All the days we missed
There used to be a tree in the front yard of my childhood home.
A big oak tree with vines that crawled up the trunk, and big fat leaves took about 20 bags to clean up in the fall. A green filter covered our cars in the spring with its rude pollen, and it dropped acorns all over the street and in our gutters.
On the front of the tree was an abscess shaped like a nose. Every time you drove up the cul-de-sac toward the grey ranch house in the northwest corner, the nose watched and welcomed you in. The nose took up most of the rear view mirror as you thunked off the driveway and back down the street.
The tree is not there, anymore, cut down some time ago. And when I walked toward the spot it used to be this morning, it reminded me of the summer days when the nose silently nodded hello and goodbye. And I thought about what we should all be doing on this June 13th, instead of what we are doing.
This weekend should be opening ceremonies for the College World Series in Omaha. We should be watching the NBA Finals or have a baseball game on in the background while we eat lunch. We should be ironing shirts before heading to a wedding, we should be putting on sunscreen before heading to the pool.
With coronavirus, we’ve been been cheated out of those days as the country toddles between re-opening and staying closed. I thought of this most when it was announced this week public pools in Omaha won’t open this summer. My little lifeguard heart hurt couldn’t quite imagine that.
I spent five summers as a lifeguard. It might as well have been 10 weeks of summer camp. I was part of a group of 16 to 24-year-olds who worked 40 hours weeks together in the sun listening to summer hits from the 1990s, measuring if children are 40 inches tall to go down the water slide, kicking skaters for sneaking in without paying, going off the diving board during adult swim, replacing showers for a dip in the chlorine-filled water because time back then, it seemed, was too precious to be spent showering off sunscreen. The top of the water slide was the highest public place in the county, we were told, which may or may not be true. But in the evenings, when the pool neared its close, it was the best rotation to end the day at, watching the sun set over the trees and listening to the rush of the water slap down the slide until the final whistle.
When I read the news pools weren’t re-opening, I thought of those lifeguards, unable to make some money in the summers and thought of all the kids who can’t escape with a cannonball, or the parents who can’t just relax and read. A community pool can be a devilish place, especially at 110 degrees and if everyone’s in a rotten mood, but it’s still a community. And it feels as though that’s what’s been taken away most — a sense of physical community, though you could argue the online alternative has filled its role in recent months.
The news of the pool made me wonder of all the days we should be having, when the nose still watched from atop the street.
The world is changing, and for the better. Social justice and social activism is rising to a point that confirms my long-held belief we’re living through the second progressive era. We will exit the pandemic and the summer protests of 2020 and enter a brand new world. The one from February, the one that the nose saw all those years, is gone, and we will never return to it.
In a way, these days we’ve missed might just be worth it down the road. It’s a small price to pay for a more empathetic and socially conscious country.
There used to be a tree at the end of my childhood street, a pine, that the old owners used to decorate with Christmas lights every year. The thing was huge, two or three stories tall. Multi-colored lights stayed on for 12 months, but only lit for about 30 nights in December and January. Years ago, the tree grew too big. So they chopped it down, and in the same spot, planted another pine.
I walked past that pine today. It’s getting there. Not quite like the pine the nose used to face, but tall, about 15 feet.
And I wondered, when it gets tall and strong, and the lights are placed back on it and they shine high in winter, what kind of world the lights will shine on.
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