prayerful of dreams - 2008-06-28
preschool princess - 2008-06-16
life with my sweetheart - 2008-04-29
the fast approach of four - 2008-04-12
lighting up my own life - 2008-03-08

2002-01-27 - 11:14 a.m.

I lived in florida, for the first five years of my life. I remember always being hot. My mother would put us in cute little pastel ruffly cropped tops, and tiny matching pastel shorts, and tell us to go outside and play. Have you ever tried to play in a dusty backyard, when it is 95 degrees? People didn't believe in shade, back then, and certainly not sun block. I was permanently tan. A little golden girl. and all I wanted was to get back inside the chilly air conditioned house. I would pound my fists on the sliding glass doors, and beg to return inside, and take a nap. Yelling "please please let me in, It is soooo hot out here!!! I want to go to my room! I wanna take a nap, please??". Then I would cry. Sometimes this worked, but not always. My mother was under the impression that we needed fresh air. When it is that hot and arid, there is no such thing as fresh air. It is an outdoor oven, baking little kids dry.

At that time , we lived in a sweet little perfect Florida manicured suburbs where every beige and trimmed in red Spanish Fiesta style house looked exactly the same. Adobe tile roofs, and the prestige of cheap metal Spanish Gates, to try and give it an air of Spanish Magnifica. But, when every house looks exactly the same, this can become sort of confusing for a small child. You wonder if you are living the same life as Johnny next door, and if so, why exactly did he get a new bike to ride in his driveway, which incidently looks just like yours? Are Johnny's parents just like yours? Does it matter which house, you go home to, at night?

Apparently it does. Johnny's dad was mean. I think there was rumours of a drinking problem, and a penchance for "loose women" . In the suburbs everyone knows everyones buisness. That is just the way it is. Then one day we moved. We moved closer to my grandparents house in S. Florida. and my grandparents had a pool! And I had a french bikini, all the rage in 1974. and I looked HOT, because well, florida IS HOT ! I used to wear my little yellow string bikini, and the top was always twisted, and flapping over. The truth is, 4 yr olds don't have the cleavage necesscary to pull off wearing a french bikini. Somewhere, there are all these great pictures of me, golden, and blonde, and splayed playboyesque style on my tummy, on the beach, in my little yellow bikini, posing for the camera. Such a leo child, I was. It was the only time I ever wore a bikini. But, I was sexy at 4!! I was sexy, once~

Anyway, when we moved, my mother decided that I needed to take swimming lessons. From the meanest woman that ever lived. She wore a severe frown, and a horrible plastic flowered bathing cap, as if that would somehow compenste for her Helga the Hated reputation. I hated her, alright. She would hold my head underwater, forcefully. and then, when she deemed enough time had passed for proper lung strengthening, she would rip my head up, by the back of my hair. Can you say OWWWWWWW? And when you would scream, she would just shove your face back under water. and repeat the whole thing.over and over. You learn to stop screaming. The pool was Olympic sized, but when I close my eyes and visualize it now, it seems Oceanic in proportions. I remember feeling so tiny in that pool. There were always 60 people in it or so, at any given time, but it looked like it could easily hold 600 more. and Helga made me swim the length of it. Again and again. When I thought my arms would break, and I could not take another lap, she would just push me harder. The hour long lesson, seemed like an eternity in my short lifetime. I would stumble out of the pool, my eyes stinging with chlorine,and my ears festering pool water, that would turn into a painful ear infection. I would wrap up in a towel, and go limp on the poolside lounge chair. Helga worked me harder than anyone ever has.

and one day, it paid off.

We were at my grandparents house, the one with the beautiful pool and a slide. All the adults were inside, and I was swimming alone. I was quite capable of going down the slide, and swimming to the edge, and then going back down the slide. This was an endless game, that I never tired of. I could hear laughter inside the house. My father and grandfather were watching Sunday Football, my mother was resting, with my 2 yr old sister and my grandmother was cooking in the kitchen. A perfect Sunday tradition in full swing. and me sliding, swimming, sliding, swimming.. etc. and then, who should come toddling outside, but my baby sister, all sleepy from her nap. She toddled over to the edge of the pool and wanted to see what I was doing. She had snuck out of the house, noone saw her leave. She'd gotten past all the security checkpoints, the men in the tv room, the grandmother in the kitchen, and most of all, out of our poor mother's sleeping arms.

