Fun, Loving NOT Funny

The noise is always overwhelming at the Bainbridge swimming pool. if you commit to go, as I do, with Aleister, one to two times per month, you must commit to being bonked on the head, kicked in the side and the shins, having loads of water splashed on your face and in your eyes, oggled by men wearing goggles underwater (oh, baby!) and, most importantly of all, you must arrive in a staunch sort of mood. You are a soldier in the Army You are teaching your child something, you just don't know what.

This is what being on safari must be like, I tell myself. This is hideous, I tell myself.

We swim for an hour and then leave. I swim hard, my face down in the water, my arms trying to emulate whatever/however it was my father taught me, so many years ago. I count the strokes Twelve from this side to this side. Side-stroke. Overhand. Backfloat. Dog paddle. Count how many seconds Allie can remain under water. Eighteen. Twenty. Twenty-five!

Finally, bored and with twenty minutes to go, I dip a foot into the hot pool and nearly crumple onto the white hard ledge. Hot, hot, hot! Instead, I open the door to the sauna and walk in. Nothing can be seen. Is it empty? I can't tell. Anyone in here? I don't breath a word. I sit on the top step, head down, feel the sweat pour off me. Suddenly a male voice is seeing an Indian song, Aaaiiieee- wanka-takka, aaaiiieee, wanka-tonka, he goes on and o. There are more words but I couldn'd catch them. Instead, I thought of the Mexican taxi driver who drove me away from L.A.'s Terminal Island and the "saddest love song" he sang to me, the saddest, he said, he could find. He was a wonderful singer; it was a beautiful song. And so was this insivible young man a wonderful singer and so was this a wonderful song. I felt blessed, I tell you. I mean, I WAS blessed. These things happen to me sometimes - out of the blue, out of the ordinary, my life takes off in a totally different direction and it begins with a stranger's song.

Then young Indian man opens the door and begins to leave. "That was nice," I said. "Thank you," he said, "you are beautiful."
"You can't see me," I said.
"That's why everyone is beautiful in here," he replied.

The steamroom looked like what coming out of anesthesia looks like. It looks like you might see God.

On the way home, Aleister said he is a "Hippie but without hippiness." He says he wories a lot about the environment and about the fact that politicans do not worry about endangered animals. I tell him about Al Gore, who won the Nobel prize for carig about the environment and who even wrote a book. "But does anybody read it? Does anybody listen?" Aleiser asks. "I think so," I reply, and then, "I don't know."

Aleister informs me that he has a very good imagination (duh) and that, therefore, he intends to become a specialized kind of security guard when he grows up. "Let's just say there will be a lot of high grade protection going on," he says. "How about becoming a scientist?" I ask. "Or a movie animimater or writer?"

"Nope," he replies, "the Security Guard's life is the life for me."

As we turn into the Kitsap Mall where we plan to meet Aleister's mother Angela, he informs me that he finds me "fun, loving and funny" - - and then he takes the "funny" back. He says, actually, I am NOT funny. Not funny at all. "But," he insists," two out of three aren't bad." I beg to differ. "I am TOO funny!" I disagree. "I am TOO!" He looks at me with a straight sad face and shakes his head, No. "You're not," he said. "I don't know why I ever said it in the first place. Actually, you're just not."

On this note we go into Barnes and Nobles to find his mama. She looks for books while Aleister and I wander off to get our beloved pretzel-dogs. We can hardly believe how lucky we are, we not only manage to find a place all to ourselves - but we each have our own pretzeldog and our own diet drink. "You know," Aleister says, after taking large gulps of his Diet Pepsi, "these are very bad for you." "I know," I say. We look at each other. We smile.


The love is overwhelming.