Blue Vinyl Sea.....

It was $218.00 three summers ago. Chey and I lugged it, rolled it over end to end, pushed it, shoved it. We lifted it onto the truckbed by the grace of strangers and once back at the little pink house, we started the ritual in reverse....lug, roll, push, shove. The vinyl dream was home.

As we grow old, we recant our childhoods in memories....time stamped by little houses and crooked sidewalks, by schools and the color of bicycles. In my new life, the rubber date stamp is a blow~up pool.... The first to arrive was just eight feet wide and a foot and a half deep. My grandbabies and I spent 7 days and 7 nights camped on the deck, rolling in the mammoth make believe waves.....dripping grape popsicles down our chins....and sun~ining our hair. We made boats from bars of Ivory soap and bathed in the pool, shampooed in the pool, and then ran in circles splashing.....kicking up foamy waves. They learned to hold their breath and let go of their noses. To float belly up without their bottoms sinking. Stone went home a week later, a "surfer dude" and Kyle, a bikini clad blonde bombshell. They had snorkel mask tans and swimmer's ear. We had the summer of love......



I finished off the last of the lazy months plopped up on the blow up ring, water dancing belly button high, reading favorite books with crumpled pages, dreaming......



And the next summer, Chey and I hauled home the Mother of all blow~up pools.



The lazy river.
The blue lagoon.
The vinyl sea.



Two summers kissed by dreams come true.....


Sleeping toe to toe....
Treasure diving.....
"Party in the middle of the pool!"....
Candlelight waves....
"Just how many people can fit in a blow up pool?"
Juicey bottle water wars.....
The marathon float.....Daytona 500 and two coolers of beer....
The courtship of the neighbors.....
Bottled margaritas.....
A real live pool boy....
Accidental Love.....
Hippie hammocks......
A bouquet of tiki torches....
A broken foot
and
Rollin' Stones on the stereo......



There was always gonna be another. From the moment, the blue lady sighed, curtsied to the sky and took her last breath, spilling 3800 gallons of blessed water cascading, there's was always gonna be another. I said it. Meant it. Believed.

But there wasn't. $218.00 grew. And this year, it would be a million dollar dream. The dusty space between my back door and Little House became the laundrey field..... tattered white clothesline swinging over last summer's shoreline. Towels and T-shirts, sails from shipwrecked stories of another time.

And then, the butterfly effect....

A giant blue box on my porch.

Tonight, she's three inches deep and rising. The grandlady of all blow up pools. And suddenly, I'm a millionaire.

"Let's hear it for the boys...."

Coloring the sky

I pushed the magic button, automatic ignition, and Cla-Plump! Bang! it shifted gears, lurched, and died. Like the lady stranded in the Winn Dixie parking lot, ice cream melting, beer getting warm, I tried it over and over and over again. Then I kicked it. Once for good luck. Swung my good booted foot around and kicked it twice for "try that"! Sometimes, it just takes a good wallop to get everything back in order.

Nothing.

She just sat there, too old, too cold, too dead to even groan. I felt bad for being a bully, and apologized. It was too late. On Wednesday, the neighbor and I will haul her, one heavy inch at a time to the curb. If she's lucky, a body snatcher will come in the night, and whisk her cumbersome remains off to be reincarnated into something grander....otherwise, she'll be laid to rest at the top of a mile high mountain of likened souls, teetering at the top, until she's buried under the next week's refuge.


Good-bye, sweet little dryer. Hello blue skies!