Forum: Return of the swimming pool Mermaid

Forum: Return of the swimming pool Mermaid

Published 1:30 am Saturday, June 13, 2026

HERALD FORUM| Edie Everette

I as soon as believed that everybody was born understanding tips on how to swim, that everybody grew up throughout the alley from a kidney formed pool owned by a health care provider. A person who, earlier than including chlorine to his pool, produced a transparent plastic package that held vials of Listerine blue and cherry crimson liquids. As a baby, I watched in awe as he dipped the package’s empty vial into the pool and held it as much as the solar.

The physician and his spouse had a daughter my age with whom I swam like a fish all summer time. We waited all winter for the top of May when it grew to become time to warmth the pool. I don’t keep in mind studying how; I solely keep in mind swimming. Maybe I used to be like these infants within the Nineteen Seventies who had been advised to hum earlier than being tossed into the deep finish.

Decades later I’m again to common swimming after becoming a member of my native YMCA. It’s a thrill to see dozens of youngsters at their swimming classes, ultimately transferring fluid as fish and turning into protected round water within the course of. During classes they squeal, put on tiny goggles with darling swimsuits and roughhouse whereas their guardians keep dry on benches and take a look at their telephones.

As a teen, when the physician and his household had been away on vacation, I held pool events. The subsequent day, all their deck furnishings could possibly be discovered on the backside of a pool that now resembled a flooded lounge. How did my buddies and I’ve all that point again then to swim and loll within the solar, to drink beer, smoke and kiss beneath a flat blue sky?

Sometimes whereas swimming laps on the Y, if I twist my hips only a bit up and down, I really feel like a Mermaid with a tail. I as soon as created a collection of Mermaid drawings for a gallery exhibit in Kirkland. I depicted Mermaids studying books, doing their hair, and smoothing their glittering scales amidst undulating sea grass. These drawings, on 5 by 5-foot sheets of paper, didn’t fulfill the gallery proprietor. She walked into my Seattle artwork studio, noticed them, and refused to exhibit even one. After she left, I rolled all of them up collectively and put them in a close-by dumpster. Years later, an artwork critic I knew mentioned she had discovered them and hung them throughout her bed room.

A number of years again I lived close to a river the place I waited for late summer time when the water grew to become heat sufficient to swim in. Like an countless pool, one can swim in place in opposition to the present. I likened shutting my eyes and floating with the present to ‘letting go and letting the universe’ carry me the place I used to be alleged to go. Yet, after only a few moments of floating, my eyes sprung open as I rapidly swam again to the place I may see my towel on the financial institution.

At the YMCA, lifeguards tempo forwards and backwards alongside the pool; their countenance is critical as a result of they’re true lifesavers. Their pacing jogs my memory of the jungle cats I noticed on the Woodland Park Zoo a long time again when all that these gorgeous creatures had had been small cages to tempo forwards and backwards in without end.

A number of weeks in the past, whereas daydreaming about making swimming pool sculptures out of clay as a result of blue glazes resemble water after being fired, I hit the highest of my head on the sting of the pool so onerous that the lifeguard heard it. “Let me know if you start feeling dizzy,” she walked over and mentioned as I stood within the water rubbing my head.

Edie Everette is an artist and author residing in Snohomish County.