The Raging Elitist

Cartter says he doesn’t want summer swim team to be over. I appreciate the sentiment. Running free with favorite teammates on deck amid the prolonged twilight, backstroke flags at either end of the pool flaunting the neighborhood’s colors – greens and yellows, bold reds and blues – bursts of cheers following each blare of the starter’s horn, the smell of burgers on the grill – few things capture the thrill and spirit of summer break’s outset like dual meet season. Once it’s over, summer enters into its decline: the return to school looms ever more ominously; the dog days wear on with punishing heat and humidity; and once thrilling harbingers of the season’s beginning grow stale. The shocking chill of jumping into the deep end is replaced with a greasy bathtub warmth; the jellyfish wash into shore and give pause to would-be ocean swimmers; and half-empty ballparks are haunted by the memories of buzzing concourses and roaring crowds. I used to think that when I could wear short sleeves at night without getting goosebumps, the best time of year had arrived; now, I’m saddened by how short-lived the year’s longest days are.

We haven’t even unpacked the art portfolios the kids brought home during their last week of school, and already we’re down to the last dual meet of the season. After last week’s meet, I sat in a chair under the timer’s tent and had a celebratory beer while the kids swam in the glow of the underwater lights – a night swim at the neighborhood pool after closing hours. I hollered at my friend Dave as he made his way toward the exit, trying to get a laugh out of him; these days I’m forever trying to convince him not to let this be his last summer with the team. He has a nine and an eleven-year-old, and as one of the moms on the team put it: “His kids are aging out.”

With Cartter and Scotty at eight and seven-years-old respectively, I’m aware of a feeling like the first comfortable night in short sleeves. Just as we’ve made it to the good part, the good part is almost over. I meant to take them to the beach to do an “open water practice” with them on Thursday last week, but when I woke up, they’d already packed for the pool. I looked out the window, and there they were at the edge of the driveway on their bikes, helmets on their heads, crocs on their feet, and swim bags on their backs. “Let them go,” I said to Danyelle.

We drove out to the Sullivan’s Island the next day. It was the first time this year I saw the American flags flying from the utility poles on the road out to the beach. Before the Fourth of July, while the season is still crescendoing toward its annual climax, there’s a hopeful excitement to their waving; after the Fourth, they’re tinged with the depressing reminder that the beginning of summer is over.

The boys and I had our “open water” practice in the tide pool. Cartter struggled with a drill that alternates three freestyle and four backstroke strokes, repeatedly rotating in the wrong direction when making the change. At one point when he was on his back, I saw clearly the remnants of his baby face and remembered teaching him backstroke at the neighborhood pool when he was a five-year-old summer leaguer. Once he figured out the backstroke drill, we worked butterfly. The boys started each set with run dives off the bar’s steep ledge. Cartter took as many as twelve strokes at a time, and when he stopped around twenty-five yards out, he was the bronzed blond vertex of an inverted V that rippled across the surface away from his body. Scotty went behind him and at one point ripped off five consecutive strong strokes. These lithe, muscled bodies I beheld were clearly budding young athletes, not the babies who played in the sand just a couple years ago.

Two days later we headed out for Sullivan’s again, this time on Father’s Day. I queued up an Amazon playlist, and as we made the drive across the causeway that spans the marsh and the Intracoastal, Miles Davis’s All Blues came on over the car stereo. Its opening, with its trilling piano and lilting horn loop was the sound that first brought me to jazz music. I had randomly selected Kind of Blue from a CD store as a birthday gift for my sister, probably because the cover looked cool; then I kept it for myself. I listened to it over and over the summer I turned eighteen, the final summer I spent living at the house on Sullivan’s with my dad. I smoked mind-numbing amounts of marijuana, blasted the sweet melancholy music in my room, and secretly wished I wasn’t moving away from home. I copied the CD onto a cassette tape for Dad so he could listen to it in his Pontiac Bonneville and was very pleased when he was nearly as enthralled by the album as I was. Any time I hear a track from Kind of Blue, I remember perfectly the feeling of being a sad 18-year-old at the end of his childhood wanting to squeeze every last drop out of his last summer at home. And I think of my dad, Cartter’s namesake.

After Danyelle and I took the kids to the beach on Father’s Day, we sat in the living room with Dad, his wife George, and my sister Betsey. Dad was in boxer shorts so that he could apply e-stim pads to his legs, which are withered from neuropathy, and a thin layer of dead skin around his toes shone in the lamplight as if he’d rubbed Vaseline on the tops of his feet. He told us that he’d recently gotten a call from a scammer claiming that Betsey was going to be jailed for failing to appear for jury duty. It seemed to Dad, who has no cell phone and no caller ID, a plausible story, so he stayed on the line for several minutes. Then, when the “sergeant” started asking for payment, he finally caught the whiff of fraud and said that he was going to have to call the county police department to look into the matter. “Well,” said the scammer, “I think they’re gonna tell you you’re an old ass bitch.”

Dad was so surprised as to be confused, and he asked his assailant, “Excuse me?”

“I said,” came the answer, “I think they’re gonna tell you you’re an OLD ASS BITCH!” And the fake sergeant hung up.

Dad relished telling the story to us, and we all laughed. He and George drained two bottles of champagne, and he brought up the subject of his death, as he is wont to do. On the ride home, as the minivan spilled out onto the other side of the causeway, I told the boys I loved them, and Scotty wanted to know why. “Because you make my life so much better,” I told him. “You give it a sense of meaning and purpose.” He and his brother sat quietly for a minute and let that sink in. When we pulled into the driveway, I realized that I forgot to push play on my phone where All Blues was paused in the middle of the track. Immediately, I wanted to go back to the island and do the drive over, this time serenaded by the perfect midsummer song, a sleepy waltz that you just don’t want to end.