Summers Long Ago

Was there ever anything more fun than swimming when you were young? Two swimming memories came back to me today. The first is of a public swimming pool that my sister and/or a friend and I used to go to back in the mid 50's. The pool was fairly close to our house, but not close enough to walk. Mother would drop us off there and pick us up many hours later. I think it probably cost about 5 or 10 cents to swim all afternoon. It was a wonderful way to spend a summer day. Jumping into the deep end of the pool was bliss and I never got weary of jumping in and swimming to the ladder, climbing out and jumping in again - over and over and over. Water games were also fun - we would throw a coin and watch it sink to the bottom and see who could swim down and retrieve it first. At the end of the day, we got to have a small treat such as popcorn or something else salty - we had 5 cents each as a treat allowance.

It has been so many years since I enjoyed swimming, but the memory of the pleasure I found in those days long ago will always be with me. I was very active as a child - swimming, skating, riding my bike, playing kick-the-can, Red Rover, building forts, etc., etc. When did all of that activity cease to be pleasurable? Did it happen all at once or slowly over time?

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The second swimming memory has to do with Lake Waukaway in Stafford Springs, Mississippi. The water was so green and cool and the fun was immeasurable. There was a wonderful slide that children could go down and land bottom first in the water. Older children, being more daring, might go down face first. Wooden walkways separated the deep water from the more shallow end. Up in the white building in the background people could change their suits and purchase treats. Surprisingly, the treat I remember is a large dill pickle. The magic of the place and even the road leading up to it are crystal clear in my memory 50 + years later.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

Eight people are still missing in the fall of the bridge over the Mississippi River. What a tragedy. Why are our bridges, roads, rails, levees, etc. in such terrible shape? It is fairly easy to understand - the Congressional Budget Office estimates that as of June of this year, taxpapers have spent 500 billion in the Iraq war. And it is further estimated that by the time the war winds down we will have spent over a trillion dollars. And the cost in lives, health and good will? They cannot be calculated. When will the people demand that it stop?

Drowning seems such a terrible fate, and especially drowning in a vehicle. The mind has to retreat from such contemplation. The Buddha may have had it right - life sometimes does appear to be about suffering.

The poem below is another of Emily Dickinson's poems. She has a verse for most life situations.

Drowning is not so pitiful
As the attempt to rise.
Three times, ’tis said, a sinking man
Comes up to face the skies,
And then declines forever
To that abhorred abode


Where hope and he part company,—
For he is grasped of God.
The Maker’s cordial visage,
However good to see,
Is shunned, we must admit it,
Like an adversity.

Dry Spell

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I have had almost one month where I have not felt like writing anything. I was busy at work for a time with our summer program for incoming college freshmen, but truth be told, I just have had nothing to say. It has been a long hot summer and a summer that began with pain and loss. Along about this time in August, I begin to long for the cooler days of fall. The bugs, especially the tiny white almost transparent linnets that fly in through the window screens at night seeking light, are a bit overwhelming. The heat and humidity for a good part of July felt deadly.


While pining for cooler days, however, I cannot forget that fall brings incredibly busy days at work! Longing for a simpler life is a fanciful, though fruitless, pastime. Here's a poem about summer and about the simple life (which exists, if at all, in the inner person as opposed to the outer world):

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

by William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.