Month: August 2021

Posted on

More Pool Stories

*******

I am the volunteer pool monitor. My community pays two teenagers to be actual pool monitors, one girl and one boy. They spend their time sitting by the sign-in book, watching movies or texting friends on their phones. They are not life guards. One of them doesn’t even know how to swim. But they are tall, athletic and gorgeous. We pay them to be a visible at the pool. Optics are everything. Next to my job, it’s the easiest job they will ever have.

Most people who have a key to our pool are lovely, responsible people. Every so often, however, we get a group that is challenging.

One Sunday afternoon, P.M.#1 texted me because he was concerned that a group of rowdy young adults were at the pool. P.M. #2 would be there soon, and he wanted an adult back-up because he was going off-duty.

When I got to the pool, I met the group in question. One, very tall woman with bright orange hair was the spokesperson. She was there with her baby, who appeared to be about three months old. 

The baby’s daddy was there, too, circling the deck on a hover-board. There were eight others in their group ~ a mix of adults and children. The adults had lots of tattoos, but no one was wearing an ankle monitor. I took that as a good sign. I told Hover-Board Guy he needed to take his toys outside. He agreed. 

The group became louder and louder, with children acting like adults, and adults acting like children. It became apparent that none of them lived in our community, but I decided to let them stay. They were basically compliant. They were already inside and I didn’t want trouble. 

I texted P.M. #1, who was home by this time, and asked him if he knew these people. He said that, in fact, he did. He said they used to rent a condo in our community and obviously kept their pool key when they left. He had the phone number of the orange hair lady, and was willing to text her if I felt that I needed him to back me up. 

At that point, I looked up and saw that the woman with orange hair wanted to change out of her bikini top into a dry t-shirt. Instead of going into the bathroom, she changed clothes right where she was, in the middle of the pool deck ~ flashing her perky sisters at anyone lucky enough to be watching.

I assumed the group was getting ready to leave and I heard them tell the children, who were whining and crying by this time, “Don’t worry, we’ll be back tomorrow.” That’s when I hit the panic button. I texted P.M. #1 and told him that the group was planning to come back the next day. 

“Do you want to deal with these people, or should I?” I wanted to know.

“I’ll take care of them.”

And he did. I don’t know what he said, but they left, glaring at me. They haven’t been back.

Another challenging group came to the pool this week. I was home eating dinner. There were no pool monitors on duty, because P.M. #1 was at football practice and P.M. #2 had already left for college.. I got a call from a man from Russia, whose name is Rafael. We call him The Mad Russian, because he is always angry about something or other. I don’t know how he got my phone number. I knew it was him as soon as I answered the phone.

“Come. Come to pool right now. You have to come. Teenagers in pool. Drinking beer and smoking cigarettes in pool.” He was shouting into the phone.

“Are they actually drinking beer and smoking cigarettes in the pool? Or are they at the tables outside the pool?” I was trying to project calmness.

“Come. You come right now. Smoking cigarettes and drinking beer in pool,” he shouted. 

“Ok. Let me put my shoes on.”

But the time I got the pool, everything was quiet. Rafael’s daughter and granddaughter were in the pool, but he was gone. There was no sign of anyone smoking or drinking in the pool.

“Is everything ok?” I asked.

“Yes. When the kids heard my grandpa yelling into the phone, they ran away. They got in their cars and left.” 

The kids might have thought Rafael was calling the police. I doubt that they realized he was calling me ~ a seventy-eight year old grandmother with white hair who doesn’t walk very fast. I sat  by the pool until it was time to close up. They, too, didn’t return.

The pool closes on Labor Day. I will miss it. It’s added a lot of pleasant evenings, and just enough drama to my life to keep it interesting.

I will miss them all!

 

Posted on

The Volunteer Pool Monitor

I love my job! As a volunteer pool monitor, it is my responsibility to open the pool gate in my community at 7:00 each morning. 

I walk from my home to the pool in almost total silence. It’s a meditation. The only sound is the squawking of a few crows that live high in the trees.

Two cats, one black and white, and one all black, walk separate trails. They are “neighborhood cats” not unlike the “neighborhood dogs” in Mexico. They belong to no one and yet belong to everyone. The cats look well fed. The squirrels and rabbits eye them with suspicion. 

We have almost no birds any more, in my community. That is a recent development. I don’t know where they’ve gone. I hope the cats didn’t eat them.

As I reach the big iron gate, I take a deep breath and realize how beautiful the pool is. The water is calm at this hour of the morning. Six big pots of flowers surround the L-shaped pool. Geraniums and sweet potato vines overflow their pots and beg for water. 

Again I remember my home in Mazatlan, where the fountain was often the only sound I heard, early in the morning, as I sat outside drinking a cup of coffee before the buses roared by outside. There were bright red hibiscus, instead of geraniums, but the effect was the same. I was glad to be alive.

