SERENADE

Two years ago on May 1st, I wrote the following blog:

Yesterday was my birthday.

At noon, I decided to treat the day like any other Monday and go swimming at the Plunge, where my mom used to swim as a child. One day several years ago I drove all the way to Point Richmond, a tiny town built on a steep hill, to see the pool while it was being renovated.

The building had stood empty for years, according to a gal I met there recently. When her friend, actor Robin Williams, asked why it wasn’t in use and found out the city didn’t have the funds to renovate it, he made a considerable contribution.

The Plunge still has a huge neon sign on the roof that lights up at night—Municipal Natatorium—and stands between two old tunnels: one for the trains that still wind—quaintly—right through the middle of town. The other for cars headed to Miller-Knox Park that has a little lake with an island in the middle of it—and is a hangout for Canadian geese, egrets, and a great blue heron.

As you can see in the photo, the entire the far wall of the pool is a mural of the park, great blue heron and all, painted by the husband of an acquaintance of mine from the pool—Susie. She’s a retired art teacher and liberated redhead, who wears all the colors we carrot tops aren’t suppose to, like magenta and purple.

On the first Wednesday of the New Year, when I went there to swim, two black gals were hanging out, chatting, in the water-walking lane. Though they were strangers, one of them asked cheerfully how I was, as I descended the ladder. Impulsively—I’m trying to be more visible, as I’ve said—I told her the truth. “My mom just died.” Immediately their faces filled with concern. “Come into the water,” said Z’ma, whose name I didn’t know at the time. “This is your mother—it’s her womb.” And she stretched out her arms to me. Gratefully, I hugged them both. As I wrote in my journal:

I can’t say how comforted I was by their warmth. But it was only later that I made the following connection: When my family moved to New Haven for a year so my dad could get his Ph.D. at Yale, my parents put me in an all-day preschool run by three black teachers. I came to love Ms. Green and felt she loved me too; even after we moved back to Minnesota, she wrote me a few times.

Though I don’t remember much about my kindergarten year back in St. Paul, I do remember the emptiness I used to feel going up the stairs at bedtime in the big old two-story house on Dudley Street that we rented for a couple of years. It was loneliness, maybe even depression, I’ve come to believe, and I’ve always thought it was because I was missing Miss Green.

Now it strikes me that I’ve come full-circle, as I have at so many other times in my life. When I missed my parents—the days felt so long at the preschool at first—there was Miss Green to welcome me into her arms. And now that I’ve lost my mom, there were these two black strangers at the pool, doing the same thing.

Yesterday Z’ma was just coming out of the shower after swimming while I was changing into my suit. We gave each other a hug, and when she asked how I was, I said, “It’s my birthday!” The next thing I knew, she had all the other women in the changing room—most of them strangers—singing Happy Birthday to me.