matching tracksuits

“What should I do with my tooth?” the Girl asked. She’s had to have three baby teeth pulled because they just weren’t coming out correctly. This last one was the final to come out before she gets her braces on, something she’s not really looking forward to.

“Why not put it under your pillow for the Tooth Fairy,” I suggested.

She looked at me, furrowed her brow, screwed up her lips, marched over and said, “Right.”

“Well, why not? Get a little money. She gets another tooth. It’s win-win.”

Again, “Right.”

“What do you mean, ‘Right’?” I tried to keep from smiling, but I could feel the edges of my lips creeping upward.

“I know it was you guys,” she proclaimed.

“Oh, really?”

I’ve been waiting for this conversation for years now, wondering when she would admit that she knew K and I were the Tooth Fairy and Santa.

“Yes, I saw you!”

“And how do you know it wasn’t the Tooth Fairy. She could be a shapeshifter.” I was wondering if she would come back with, “Those don’t exist, either!” but instead, she just insisted again that she’d seen me.

Then the bombshell: “E doesn’t even believe in Santa!”

Our kids have grown up swimming in the pool at Nana's and Papa's condo complex. More often than not, we were the only ones there, and the kids really came to think of it as a private pool for us. "Oh, someone's here," was the common moan when we pulled up to find that someone from the complex was already there. In all the years we've been going there, I can think of exactly one time when it seemed crowded: at most, there were half a dozen other swimmers there every other time.

Most often, Nana and Papa would meet us at the pool, and we would try to entertain them by entertaining ourselves. Lately, though, say in the last two years, Nana and Papa made it less and less frequently. With the problems she had with polymyalgia rheumatica, Nana had greater and greater difficulty walking, and they came less and less frequently. And then Nana passed away, and all the changes that came with that...

Now we're getting ready to sell the condo, and so this season will be our last season swimming there. Which meant today was our last day swimming there.

It's not the loss of the pool that has drawn me into a thoughtful mood but what it means -- the end of an era of our lives. Nana's passing was, of course, the most significant, the most painful, but since then, the door to that era has remained slightly open. The apartment was still there, still filled with furniture, dishes, clothes, and all the memories attached. After the estate sale, most of the furniture was gone. A few trips to a local charity and almost everything else is gone. The apartment is empty except for a large dresser that Nana and Papa bought in 1979 from a family in the apartment complex where we lived. They were going through a split up and everything had to go.

In 1979, I was six, so this dresser was a constant presence in my life, the one piece of furniture connected to the time when I was E's age. We've been trying to sell it for ages. We've dropped the price again and again until it's now almost free, and still no one is interested.

That seems somehow sadly appropriate. Who wants someone else's 40-year-old memories?

Through all this, though, we kept going to that pool this summer. Somehow I was unconsciously thinking, perhaps, that continuing ritual kept everything from changing for good.

I guess what it is, is simple: that pool represents my kids as kids. It will bookend a period when they were both kids, for L at nearly 13 is no longer a little kid. She's nearly as tall as K, and her interests are maturing to match: she's started watching Grey's Anatomy on Netflix because so many of her friends have been watching it, and she wants to keep up with them. When we go to the store, she's asking to buy makeup instead of toys. The thought of going to Starbucks for some iced coffee drink nonsense thrills her. Our Daddy-L time is no longer playing with this or that but practicing volleyball. She's getting braces soon and will likely not find boys disgusting for very much longer.

It's all inevitable, but that doesn't make it any less bittersweet.