Today David and I went swimming for the first time. I
don't know why we haven't before, not in the two years we
have been together. We just haven't. But today we started
something which I hope we can make a habit. Or maybe even a
tradition.

I sit here in bed-after we showered together, after we
saw the silly movie, after I hurt his feelings and later
apologized. I can feel the flannel sheets against my back.
My skin feels too small for me today, taught, because the
sun burned us as we frolicked and splashed. Two hours we
were out there. Seemed like ten minutes.

I can't remember the last time I felt like this. My ears
feel cleaner after two hours swimming than they have in
months. My hair, dark and mousy in winter, now feels dry and
like the straw I fed to horses when I was younger. My skin
feeling cleaned and scrubbed after the chlorine and the sun
and the shower.

I remember this feeling so much from when I was younger,
maybe from one of those seemingly endless cross-country
trips we would go on. It was only the men in my family-my
dad, my older brother, me. Never my mom, which seems so odd
now. We would pile into the car-maybe Tyler the Plymouth
station wagon or the Jeep we bought on another one of those
trips, bought in South Dakota after hail damage allowed my
dad afford it.

I was always the one to insist on a swimming pool. I
know my brother liked having a swimming pool at those
hotels, but it wasn't as much of a big deal for him. I liked
it because I was a fat kid and the water made me feel so
free, so alive. I was the first in the water and the last
one out.

We pulled into the town where we would stay the night.
We never had reservations; my dad would never plan that far
ahead. (I was 18 before I found out hotels took
reservations. I just thought you showed up and the hotel had
to take you.) Once we decided which town, we had to decide
which hotel. We asked for the hotel strip and then drove
down it, looking at the McDonald's and Ramada Inns and the
chains that were supported by families like us who traveled.
For the hotel, air conditioning was a must in the hot and
humid summer days, color TV, and, because of me, a swimming
pool. We slowly drove the street until the perfect hotel, a
Motel 6 sometimes, but usually a Best Western, peaked around
the corner from behind the KFC.

As my dad haggled with the front desk clerk, my brother
and I sizes up the pool from the back seat. Slides were
cool; diving boards were better. Large, rectangular pools
were the best; kidney-shaped pool sucked because they rarely
had a very deep end. And the pool had to be open late at
night.

So there we'd be, in this strange town just about dusk
and it would be so hot I could just about put a quarter in
one of my pores. And my only salvation was for Daddy to
finish checking into the hotel and for me to get out my swim
suit, the one wrapped in the towel of your duffel bag, the
one that was still damp from the night before, 300 miles
back in that other city I wouldn't even remember visiting in
another two years. And I got to the room and stripped my
clothes off as fast as I could. I asked Graham (who usually
went) and Daddy (who sometimes went) if they wanted to go
swim. I grabbed my still-damp towel or maybe one of those
too-small white hotel towels and head out for the pool.
Sometimes the pavement was too hot from the day's pounding
and relentless heat and I'd have to run back to put on my
sandals in order to make it to the pool without
screaming.

Then I'd get to the pool and decide how best to get in
the water. The debate raged between jumping in all at once-
the submersion method-or easing into the water, one step at
a time-the gradual method. Eventually the diving method
became the custom for my brother and me.

I never did laps or anything so formal in the pool then.
We would just mess around for an hour or two. My brother and
I played some games: diving for change or making the biggest
splash in the water. We used to mainly horse around, trying
to dunk each other in the water until inevitably one of us
went too far and before you knew it we were fist fighting in
the damn pool, looking like a poster for the poor white
trash family we were.

We loved it when my dad came out to play in the pool. My
dad never wrestled with us when we were outside of a pool,
but for whatever reason decided to tussle with my brother
and me once we hit the water. He seemed so strong to us
then. We would double-team him, one brother per leg, and try
to tip him over or dunk him. We never were able to beat him,
maybe because we stopped taking those trips about the time
that I was 12 and my brother was 14. We could have dunked
him by then.

He would always ease into the water, using the steps in
the shallow end. My brother and I would grow impatient and
urge him in faster or splash him so he would retaliate by
coming after us (which is all we really wanted anyway). Once
his shoulders were in the water, he would wait to dunk his
head until he had played around a while.

Graham and I would swim under water and try to grab his
legs, our eyes burning from the chlorine. My dad had these
powerful legs from riding his bike or walking, and they
seemed like these warm, immovable pillars to me. Tug as I
might, they wouldn't budge until he wanted them to. I
eventually ran out of air. Once I came up to get that air,
my dad had one hand ready per brother and we were dunked in
the water, giggling away our air into little bubbles. Even
while I complained, I liked being dunked.

My dad also taught me how to dive. Ironically, he never
could dive himself. But he challenged me one day and I dove
head-first into the pool, ungraceful at first. I tried until
I had it pretty well down, at least well enough so I didn't
hurt myself any more.

We played in the pool for hours, until well after it was
dark. I always had the longest stamina and held out going to
dinner some nights so I could swim a little longer. Once I
did finally succumb to getting out, I remember I never used
to wash my blond hair just rinse it out and put my head near
the window while driving to the restaurant to let it dry.

I hadn't been swimming in years but I went today. It was
summer in Southern California and I realized I may not have
many more of these days, now that I've graduated and may be
moving on. So we went and we played and we wrestled and we
tickled and we splashed. It reminded me of those days with
my brother and my dad. I don't remember when I last felt
this good. When I smile, I can feel the tightness where my
face will be red tomorrow.