Not every morning, has been peaceful, of course. One morning I was startled as I reached the pool, to see four very drunk young adults swimming in the pool before I was able to unlock the gate.

“Who are you? And how did you get in” I wanted to know.

“I’m Jeremy. This is my friend, Josh. He’s leaving today for the army. We thought we’d come for a swim before he has to leave,” said the lesser drunk. Two girls with long, stringy, blond hair scooted to the side of the pool.

“How did you get in?”

“We put our hand through the bars and unlocked the gate,” Jeremy lied. I realized I was never going to get a straight answer. I also realized that if people are determined to get in the pool after hours, they will find a way.

By this time, both young men were out of the pool, wanting to shake my hand and let me know that they were, in fact, very good boys. They were sorry. They didn’t want to cause any trouble. I told them to go home, and they did. 

As part of my responsibility, I water the plants twice a day. I water by hand, because I believe the plants like it that way. I fertilize them every couple of weeks. I talk to them in the morning and tell them to be good boys, and not cause any trouble. I come back at supper time and water them again.

Two weeks ago, I decided to stay at the pool for a little while after watering the flowers for the second time that day. It was a quiet, peaceful scene. An elderly couple was noodling and bobbing their way around the deep end, when a group of very loud, young Afghan-American girls arrived. Because they are Muslim, they are allowed to swim in their shorts and t-shirts, rather than in bathing suits they consider to be immodest. 

They have come to the pool before with their mother, a lovely, quiet woman full of gratitude, who eagerly told me she doesn’t know what to do with her daughters or their friends. They scream and yell. They don’t listen to her. This particular night the girls came with their grandmother, an aunt, and a much younger sister (age 6) who was the only one entrusted with the key.

The girls jumped in the water, laughing and screaming as usual. They were chasing and spraying each other with “water blasters” ~ high powered squirt guns. A couple of them sprayed my feet as I walked along the pool, watering geraniums. I ignored them.

The elderly couple called me over and remarked that they were going to leave if the girls didn’t stop screaming. That was my cue. I talked to the grandmother and the aunt. I told them I was going to ask the girls to stop screaming. They nodded their heads in agreement.

I approached the girls, who were having a great time. When I leaned over, to give the girls my message ~ “stop screaming or come out of the pool” ~ one of them hit me with the water blaster.  She soaked me, head the toe. My hair and my t-shirt were dripping wet. The girls stopped screaming when they realized what happened. Grandma started to cry. The aunt apologized.

“Get out of the pool!” I thundered. I was no longer the nice Grandma Lynda. I was the person who used to work in a high school. I was not a volunteer pool monitor. I was a campus security guard. 

I ordered the girls to sit at one of the tables, while I told them, “If you ever come back to this pool, you will not scream. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” they answered, meekly.

“Do you see anyone else screaming at this pool?” I pointed at the elderly couple bobbing in the deep end, who were obviously not screaming.

“Do you see anyone else hitting the volunteer pool monitor with a water blaster?”

“No.” they agreed. 

“Then you don’t do those things, either.”

“Ok”

And next time leave your water blasters at home”

The girls have not been back. They’ve been replaced by Japanese Beetles, attacking the geraniums and the sweet potato vines. Alas, Japanese Beetles are more of a nuisance than screaming middle school girls, and harder to get rid of.

Posted on

An Orphanage Volunteer

I wanted to feel useful. To volunteer my time for a worthy cause. To have something meaningful to do one afternoon a week, while I lived in Mazatlán. A friend was volunteering at the local orphanage and I asked her if I could tag along. She said, “Ok. But it’s harder than you think it’s going to be.” She was right. 

I still remember the names of some of the children at the orphanage. The babies were Diego and Daniella. Two of the older girls were Mariam and Lupita. There was one darling little boy who was angry and hateful. He captured my heart but I don’t remember his name. For this blog, I’ll call him Diablito. 

The woman who ran the orphanage was a beautiful, kind Mexican woman. She operated on a small budget and very little training. The children slept in dormitories, girls in one room and boys in another. Each child had his or her own bed and an orange crate on which to display pictures and shiny objects. Some children had pictures of the parents who had abandoned them, hoping that some day they would return to celebrate their birthday and take them home.

There were other volunteers. Church groups donated clothes and toys at Christmas. A Rotary Club donated money to put a tall swing in the dirt yard “playground.” But no one donated enough love to heal the children’s hearts.

The babies were fat and darling. They would be adopted before the year was out, by American families willing to pay a crooked attorney a lot of money in order to take them home. 

The older children seemed sad. They knew they would not be adopted. They went to school but didn’t have much energy for learning. My friend was a yoga teacher who led the girls in a yoga class every week. The girls loved her. They would have gladly stood on their heads for hours, just to see her smile. 

