Early September

The pool in the woods is almost empty now. The clear blue water, once a riot of children swimming, splashing, diving, is reduced to a standing pond of emerald green, quiet, disturbed only by winged insects alighting on its surface. The only sound is a faint rustling of leaves, a portent of changes to come. Lawn chairs are stacked one atop the other, preparing for storage over the long cold months ahead. The three ping-pong tables remain fixed to the ground, like green rectangles pasted on a child’s construction paper. They will endure through the winter, awaiting next season and the return of carefree games played late into the afternoon. Maintenance equipment sits idle by the tool shed. There is no rush now to prepare the grounds for visitors, who, like winged migrants, won’t return for months. And the waterslide that provided cool delight to the more adventurous bathers is dry. It collects twigs instead of children that tumble into the empty basin below.

The changing of the seasons is almost tangible here. Though the air is still warm and the leaves have not yet begun to turn, the light is different, somehow brighter and lower in the sky, and the children have gone back to school. This place will sit dormant until May, when the children return to breathe life back into it.

I walk up the hill above the pool, reflecting on the decade of summers spent by its waters. I began at the shallow end, a haven where babes just out of diapers could test their mettle, wading bravely up to their necks to the very depths, where the strategically placed rope set firm boundaries beyond which only older siblings were allowed to venture. “Look at me, Mom, look at me!” they’d call, and the heads of a dozen mothers would turn at once. I spent days, years at the shallow end. I watched other mothers some distance away whose children didn’t seem to need them anymore. They read magazines and chatted, while I chased and soothed and dried small bodies with chattering blue lips. I envied them.

As the years passed one by one, I left the shallow end and I became the one young mothers watch. I recline, read, chat and doze, interrupted only by the occasional request for snacks from the overpriced concession stand. I grant their wishes, sometimes just to see their delight at the prospect of getting what they want, just because they’ve asked. I well recall the simple pleasure of snacks at the pool when my mother granted my wishes, so many years ago.

I continue walking up the road, leaving the pool and summer behind me. Turning the corner toward home, I can’t help but regret the passing of those long light-filled days by the water. But though the seasons are changing, I know the pool in the woods quietly awaits our return at the end of each winter, as surely as I now await my children’s return home from school at the end of each day.