The Fountain of Youth

I am tired and slightly annoyed as I fumble through various keys on a key chain looking for the one marked, boiler room. As I open the door, I can hear the mechanical hissing of pipes, the constant heating and filtration of the pool located beyond this room never seems to stop. I climb a small set of stairs, stretching each limb on my assent and open the door to a small hallway that has only a glass door located only 10 feet away. I wearily approach the glass door knowing what lies behind it.  As I push the glass door open, I must apply my own body as leverage to break the air pressure that keeps the door sealed. The door swings open and a gust of hot humid air rushes in to the tiny cooled hallway where I am standing. I walk into the pool area and feel the inconvenient truth of a severe climate change. I can smell the chemical lingering of chlorine in the air which is humid and seems heavy enough to weigh me down as I walk into the small glass box known fondly to lifeguards as, the office. I punch in my employee code in the computer and it reports back to me,” Jeremy Brozek #204098 Logged In: 5:00 am".
I walk back out onto the pool deck and stop to take a look at the pool. It looks the same as it did last week, 25 yards long with six lanes. Ropes divide half of the lanes with small floating buoys strung across them, like necklaces with red and blue beads. The other half of the pool has no lane ropes and consequently is just an open area. The water is clear and blue reacting with itself as the slightest movement causes the whole surface to dance. The pool ranges in depth from 3 feet at one end to 10 feet at the other. There are diving blocks located at the end of each lane in the deep end where I am currently standing. A grainy deck surrounds the pool and provides stability under foot. I walk down the deck to a plastic cupboard and retrieve a small graduated beaker and three bottles of colored chemicals. I then take my supplies back to the deep end and begin to check the chemicals. As I fill the beaker, I can feel the hot flow of water rushing around my hand and into the void of the beaker. The water itself reminds is like a natural hot spring as it warms my hand sending a euphoric sensation through my arm like waking up from a long rest. I test the water-filled beaker with the colored chemicals, which seem to dance their way through the beaker resting at the bottom. All the chemical levels are right and I now can open the pool to others. I put the chemicals away, walk back into the office and grab the keychain from before and head towards two new glass doors, one labeled "Men's Locker Room" and the other "Women's Locker Room". As I unlock the doors, I find myself feeling rather chipper and alert. I don't know how this happened but I am know longer weary or tired and my grogginess seems to have been washed away. The doors are unlocked and the pool is open. Now I sit down in a high elevated white chair with a red foam tube in my lap, I am ready to start observing and watching others as a lifeguard.
The first person to come in to swim is an old woman named Shirley. Shirley is 93 years old and looks like a very fragile piece of art. Her body seems to tell the stories of her life like an ancient tapestry. She walks slowly and with a slight limp in her right leg. She concentrates on her feet as she traverses the pool deck, looking up only to smile at me as I wish her a good morning. She reaches the steps that lead into the shallow end and gripping the handrail tightly, lowers herself into the pool. She wades slowly through the water and then pushes off the wall and begins to swim. At first I am worried that she will venture to deep and be unable to stay afloat but then I am quickly astounded at her grace. This small feeble woman has changed right before my eyes from an ancient tapestry to a flowing piece of silk. She glides through the water with ease changing from freestyle to backstroke as she pleases. Her body seems to have no age at this moment only the water and her movements define her. Shirley's return to youth is short-lived and she begins to wade back towards the steps after only a few laps. Her body begins to return to an outline of age as she climbs out of the water. She slowly walks back towards the the women's locker room stopping for a moment by my chair and saying, ” Well, I guess 3 laps is good enough for today. Have a nice day, Jeremy". There are deep red lines that have been left behind by her goggles, but despite these red impressions there is still some youthfulness in her eyes as if everything has aged on her body but her eyes. Why does this 93 year old woman still come swim laps?
The rest of the morning went by very normally with lap swimmers coming and going. There was a water aerobics class at 5:45 and the women in the class all reminded me of Shirley in a way. All the women were old but none as old as 93. They came in slowly and lifeless making their way towards the steps but when they entered the water a familiar changed occurred. Suddenly these old women with hairnets and float-belts became ageless. They seemed like children as they splashed around the shallows exercising and gossiping with their neighbors. They moved effortlessly through the water and their exercise movements appeared more like a modern dance routine. The class went on for an hour and then the women climbed out of the water putting on towels as their bodies put on age and form. Why did these women change when they entered the water?
Shirley and the rest of the swimmers came to the pool to reclaim their youth. The obvious assumption that all of the swimmers came for health and fitness reasons could be made but I think they came for more. We are taught to swim at an early age or we teach ourselves after we almost drown but either way this is a skill that is strongly associated with childhood. I believe that the older swimmers come to the pool with the subconscious motive of reclaiming their childhood. When they enter the water it is like they can dive into themselves and submerse into their own depths where they find their youth. Society tells us that our “prime” is when we are young so it seems natural that everyone who is out-dated would want to relive those golden years. But I think that these swimmers come and defy societies definition of “those golden years”. The swimmers that I saw all were living in their prime or more appropriately swimming in their prime. They came to the pool and became kids again. The water doesn’t define age it defies it. The swimmers understand the way the waters flow and that is why every morning they come and return to “the fountain of youth”.