She promptly fell in. and sank to the bottom.

I was all of four and a half. and I knew that I had to save my sister. I didn't stop to think about anything. I swam to the bottom, trying to fight against the incredible pressure of the impenetrable waterwall. It is not easy for a small 45 pound child, to reach the deep bottom of a pool floor.

I remember that my eyes were open, and I could see her, sitting there, on the bottom, her eyes big saucers of expectation, waiting beseechingly for me. Her caramel curls fanning out around her face like a halo of brown seaweed. She sat there, on the very bottom of the pool, like the princess child of the deep sea. and I knew that I alone, had to save her. Noone was gonna help me, cause noone knew what had happened. I kept trying to slice through the water,to get to her, and all the while my lungs felt like they were starting to fill up with burning hot metal. but, I knew that I had to keep trying.

Somehow, I break through the force of water and reach her, but now I have to try and get her to the surface. She is a dead weight. She is more than half my weight.and she is wearing clothes which make her even heavier. I grab her, and her soulful eyes looked deep into mine. I knew that She could see me, and that she trusted me, she believed that I could and would be able to save her. I start kicking desperately, trying to generate a treading motion that will carry us swiftly to the surface. But we are not going up. We are not moving at all. I yank harder on her, and look up through a filtered glass ceiling. From the bottom of the pool,I can see the distant sun peering down at us, in streaming shimmering waves and muted through water, it is the most beautiful thing that you have ever seen. And more than anything I want only to get us back up there, in the living world, of shimmering sun and endless azure blue skies.

Somehow fear is enough to get my legs to thrash more desperately and we start to get to closer to the sapphire surface. The moment we break through the water and fill our lungs with precious air, is a total re-birth. But we still have a long way to go, to get to the safety of the edge. I push her up and try to keep her tiny head just barely above water, but the density of her weight, forces me back under. I struggle like a dog caught in the rapids. I kick and kick,thrashing and surfacing occasionally to get a gulp of air, and then I go back under, and kick some more. I seem to be moving in total slow motion, gaining only an centimeter closer to the edge at a time. We keep struggling, I am holding her up, keeping her small face tilted upwards,just above the surface. I am giving her back to the shimmering sun and endless blue sky world. and me in my yellow bikini fighting to surface us both.Trying to save her. It felt like an eternity, but actually it was only a few moments. and then we reached the edge. we reached safety. My legs were shaking . and then the adults came out of the house, and saw my baby sister, soaking wet and started screaming and asking " what happened?" My baby sister proceeds to tell them that she fell in, and that she just waited for " wendy to come get me" The adults were all horrified.

and me, well I got an ice cream cone as my reward for saving my sister.

I always sorta knew that I had saved my sister. I just never thought much about it. Until today. My sister is married. She has the most beautiful baby daughter, named Annaka who will be one years old on Jan 30. And now my sister has just told us that she is pregnant, again.

My sister is pregnant. My baby sister who was sitting on the bottom of the pool, when she was 2, is pregnant.

and I fear deep inside my heart, that I will never have children of my own. This thought crushes me. I always thought I would. I always believed I would be a mother. because, because, well I have always taken care of everyone and everything. That is who I am, that defines me. I need to be needed.

but, now, I wonder, if it was just my place in this world, to save my baby sister. cause, well, my baby sister is gonna have another baby.

maybe I can be ok with that.

Maybe I saved her for both of us. Resurfacing us both back into the shimmering sunshine and azure blue sky world. Maybe the glistening sun smiled upon us, one tiny sister helping the tinier sister, break through the sparkling water. as we burst back into life, clinging to one another. and one grew up to have babies, and the other one grew up to hold the babies, on holidays and occasional visits. Maybe my sister's babies, can be my babies too.

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