At the Neighborhood Pool

I love going to the neighborhood pool. Laying out in the sun followed by a quick dip always energizes me and reminds me of a much simpler time. Being out there for a few hours every weekend helps me reconnect with my youth and allows me to revisit some of my fondest childhood memories.

I think the smell of chlorine on a hot day permanently etches the experience of your first swimming lesson, your first belly flop, your addiction to the highdive, and your first crush on the lifeguard to your brain. Moments that somehow are as vibrant now as the day they were being made.

Today I didn't need that smell or my mind to bring back memories from my childhood, though. Instead I just needed an old friend. He was a rock star back then. Still is now actually. If there was a soundtrack to my life I couldn't say how many of his songs would find their way onto the album. Too many to count really. Songs about growing up, summer time, love found and love lost. All of which he released at just the right moment to act like musical chlorine to help capture some of my most defining moments; freezing them forever on my mind.

So, we talked briefly, but floodgates opened with names and stories and pictures of people I haven't thought about in a very long time. I would say that is one of the best things about growing up. Every now and then you get to look back on where you've been. You get to look back though, without the raging hormones and bubbling expectations of someone in the midst of the adventure. You get to look back as someone who has weathered the storm and can separate pesky emotion in order to see events for what they really were. Chances to grow up.

Now that I am here in adulthood, life seems so much more serious, and the choices I make so much more important. I think he might say the same thing too now that he's ventured out on his own and makes music to provide for a family. He and I are no longer those kids we once were. But I hope we would both look back on this time years from now and realize how the things happening in our lives right now are worth remembering.

It is great to have people that can remind you of your past. I especially am grateful for my friend who not only could speak the past back into my life, but who also provided me the gift of his music, and that for so long I could use it to help connect and store all those things going on in my life deep within my heart. And I am thankful that on a hot summer day at a neighborhood pool I could once again get a chance to walk down memory lane. A walk that was even sweeter because he happened to be there.