I was perusing the Los Angeles Magazine ads. And I saw a picture of a most beautiful wedding party-at-a-pool.
It was dusk, the perfect time of day in LA. The pool was lit, and was covered with a see-through, glass top. White and purple chairs were set on top of that, and there were mini orchids making order of the rows.
There were no people yet, sitting on those chairs above the turquoise pool. No scuff marks or dropped pieces of Kleenex. So far no one had slipped on the see-through cover and maybe cracked it as they fell. No one had fallen into the pool. It was the moment before the mayhem.
So I started thinking about the perfect pool. Like the one in the snow in the picture. That must be a heated pool, except I see no steam. The first year my family moved from Brussels, Belgium to Pasadena, California, my parents dutifully heated the pool all winter. So the thing steamed all night long. After having found out that no one swims in their pools more than one minute a week, unless recovering from hip surgery, the heat was shut off.
I've always considered it to be the ultimate of luxury to have a swimming pool at one's home on the beach. But then one runs the risk of feeling doubly guilty for never using either.
And then there are the steamy, don't look too closely in the dark moldy corners, old indoor pools in Europe. One can practically smell the Middle Ages. One does not want to ask too many questions about sanitation. One merely wants to stand there in awe, feeling the spirits of the monks and saints and kings and serfs all joining together in the (suspiciously) warm water, taking their exercise, avoiding conversation so that there may be no cause to draw swords. The men first. Next, the women.
And then, this being when they were both low-man-on-the-totem- pole, maybe the children and horses.
When I lived in Brussels, my school carted us over to such a pool once a week. Wednesdays. I loved it, I did. But we all had to wear rubber swimming shoes, and even though until then I had swum with bare feet in frigid lakes in Massachusetts, I was very glad for those shoes.
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