Olympic pool

I was walking by Olympic pool one morning earlier this summer  – the air unusually cool for July, a glorious blue sky filled with white puffy clouds, the trees casting deep shadows on the lawns. In the distance I heard the repeated blasts of a swimming coach’s whistle and wanted to glimpse just one more time the magic of an early morning workout. I peered in to see kids swimming their laps.  Their glistening arms raised in freestyle, the rhythmic slap of their strokes, the sun sending sparkles in the cold blue backdrop of the pool. In the air, the familiar smell of chlorine and the distinctive sound that diving boards make from the exuberant bouncing of children goofing off. Others mounted their bikes, to ride home to do chores and then I’m sure as in the case of my brothers and I, back to the pool for the rest of the day.

There were places that formed the steady and comforting triumvirate of our childhood, Immaculate Conception school and church for routine and absolution. Whetstone Park for gymnastics in the Fall, skating on the casting pond in Winter and of course 4^th of July fireworks but perhaps it was Olympic Pool that defined the sweetest months of the year – June, July and August.  Olympic represented freedom and belonging.

It was a time when air conditioning was an unheard of luxury so the pool was our cooling station, a way to keep the hot humid days of summer at bay. When mothers stayed home to raise their kids while our dads went off to work. There were understood designated areas at the pool, on the backside of the expansive grass lawn were the older ladies with their leathery suntanned skin playing cards, while on the opposite end our slim mothers lounged at the baby pool with our younger siblings. Somewhere in between my friends and I played in the huge rectangular swimming pool until at the end of the day our toes and feet were white and shriveled.

As we got older we endlessly went off the 3' and 12' diving boards, then eventually the 16-foot platform – a rite of passage when you one day found the courage to climb the slippery cement steps and stand on the edge tentatively peering over. 

At age five, my fearless younger brother scrambled up those very steps, without a moment’s hesitation walked to the edge and promptly jumped.  Something that had taken me several days at the age of nine with frequent scooting back down the precarious stairs and then up again until I finally found my own courage. Eyes scrunched shut waiting for the impact as I plummeted through the air, arms stiffly held tight to my side before smacking into the water, going deep underwater before opening my eyes, realizing I had actually done it.

There were special moments when the OSU diving team came and used the 32-foot (off-limits to us) platform for their practices. We kids sat enthralled not minding one bit that the dive pool was closed to us for the evening.  Watching as  acrobatic athletes performed miracles of grace in the few seconds from lift-off to entering the pool.

Years later when we moved to Florida, it was Olympic that was my last clear memory of Clintonville.  Our car stopped at the crosswalk in front of the pool, watching kids with their towels casually draped around their necks crossing the street heading toward the splashes and squeals emanating from within - then the light changed and we drove to the airport to take the flight to our new home.

And that first difficult year in Florida missing my comforting leafy neighborhood, missing the company of familiar places.  A time when I felt like a fish out of water gasping for air - completely out of my element.  Walking home from school in the relentless heat of a gulf coast September, I would imagine Olympic’s deep royal blue diving pool. Closing my eyes as I struggled on the hot sandy roads - conjuring myself with outstretched arms slowly falling forward into its cool soothing waters.

After 76 years the pool is closing. I go on the last day, and there is still a tangible magic to the place. Earlier in the day, the enormous crowd gathered around both pools forming a community of linked hands chanting “Olympic, Olympic, Olympic.”  

Then the dive pool became the focus with people gathered six deep all around, everyone shouting encouragement to those on the platform, mothers anxiously watching their children’s own rite of passage. A set of sisters in their 60’s go off the platform together – acknowledging the cheering crowds with queen-like waves before jumping in. When someone does a flawless dive or a particularly effective can-opener the crowd erupts in clapping and cheers. And they collectively groan in a reflexive cringe when an overenthusiastic dive turns into an unintended belly-flop – its smack reverberating across the pool.

I take photos, watching the drama play out through the lens of my camera. Across the way I see a father bend to his daughter, obviously teaching her to keep her arms tight to her body before going off the board, her face screwed up in deep concentration. There is the young teenage boy who tries for hours to dive off the platform – walking away, coming back to the edge again and again. He starts the dive then his body straightens up as if on autopilot before hitting the water – disappointment all over his face. But several attempts later when he finally does a full-on dive the crowd erupts in cheers as proud of him as if he is their own. We are in this together, this sense of community.

When I was five years old my grandparents moved away.  I walked by their house every day on my way home from kindergarten knowing somehow in my heart that something precious and irreplaceable had been lost. Never quite reconciling myself to the memories that would have been made there, desperately missing their reassuring presence. I just felt a deep and abiding sense of loss of what could have been.  That is what the closing of Olympic feels like.

I get it - that this next generation having never known the utter joy of seemingly floating in air while performing a swan dive, or the thrill of 12 and 13 year-olds meeting up with a gang of friends making their first tentative break from childhood, will not know what they have missed. They won’t miss the sense of accomplishment when achieving a perfect front flip, or the thrill of winning a swim race, or just the comfort of the daily routine of walking to the neighborhood pool. 

But we know, those of us raised at that pool, going back to my grandfather’s generation, that something so intrinsic to a well-lived childhood, an enchanted childhood, has been lost. We know it and feel it in our bones. It is as if someone beloved has died leaving an empty place in our hearts.