
And in the warm summertime evenings, all of us kiddos played ball in the alley.
No one ever said don’t do that, it’s dangerous. Or even, you’ll get hit by a car.
No one.
We played until the sunset cast a darkening glow across the neighborhood and the sun dipped below the horizon as our mothers would call out, “It’s time for dinner!”
It was the last time to throw the large basketball; sadness enveloped me as I had to go inside.
I could have stayed outside forever; those are the summer nights I live for…warm and balmy.
...Then there were those evenings bathing in the outside pool with my dad.
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I grew up in the 60s and 70s and our parents cared about us but also relied on us kids to run the family Livery Stable while our parents worked. We learned how to deal with the public, handle money, catch, brush, bridle & saddle horses for customers to ride and we were the Trail Guides. It made us very independent at a young age to have the responsibility of running the farm. After school, we went straight to the farm. On the weekends and all summer, we went to the farm early in the morning and got picked up between 10:30 pm and 11pm. Days were long and sometimes difficult although our only option was to tredge trough. Winters were harder as we had to break ice in water troughs and drain long hoses over a tree branch. We all grew up to be productive Professionals. It also made us strong.