First published in the Ipswich Local News June 9, 2024
When we first moved to Boston and began searching for a home, I had two rules: I needed a bathtub (not for kids, for me — I take baths). And secondly, I would not tolerate a pool.
Pools in the Arctic Circle, where penguins dot our yards, are ridiculous. No one would ever use one. Plus, they are a money pit. Okay, fine, they might be squirrels, not penguins. And it turns out people do use them. But point three is a rock-solid point.
Now that I own a pool, an just to be belligerent about the climate, we open it in late April and close it in early October. We run our pool when we know full and well that the weather will be awful, because looking at a pool, in what we idealistically call the shoulder seasons, at least reminds us of climates in which pools belong.
Except we’ve had runs of balmy — downright delightful — weather here in late May, stretches of what I think most of America calls “normal” spring weather. It wasn’t buggy, rainy, foggy, or peppered with that summer favorite, a “Nor’easter.” And so, on a day when it was in the 80s, I had a pool party. I invited a group of younger moms from my church to come and relax with their kids. Fun, easy, and chill.
Cleary, I had not read any of my columns from the early 2000s, when I had babies and toddlers of my own. You know what you call six moms and 10 toddlers and infants by a pool? The actual opposite of “chill.”
Babies love water! At least the baby I was holding did. He loved to dunk his face into the water, which, I explained to his mom, triggered his automatic reflex to hold his breath and was actually quite safe.
After considering it, she went with me just holding him higher up from the water.
Toddlers also love water! And their shoes! One toddler loved to collect shoes and throw them into the water — a fun combination of his newly acquired loves.
The shoes would then float out into the deep end, which I thought was a fascinating experiment in how far a toddler might venture to retrieve the shoes.
Again, this was met with the view that perhaps I could just quick grab the shoes instead?
Both babies and toddlers are slippery when wet (not to mention covered in sunscreen), and trying to keep one still by the edge of the pool was like trying to shimmy up a greased light pole after a championship game downtown.
And that was all before lunch.
I’d called my friend, who has toddlers, in a panic the day before. “What do toddlers eat? Do I serve chicken nuggets by the pool? Chicken in the hot sun? It feels iffy.”
She laughed. “Get them Crustables — you know, the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the edges cut off. They come frozen at Costco.”
I didn’t know.
To add more complexity, Crustables come in both strawberry and grape. I was paralyzed by the choice. But I grabbed strawberry because grape jelly tastes like communion juice — which is not a flavor one should associate with a fun summer pool party, in my personal opinion.
Then, on a whim, I grabbed a box of taste-free frozen water cleverly marketed as popsicles to make up for the obvious health bomb the Crustable represented … in case anyone cared.
Turns out, they didn’t.
Lunch involved food mashed into the ground, kids ingesting sunscreen, popsicles spilled on babies, and not a small amount of pool water consumed. In addition to the feast of Crustables and popsicles, the moms brought Paw Patrol sippy cups, many variations on the sun hat, and so many styles of life jackets that I’m pretty sure half of Boxford was afloat from the sheer buoyancy of my pool.
None of it looked relaxing. But then I reminded myself that I was 50. Relaxing, to me, was bed at 8:30 p.m. So, really, what did I know?
Except, I guess, that even in New England, pools can be fun.