Tracing my thoughts

Last night I was lying awake in bed and for some reason was thinking about an unusual experience in my childhood. My memories were reliving a time when my mother's club (The Ellis Domestic Science Club) was having a picnic over at the El Dorado Springs Park. They were picnicking on the upper level of the park, west of the little valley where the spring and grandstand is. There was a swimming pool there. I'm not sure if a swimming pool exists there now or not, but back then, probably about 1935 or so, there was a fairly large rectangular pool complete with a bathhouse.

The women decided that they would go swimming themselves. It must have been preplanned that way because we girls had brought our own bathing suits. None of the women had any suits, even at home, so they all had to rent those awful looking one piece suits that most pools then had for rent. My sister and I and our friend Joyce Kafer were amazed that our mothers would do this. But they did. They rented the suits and came out of the bathhouse timidly and stepped down the ladder in the shallow part of the pool. My mother wanted to get into the deeper part for modesty's sake but was afraid to move in the deeper water. I think this was the first time she had ever gone into water that would cover her whole body. She had never mentioned swimming as a girl, and since they lived in rural Iowa I doubt there were many chances for paddling around in a creek or something.

My mother asked me to take her hand and walk with her until the water would cover her up to her shoulders. I wanted to go into the deeper part and have fun with the other kids who were there, but was honored that my mother had asked for my help. I got her to a comfortable spot where she spent the rest of their time in the water holding on to the edge of the pool and watching the others brave the deeper water by themselves.

Last night, over seven decades later, I began wondering why I had remembered this incident. Nothing had happened that day that had anything to do with swimming. I tried to trace my thoughts back to see why I had been kept awake with this memory. Maybe it had to do with the fact that my own youngest, but almost middle aged, daughter had gone swimming at the hotel pool when we were in Kansas City for Lester's chemo therapy treatment. But I couldn't remember even thinking about that fact at all. It might have had to do with my need to start sorting out clothes for our church's annual spring basement sale. But bathing suits were certainly not in my pile of discarded items.

Finally I remembered that it had occurred to me earlier in the evening that I was now several months older than my mother was when she died. For several months before her death I was very aware that my mother was an elderly woman. She had needed care, and was slightly confused about facts and who these different people in her environment were. I considered her an old lady.

Now here I was several months older than she was at that time, thinking that I am only middle age plus. I don't need care but I know I let some household duties slide by at times (well, really most times). I don't feel nearly as old as my mother seemed to me during her last months.

So my memory of my mother experimenting with fun in a swimming pool was a natural follow-up. I realized that even at that very early date I had considered my mother as old. Certainly she was too old to take a dip in a public pool at her age. Since she was 42 when I was born, I really don't remember her as a very young woman, but since she was always in good health up until those last months she was a very capable and supportive mother. I cherish many memories of this creative, brave woman who mothered eight children who all turned out fine. I wondered why I always thought of her as old.

Since I am older than she ever became and I am just beginning to admit to having a few years on me, why should her age have seemed so much more advanced than mine at the same biological age?

Of course part of it is the perspective of youth toward those who are older, but I realize now that society at that time and my mother herself, considered women "of a certain age" to be too old for certain things that we would not hesitate about today. Therefore my mother's risk to expose her body in that horrible bathing suit and to water deeper than her height was a big adventure. She was certainly young at heart when she joined the group in their adventure. It was just my smug child-centered vision that made me think otherwise.

I am sure that my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren don't think of me as an old woman. Or do they?