Sunday, August 9, 2009

Nine or ten years ago I had a whim to put a pool in the backyard. The whim was fueled by an evening spent playing pool and drinking beer with my father and father in law, and I determined (around beer #6, I think) that not only would we have a pool, but I would do all the work myself. I had no idea what that might entail, but I was determined, and actually painted off the area where this pool would go, and started to dig a hole.

Two and a half feet down, with an area roughly four feet by four feet dug out, I changed my mind and made a wood form for the hole, filled it with sand, and created a play area for the kids.

I was reminded of this at eight o’clock this morning by a grumpy, “If you’d actually finished the pool, I could stay home and sleep in, and I wouldn’t have to go with you in order to swim.” I didn’t earn any points by pointing out that she’s not swimming, she’s walking, and had I created the pool I envisioned it would have been too deep for her to manage that.

Even with the cast on her arm, she can still flip me off.

Honestly, I had not expected her to want to go to the dojang this morning. I only had one class to teach and Alex intended to skip his in order to stay home with her; she had other ideas and fully intended to work out during Alex’s class. She waited in the office during my class, and when I was done we hit the pool.

No Speedos were involved.

She doesn’t fully understand why she froze in the pool yesterday; Alex was walking along beside her and they were talking about the start of school next week, and how last year when she dropped the kids off on the first day she mortified Kevin by kissing him goodbye where he friends could see. The notion that on the day of the accident she could have had any or all of them in the car with her hit her hard, and she froze. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t tell Alex to just give her a few minutes and it would be all right. She was barely aware that he had gotten out of the water and couldn’t tell me how long he had waited to go get me(just a few seconds; he knew instantly that something was wrong) or how long it took for me to get there (less than thirty, I think). The only thing she knows for sure is that thought pricked at her for just a moment, and it was as painful as any of the physical pain she’s endured lately.

She’s just now starting to recover pieces of memory from the accident; she can recall the squeal of the other driver’s brakes, and she can distinctly remember the thought “God, no.” But in spite of not remembering everything, she grasps what the outcome would have been had any of the kids been in the car. She should not have survived; anyone else in the car would not have. And just the notion is tearing her up inside. It was enough to stop her in her tracks in the pool yesterday, and enough to make breathing a concentrated effort.

Today, however, we walked the pool for an hour and a half, and she was fine. When Alex’s class was over he joined us in the pool for half an hour of lap swimming. Afterwards Dack drove Rachel and Kevin to meet us for lunch, and we were able to discuss with them some of what their mother might go through, and what to do if the same thing happens again (get Dad or Grandpa, because one of them is always going to be close at hand for the foreseeable future.)

This afternoon I sat in the living room working on the dojang budget and she was in the kitchen with the kids, helping them bake cookies. There was a lot of laughter coming from all of them, and other than the fact that there are actual cookies in the house right now and I might even get one, it was a slice of ordinary. It could have been any other pre-accident Saturday afternoon.

Except, it’s not. That other shoe is starting to fall and it’s like we’re watching it in slow motion, hoping that it lands gently. I’d catch if it I could.

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