Because I can

Tuesday, 20 October 2009

Daddy has been talking about putting up the pool for the year, which means draining about a third of the water, putting in that nasty pink chemical and covering it over with a lattice of PVC pipe and the big grey tarp. As with last year this depresses me. I can never let go of a summer. Yesterday was cool and cloudy in the morning but cleared into a sunny, warm afternoon, but Jessy and I were out doing errands and did not get home till after 4.00 when it was too cold for a swim. This morning I vowed I would not miss an opportunity like that. As soon as we got home Jessy and I stripped off and dove in.

Daddy was out raking leaves and pulled up with the yard tractor and the trailer-- with J.J. riding in it-- at the garden gate. I was in the middle of my constitutional 25 laps when they came up on the terrace. 'Oh,' Daddy said, 'what's this?'

'They're doing it again!' J.J. said-- little master of the obvious that he is. He hates when we're naked. He thinks there's something missing-- which there is, and not just our clothes. He is at the age when he is exceptionally proud of being male and thinks girls are silly and prone to immature, unmanly pursuits like swimming bare in the pool in front of him. I know Daddy encourages him in this attitude-- it's how he builds his gender identity, the same way Lisa builds hers by dawdling in the bathrooms when Jessy and I are getting dressed and mimicking us in pursuits like swimming bare in the pool. Daddy always enjoys teasing us-- at our age there is much less that he has in common with us and he just wants to stay a part of our routine lives. I know that deep inside he longs for when Jessy and I were just The Twits, those silly little girls he had so much fun with before nature made us grow up and leave that phase behind. He is our dad and to him it's not so much of a phase-- it's something he misses. So I think we do persist in what we do round here just to make sure he doesn't feel we've changed. After all it's only our bodies that have changed. We're still his twits.

By the time I got out the sun was beyond the roof of the house and a shallow shade was cast over the terrace. I was actually shivering. Mother sent Lisa out with two towels. Despite the mid-autumn chill I really didn't want to go in. For a while I sat in one of the chaises, staring at the sparkling aquamarine water of our precious pool, seeing how it went greyish in the coming twilight and reflected the even deeper grey of the salt-water bay just outside the garden wall. Out over the ocean, the sky remained crisp and clear for another half-hour and then went a brilliant purple-orange that was really stunning. It looked like the reddish-orange sky of Destin, the cloudy planet in 'Empire Strikes Back', deep and dense and distant, like you could jump off and dive into those clouds and then go sailing out over them for ever. I swear I got chills down my spine just thinking about that.

Lisa came out a little while later and found me reclining back in the chaise, with my gaze still up in the sky and the towel still wrapt round me and my hair still damp.

It's going to be a long winter.

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