To the Summer 2025 people:
Jane and I swam at Mitchell during the final hour of Summer. The warm sunlight was like a gentle reminder of hectic mornings dripping in humid sweat, long hours wrangling procedures on reluctant folk, and clouds and people that floated through the gates like background specters. Last night the water was salty and pungent with sun-tan lotion, but warm and relaxing like a soft water bathtub. The air was so cold and chilly that exiting was like admitting that Summer was truly over and it would be nine months, if ever, before we’d return.
My favorite part of the evening was watching Jane laugh with delight while swimming. She developed a love for the pools and has a naive comfort in the water that I’m certain came from the hours she spent in lessons with instructors that fostered that happiness and excitement.
The second favorite part of my time at the pool as a “patron” was seeing the lifeguards doing their jobs with practiced ease, with confidence, without apparent burden or frustration; all of our chairs were up with a full staff and typical 40 up 20 down rotations. They smiled at songs on the radio while scanning. They rotated with verbal and non-verbal confirmations. They didn’t correct kids doing belly flops (which are like diving), they whistled without context at people who looked at them with confused glances checking to see if they were being scolded. I felt pride. A little for me, but mostly at their expression of competence and deficiency (area of improvement).
I’m proud of you all. I’m proud of the way you grew into the pool jobs this summer. We aligned as a team in a way that hasn’t happened before for me. For that I’m extremely grateful, but also proud. Very proud.
I think nothing expressed that competence and effort we’ve been attempting to foster when the pool closed and Jane and I lingered in concessions like VIPs while patrons milled about the deck and shuffled through the gates. (I told Katelyn she could take someone in chair 5 down and she responded, “But you’re a patron.” I laughed; well done). The staff burst into activity; not just action but coordinated cohesive action to tear down the umbrellas, to winterize and prepare for the off-season; something we haven’t practiced or done before since last year. Everyone was moving and doing and so Jane and I quietly left to give staff the opportunity to do without impediment or distraction.
Today I’m sitting in the cleanest the pool office has been since the day before we opened looking at the bubbling water from the vents and pumps listening to a personal playlist. I’m thinking again about how the ghosts of your feet and movements are like howling echos of the Summer’s flurry. We burn like high-July sunshine. We clash like billiard balls after a break, and in those collisions between structure, scaffolding, and expectations we find a balance of personality and rigid accountability. I like to say I attempt to provide clear boundaries but allow for great leeway within those boundaries. I believe what makes Summer at pools so special are those millions of moments within the walls of job tasks, safety, and “meeting the public where they are.” Your personalities and vibrance are the soul of Deerspring and Mitchell. They are the driving engine that produces an energy you can feel in the air when you walk in, can smell under the sun-tan lotion and sweat, and can see in the way people clutch the concessions key, or readjust a guard tube, or open the office door for a deck walk.
Now, that energy is a memory. It’s a feeling that lingers under my skin and in my core. So begins the long slog through Winter and Spring before we burst again in glittering effort and happy reunions.
This isn’t to say that I’m already sad. Fall and Autumn brings with it a heady happiness filled with my favorite things: pumpkins and long cool nights with a hint of Summer’s lingering breath heating bones under flannel and jeans, the smell of cut grass and dead leaves, the sound of dead leaves as they blow across asphalt, the sound of high school drums during weekend games, the long remembered but still felt deeply feeling of “returning to school” and mix of fear and hope it always brought, and the slow slide into Winter as we flow through Thanksgiving and into long nights and cold days.
And all is not over; now I move into School Year season where there are fewer of you, but there is more opportunity for iteration, planning, trying new things, and refining excellence. Working lessons during the school year is exciting and challenging, but rewarding with the extra $3 / hour pay. How I fought for that! My gosh if you could only remember the $7.75 pay in 2018!! And this year we start at $20.
With this I’ll say adieu, goodbye, and bon voyage. May your days be filled with the dreams you wish and the actions to get them. Till next year!