My love affair for the water goes as far back as I can remember. I can recall the night before a trip to Holiday Pool. Our mom would ask if we wanted to go. The answer always came out before her question was over. I can remember scrambling down the stairs, scarfing my waffles with an incredible intensity. I can remember fighting my brother to get in the car first. I see my mom pull out the pool passes, mine featuring a nearly toothless smile, and scan us in. And then I get chills as I remember jumping into the crisp, cool, and clear pool. I can see myself going down the slide, off the diving board, and playing with splash balls. If the activity planned for that day did not have some attachment to the pool, it became insignificant. My summers were spent doing all kinds of activities during the three month-hiatus from school, but I lived my summers during trips to the pool.
Every year the last day of summer meant saying goodbye to the giant blue hole in the ground that occupied my thoughts and dreams. The summer the pool was closed was the closest I had come to losing someone close to me. My heart ripped out, I existed in a childlike state of depression until the new water park was built. With its completion, the sun shone a little brighter, the clouds never came, and I once again found joy in the water. The new slides were fast and exciting, the inner tubes were always blown up, and a West Des Moines Water Park once again became the center of my adolescent universe.
Even with the best efforts of all the alluring slides and diving boards, nothing felt quite the same as the thrill I got from racing someone across the pool. Few things equal the excitement of putting a hand on the wall first, before the three or five or seven other people racing. It was at the public pools that I first felt the joys of winning, but I also felt the pain of losing. I almost never lost, but when I did, the race was on until I won. I challenged other kids seven times if I had to. I did laps across the pool to be in better shape than anyone else. I knew that I liked to win, and the public pool first instilled that all-out drive. I could not accept anything less than first.
As I grew up, West Des Moines Water Park lost its luster, but competition did not. I no longer felt the joys of exploding from the slide into the crisp water. The diving board lost its spring, and my focus turned to the glory of the football field. I enjoyed being able to finally hit someone and being allowed to do it. I was good at it too. My day dreams of trips to the pool turned into dreams of playing under the Friday night lights. I saw the way girls looked at football players; I wanted to be the man they were looking at. I wanted to earn my own trip to the famous playoff dome, where legends are born. I wanted to reach the pinnacle of athletic achievement, playing for the Iowa Hawkeyes on Saturday afternoons. Running onto the Kinnick Stadium grass in the iconic Hawkeye swarm became the sole focus of my football career.
Despite my drive to destroy helpless quarterbacks, I missed the pool more than I thought. Where I had taken to the field, my brother had stayed in the pool. I had dragged my brother to enough of my football games that when he started swim season, I felt obligated to go to one of his swim meets after my game.
I watched my brother leap from the starting block, crash into the water, and proceed to race. He won every race that day and was the most celebrated athlete in the house at dinner. Never mind my five tackles; my brother’s five blue ribbons commanded the discussion. Every detail of his races was analyzed, and the only recognition I received was a casual good job.
I signed up for swim team the next day, and the love I felt for those rectangle holes in the ground returned. It was a rough awakening from the carefree attitude I took with me to the pool as a child and from the destructive urges I felt on the football field. The focus and energy required to swim competitively shocked me. I soon learned I had a knack for swimming, but I did not get faster overnight. It took a long time for me to get better. The frustration of countless weeks of work to drop little or no time in a race still stings, but being in the water makes the work worth the pain.
I encountered a fair share of struggles during my relationship with the pool. In high school, I vowed to quit every night, and every morning I woke at 4:45 a.m. to get in the car and go to practice. I could never escape. I have wanted to quit more times than I can count, but the pool wanted me. I feel more at home in a pool, pulling and kicking back and forth, than I do in my own bed. The pool became my own form of therapy. No matter how much force I put into beating the water, it still fell right back into place, ready for the next one, begging for more of my frustration. The majority of my demons find themselves exorcised in the pool. Any troubles I have before practice seem trivial when compared to the amount of work I will put in, and after climbing out, my troubles are no longer my priority. All I think about after practice is the moment when my head can fall into my pillow. The hypnotizing effect of staring at that simple, tiled, black line coupled with the complete silence of the water provide a rare moment of meditation, leading to two-hour practices feeling like ten minutes. The simplicity of that black line tiled into that concrete floor became a true consistency in my life. People come and go, but the pool stays where it is, waiting intently, inviting me to come and vanquish my foes of that day. In the water, I found that the harder I worked, the more I put into it, and the faster I went, the easier it was to slow down in life.
The therapeutic aspects of the pool only represent part of the attraction. I also rediscovered my desire to touch the wall first. Microscopic time drops, countless blowouts, and more than countless last place finishes drove me to become the best. I remember clearly every single race I should have won, which pool I was in, and why I lost. The memory of these races follows me every time I get in the pool, and I vow not to make those same mistakes. I have won many races at a fingernail distance, but few things are as demeaning as being on the losing end of the one hundredth of a second differential. This heart break leads to inevitable hours of contemplation and frustration, and the therapeutic cycle of the pool repeats itself.
The simple hole in the ground with water in it provides endless opportunity. Swimming back and forth, wall to wall, staring at a solid black line for hours on end is a small price to pay, because those very same hours have provided me with the best experiences of my life. I have made lifelong friends, become an athlete all over again, and been given an opportunity to continue staring at black lines twice-a-day in college.
The pool has a funny way of bringing people back. The more I wanted to quit, the earlier I got up and went to practice. Those carefree summer days at the Holiday Pool have long since been replaced by even longer days spent training for one meet, one race, or one second. Many times, those training sessions lead to elation, but more often than not, they lead to heart break. To truly understand the pool one has to embrace it as more than just a hole in the ground, more than just a cold body of water, more than just a tool for expressing emotions. From the inside looking out, it cannot be explained, and from the outside looking in, it cannot be understood. It is more than just a pool.