Pool Party

After nine long months of waking up at 5:55 to get everyone dressed and out the door for school by seven, and passing out on the couch by nine, the last day had finally arrived. I made the last lunch, handed out the last backpack, and waited the last time for that teeny, tiny break in traffic where I could zoom into the busy street of other parents heading for school. I was looking forward to sleeping a bit later, taking life a bit slower, and having a less regimented schedule. And it all would begin today.

Well, it would almost begin today. It would begin right after my daughter had her End Of The Year Pizza and Swimming Blow Out. After 15 screaming girls piled into my car and then into my yard for some serious fun, then the slow lazy days of summer would hopefully begin.
My husband left that afternoon, as he had been told by my daughter that morning, to cart home many young ladies that were ready to swim. I stayed behind to start baking pizzas that I had been told were on the menu for the afternoon. The pool had been cleaned, the grass mowed, and the picnic table polished for the big day.

I was still pouring chips in a bowl when the car doors opened and a bunch of chattering, screeching, giggling young girls ran through the yard and my daughter led the noisy bunch upstairs to change clothes. They all crammed in her room while trying out her perfume and investigating her latest purchases from Belk’s. They hurriedly changed and wasted no time hurrying back down the stairs to head for the pool. But they did take a detour to yell names at her brother and tell the girl that her clothes were outdated and she seemed thinner last time they had met. Nothing like trying to knock out the competition while still several years too young.

Very pleased at the angry looks from the girl and dodging the swats from the brother, the gang of teen girls hurried out to the yard. I was amazed at how a pan of pizza could disappear in mere seconds. And also how pizza seemed just as edible after being dropped in the pool. And how 15 girls could all be talking at once, and yet insisting that the radio needed to be louder, and how cell phones didn’t seem to work as well when they got wet. And how pepperonis can float.

I brought out pizza after pizza, while trying to pick up glasses and cell phones from puddles of water and place them in dry, safe places. I would hurry back out when shrieks went up that glasses were missing and pizza ran out. Then right when I thought they were going to all die of starvation, one mom showed up with a pan full of brownies. A cry of glee went up in the air and they attacked the poor mom and left her damp and frazzled and holding a tray of nothing but crumbs.

After sitting the post-brownie mauled woman in a chair to recover, I hurried inside and outside, retrieving drinks and answering yells. It did make me wonder how after an afternoon of dozens of juice bottles, I had very few requests for directions to my bathroom. As I wiped my sweaty hair back from my face and plopped next to the brownie victim, I pondered the price of extra chlorine for the pool. And wondered if the person that named the lazy, crazy, summer days had ever thrown a pool party for teenage girls.

But after hundreds of jumps from the diving board and thousands of squirts with the hose, the moms began to parade in like the calvary coming over the hill. The screams began to quiet and no one hollered when I turned the volume on the radio down. I walked through the yard picking up scattered Sunny D bottles and skimming the last of the floating pepperonis out of the pool.

The lazy, crazy, days of summer had begun. Young people having fun and partying til they dropped. But even though I wouldn’t need to set my alarm for 5:55 in the morning, I had a feeling that if I made it until nine o’clock on this evening it would be my own high note of middle aged mom partying til she dropped. Those long summer days of no early mornings, afternoons of swimming, and watching TV until late at night would just have to wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow after I had removed all the pizza from the skimmers and dumped extra chlorine in the pool.