Celery Seeds and Salt Water Pools

I grew up swimming in salt water. Not only did we go to the ocean every Sunday in the summertime, we belonged to a yacht club with a salt water swimming pool. To this day, I find fresh water weird to swim in. Your buoyancy is better in salt water, and salt water feels nicer in your eyes - after all, your eyes are filled with salt water.

Pretty much every day, all summer long, we went to the club. My mother camped out in one of the adirondack chairs, drinking iced tea from the tea lady. And we plopped in and out of the pool, seared our bellies on the hot slates, ate frozen Milky Ways from the snack bar, and hated every minute of "adult swim".

One day, I swam to the edge and tipped my head to slick my hair back, but I caught my chin on the concrete lip and ended up in the emergency room with six stitches. Two days later, my little sister, who was little enough to be swimming with a bubble, jumped into the pool backwards and split her chin open. Another trip to the ER, another six stitches. Hers were black; mine were blue. And a couple of days after that, my father did a cannonball into the not deep enough midsection of the pool, and sprained his ankle on the bottom. QED: bad things happen in threes.

Yesterday, I was poking through a box of family photos and found an envelope of old postcards of the town I grew up in, including two of the club. The photo of the clubhouse was taken before 1929 - because that building was replaced by a stodgy columned brick edifice. And I don't know when the photo of the pool was taken - but the pool looked nearly the same when I was a kid. In fact, I think some of the pictured chairs and benches were still around, thickly painted with white paint, though the wood framed diving boards had been replaced by a pair of springy modern diving boards (low and high) with metal frames.

It was nice growing up with that pool. We lived close enough that eventually we kids could walk down there alone. It became a home away from home, and a reason to never have to go to sleepaway camp.

And despite its echt WASP trappings, it was full of eccentrics. The local superintendent of schools hung out at the pool, drinking beer on ice in a skimpy black bathing suit. How could we take him seriously, knowing what he did on his weekends? A boy my brother's age wore the same Speedo that Mark Spitz had worn when he scored the seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics. That boy wore that suit every single day, and at the end of the summer, his buttocks were tanned with stars and stripes where the sun had snuck through the white in the pattern. Somewhere in there, my parents got divorced - but we still kept using the club. To keep everything copacetic, and to facilitate my father paying the bills for his kids' activities, the club set up a special account for us: Z226. Everyone else had an account number that started with the first letter of their last name; we had Z226. It was kind of dramatic and liberating, though it could have been like a scarlet letter.

A couple of times each summer, we'd have dinner on the terrace, standing in silence while they shot off the cannon and took the flags down at sunset. The house salad was always garnished with slivered red cabbage and dressed with a vinaigrette laced with celery seed. Every time I toss a little celery seed in my salad dressing, I remember that salad from the club.

I kind of miss it. The club that is. I can make a fine salad anytime.

[Inspired by Parent Bloggers and their Little Swimmers blog blast.]