Everyone has memories (just ask a psychiatrist), but mathematically speaking, older people have more. It’s our cosmic reward for the joint and bone problems we have as well.
This summer, my memories are of the deep-end test.
A few times a week, I make my way to the Underwood Pool and swim laps, so slowly and unsteadily that no one ever asks to share the lane. Often, these sessions overlap with a deep-end test. Showing an ID tag one morning, I asked the teen at the front desk what time the next deep-end test would be. A reputation must have preceded me. “Are you taking it?” she asked.
When some invisible public address person announces the test, I pause along my unsteady route to watch. Little kids line up, their backs to the shallow end, facing their future. Youthful lifeguards with rescue tubes stagger themselves along the edge of the pool. Parents lean down for last coaching words. Younger siblings watch enviously.
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Sometimes it’s an easy and joyous exam. Recently, a boy hurled himself into the deep end with such certainty, crawling so adeptly and confidently that he didn’t want to stop halfway down the lane to tread water. Pausing cramped his style.
Sometimes, though, it’s more poignant. A little girl adjusted her ruffled bikini top, adjusted her goggles, looked at the lifeguard, looked at her father, adjusted her goggles, and adjusted her suit again. She asked some questions I couldn’t hear. You didn’t need prescription goggles to see the worry. Her lifeguard was patient and encouraging, but after the hesitation had lasted long enough, pointed out (very gently) that other test-takers were waiting. The little girl looked even less willing as she lowered herself into the water. I swam away. This was a private experience, not to be intruded upon.
Twenty-one years ago, my own little girl took the deep-end test. She was hesitant and bold all at once. The lifeguards were different then, but the test hasn’t changed. Her swimsuit was a one-piece; her father was her coach. She wasn’t filled with certainty, but she slid into the water with the determination of a youngster who’s had it with kiddie pools.
And now, a confession about memory: I wasn’t there when she took the deep end test. I was probably home baking cookies. But when the two of them returned, it was in glorious triumph—in ecstasy. She had the keys to a new world, hers for life.
I made a memory of this deep-end test, and why shouldn’t we be allowed to do that? I clearly see her enter the shallow part of the deep end. She’s striking out, treading water halfway down, floating on her back at the far end, swimming horizontally across the lanes, climbing the ladder, then walking (no running) to the diving board and, in a final act of verification, leaping into the very deepest section of the deep pool.
It was so long ago that she probably doesn’t recall the details. But I remember everything.
Elissa Ely writes about seniors/baby boomers for The Belmont Voice. She is a community psychiatrist.
