Kiddie Pool
Blue and I are not proud of the sheer yardage of petroleum products we accumulated when Carly and Eliot were little, but the truth is the toddler stage of parenting can easily involve a lot of of plastic.
It started with the kiddy pool we bought when Carly was two. I went for the sturdy model with the built-in slide, not considering when I rolled it up to the cash register that durability might not be compatible with pack-ability. Ten minutes later in the Kiddie World parking lot, I was opening windows and folding down the seats in the Explorer in an effort to wedge in the pool. In the end we left the pool at Kiddie World, drove home, and called Blue, who picked it up in a George H. Wilson truck. Not just any truck, but the one with the huge bed for carrying ducts and equipment. There were miles of space around the kiddie pool in the bed of that truck.
To Carly it was a serious pool, too humongous to fit in an SUV. It would be years before it looked to her the way it had to me the day Blue brought it home, dwarfed in the bed of the George H. Wilson truck.
About that time Blue’s mom bought us a play structure at Costco, another monolith of plastic that entertained the kids for hours at a time in the backyard. In the summer we moved the play structure so that on hot days Carly and Eliot could careen down its grander slide into the kiddy pool.
By the time Eliot was ten he was longer than the diameter of the pool. I filled it up one hot day, but he spent hours playing under the redwood tree instead. Probably if he had slid down the slide, his feet would have jammed up against the other end of the pool. And Carly? She was inside checking out a friend's MySpace.
The following weekend Blue and I got the pool and play structure ready for our nephew Chase, who within a year would be climbing and sliding. We brushed off the spider webs and scrubbed the dirt that had splashed up on the sides through a winter of rain. We scoured and sweated, opting not to dismantle the structure to fit it through our back gate. Instead, we lifted it over our neighbor's fence and carried it down her driveway to the truck.
We were tying down the plastic in the back of the truck when Eliot came out on the front porch in tears. He wanted his pool! We were taking his slide. He wanted them back! He let me hold him for about five seconds before he broke away.
I knew why he was crying. It was not that he had plans to use the pool or play structure anymore. It was that he knew as well as anyone: he was watching a chunk of his childhood slip away in the back of a George H. Wilson truck.
It started with the kiddy pool we bought when Carly was two. I went for the sturdy model with the built-in slide, not considering when I rolled it up to the cash register that durability might not be compatible with pack-ability. Ten minutes later in the Kiddie World parking lot, I was opening windows and folding down the seats in the Explorer in an effort to wedge in the pool. In the end we left the pool at Kiddie World, drove home, and called Blue, who picked it up in a George H. Wilson truck. Not just any truck, but the one with the huge bed for carrying ducts and equipment. There were miles of space around the kiddie pool in the bed of that truck.
To Carly it was a serious pool, too humongous to fit in an SUV. It would be years before it looked to her the way it had to me the day Blue brought it home, dwarfed in the bed of the George H. Wilson truck.
About that time Blue’s mom bought us a play structure at Costco, another monolith of plastic that entertained the kids for hours at a time in the backyard. In the summer we moved the play structure so that on hot days Carly and Eliot could careen down its grander slide into the kiddy pool.
By the time Eliot was ten he was longer than the diameter of the pool. I filled it up one hot day, but he spent hours playing under the redwood tree instead. Probably if he had slid down the slide, his feet would have jammed up against the other end of the pool. And Carly? She was inside checking out a friend's MySpace.
The following weekend Blue and I got the pool and play structure ready for our nephew Chase, who within a year would be climbing and sliding. We brushed off the spider webs and scrubbed the dirt that had splashed up on the sides through a winter of rain. We scoured and sweated, opting not to dismantle the structure to fit it through our back gate. Instead, we lifted it over our neighbor's fence and carried it down her driveway to the truck.
We were tying down the plastic in the back of the truck when Eliot came out on the front porch in tears. He wanted his pool! We were taking his slide. He wanted them back! He let me hold him for about five seconds before he broke away.
I knew why he was crying. It was not that he had plans to use the pool or play structure anymore. It was that he knew as well as anyone: he was watching a chunk of his childhood slip away in the back of a George H. Wilson truck.
posted by Victoria Tatum at 2:27 PM
2 Comments:
barbara tatum wrote:
"i love the new story about the wading pool. love mom"
Thanks for another great story about family, kids, growing up and letting go (or not).
This one took me right back to my experiences as a kid; the joy, melancholy and bittersweet memories all came flooding back.
Keep the stories coming; your audience is insatiable!
And thanks for the mention in your e-mail.;)
-Nana
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