I participated in the yoga class and other activities that the yoga teacher arranged. Otherwise, I was pretty useless. I often positioned myself in the playroom and helped Diablito build tall block towers. One day, when he left the room to use the bathroom, the girls walked over to our tower and kicked it to pieces. Diablito came back to the room, screamed and burst into tears. I wanted to do the same.

I tried to hug Diablito. He tried to bite me. When I told the director what happened, she shrugged her shoulders and said it happened every time Diablito built towers. She suggested that if Diablito would stop building towers, the girls would stop kicking them over. I walked out the door, caught the bus, and went home. 

I volunteered at the orphanage for six months, from November until May. The next year I volunteered at the library. Other American women volunteered at the orphanage and were more creative and successful than I was.

One day I ran into the Orphanage Director at the bank. She had happy news. Diablito found a home with a family who wanted him. Diego and Daniella had been adopted, too. But the girls, Mariam and Lupita and the tower-kicking girls, were still waiting. 

Posted on

Feliz Cumpleaños, Mamacita!

Neto’s Mamacita, Zelmira Flores Aguilar, turned 94 last week. It’s a very long time for a woman to live in Mexico. Last year, when she turned 93, no one expected her to live another year. It’s not that Zelmira is sick or in pain. She is simply very old.

Zelmira lives in her house on Papagayo Street with Neto, his daughter, Vannya, and Vannya’s children, Danya and Emanuel. Neto isn’t sure how old the children are. He thinks that Danya is four and Emanuel is two. But he thought the same thing last year. I’m sure Vannya knows, but age just isn’t something that Neto thinks about unless he has to. 

Zelmira has had a long and interesting life. She raised seven children and provided for them by turning her living room into a neighborhood grocery store and breakfast cafe. Later, she followed Neto to California, worked as a housekeeper for a Cuban family in Echo Park, and ran an illegal business on the side, transporting clothes from California to Mazatlán.

Zelmira is no longer the terror she was when she threw Neto’s surfboard in the trash when he was fourteen. She’s no longer the young woman who made trips to the Vatican to see the Pope and to Portugal, to see the famous shrine to the Virgin of Fatima. Or the woman who went to Mexico City for the blessing of the Basilica. Or the woman who cried when JFK was assassinated. 

Zelmira is no longer the feisty woman I knew when I moved to Mazatlán. Back then, Zelmira would come by city bus, uninvited, to my house nearly every day. She rang the doorbell promptly at 7:45 and announce she had come to sweep my courtyard, even though I told her over and over, that I didn’t want her to sweep my courtyard. In fact, I paid someone else to sweep the courtyard. In fact, I was just waking up. I was happy to have Zelmira come in for a cup of coffee and a piece of bread, but only if she put down the broom. Sometimes that worked. Usually it didn’t. Zelmira was a woman who was always the boss.

Now, Zelmira is no longer in charge. Her husband died in 1993. Two sons and one grandson have died. All of her brothers are gone, except Uncle Mon, and almost all of her friends have died. At this point, Zelmira doesn’t know who is alive and who is not. She often mistakes Neto for her husband and wonders where her friends are. 

Neto’s father was right when he told Zelmira long ago, “Don’t hassle Neto. He’s the one who will take care of you when you are old.” Zelmira is not able to get out of bed and Neto and Vannya provide around the clock nursing care, including changing her diapers, washing her and getting her dressed every day.

As an old woman, Zelmira’s world is closing in around her. Her son, Franco, is not allowed inside the house, because he sold his mother’s cemetery plot to buy cocaine. Her daughter, Rosa, was recently asked to leave town after repeatedly screaming at Neto and Zelmira and then faking a seizure. 

Always a tiny woman, Zelmira is physically shrinking away, according to Neto. She weighs less than seventy pounds and sleeps most of the time. Once in a while Neto puts her in a wheelchair and takes her for a walk around the block. Sometimes he takes her to church, where the neighbors are delighted to see that she is still alive.

Zelmira likes the taste of food but her diet is extremely limited because she has no teeth. She lost her false teeth five years ago, when she visited Rosa. No one knew what happened to the teeth and there was no money available to replace them. Now Zelmira eats tiny amounts of watermelon and feeds herself watery oatmeal with slivers of bananas every morning. Neto makes her chicken broth with fideos (tiny noddles), but he has to be careful she doesn’t pour the broth on herself when she tries to lift the bowl to slurp the last few drops. 

Last week Neto bought his mother a small cake from Panama Bakery. Zelmira forgot it was her birthday.

“Who is this cake for?” she asked. 

Her eyes lit up when Neto said, “It is for you, Mamacita. Feliz Cumpleaños!”