The Pool

Dear Caroline,

We live on an interesting street. There are some houses that have been all fixed up and are freshly painted and landscaped and some that are, well, not. I wrestle with the fact that we have some people down the street who are clearly scrapping things as their main source of income and have a yard to prove it. Of course it came as no surprise when they put up an above ground pool - in their front yard. I'm over it, and love the character of our neighborhood so much that this is just one more thing. I have to admit though, I thought I knew what was in store for this pool from the start. Here's how I thought it would go - blow up/fill up this giant pool, play in it for a couple of days, the water gets gross, they don't take care of it and we have a steaming 4 foot deep cesspool (fully equipped with a ladder) for the rest of the summer. Eye roll, sigh and move on.

However I was wrong, really wrong. They clean, fill and refill this pool more consistently that I clean any part of our house. They dutifully cover it each night. But most of all, they use it, all the time. There is a gaggle of children living/hanging out at that house and they are in that pool all day and well into the evening hours just having the time of their lives. I actually have come to love sitting on our front porch and listening to them giggle, splash, dive over and over again in the evenings after you have gone to bed. These kids have to be absolutely exhausted each night when their little heads hit their pillows and I love that for them. I have such great memories of playing in the pool all day as a kid and then falling asleep with pink cheeks at night, I hope you get to do this too one day.

This taught me a larger lesson though that I want to share with you. I was wrong about our neighbors. While we don't talk with them much, I certainly had some ideas about them and their pool that just weren't right in the end. I know I talked about it in my last post, but I love that you don't have these judgments yet and hope that I can grow in my own ability to love and accept others.

While I don't think we will be putting a pool in our front yard any time soon, we did put a little one on the side of the house for you. 

Love you,
Mom