A little background: Two summers ago, our neighbors got an above-ground pool. While we have a nice backyard, our house is right on the street, with little elbow room between houses. So having a neighbor with an above-ground pool feels much like having a pool ourselves, except without the swimming.
On Saturday, I had been standing with Ava, letting her assault the young maple tree near out neighbor's property, wondering why the filter on their pool sounds like a small airplane. Then I saw it. Beside the filter, up against the side of the pool, stood a storage trunk. I continued to look at the trunk while coming up with polite ways to tell my neighbors to build a box around the filter to keep the noise down. (“You know your filter? The one that’s sounds like a Boeing 747?”)
Then, in a divine moment of clarity, I realized the trunk did more than store miscellaneous pool supplies. Standing at 2 1/2 feet against the 5-foot pool, it also made a nice staircase for my boys.
A stairway to heaven, if you will.
By the time I got to the living room, my lungs and heart had converged in my esophagus and together administered CPR on themselves. Even though no one got hurt, I felt the weight of it, of what could have happened.
In a matter of seconds.
How many times had I lost sight of the boys, and assumed they were in the woods, if only for a few minutes?
That’s all it takes.
This is the boys' sandbox with the gray side of the neighbor's pool in the background. The trunk was right there.
I sputtered the facts to Brian. He insisted the trunk had been there just a few days. But still! Just in the last few weeks, we had started letting Ben go in the yard without staring at him every second. Ben, my six year old who thinks he can swim because of the inner tubes that keep him afloat, even though I tell him he’ll drown and never, ever go in the water without mom or dad.
“I can swim, Mama. Really.”
At first I told Brian to go talk to the husband. Then I decided, no. This is between me and her.
When her car appeared in the driveway I walked over, Ava still attached to my side. They were eating lunch but invited me in. I thanked her for the advice she gave last week about Ben’s sting (put a baking soda compress on it).
“It worked within five minutes,” I smiled. Then, “You know that trunk next to your pool?”
Maybe she thought the boys had done something to it, ransacked it and strewn the contents about the trees.
“The trunk? Yeah.”
“How long’s it been there?”
“Oh, I don’t know ...”
“Forever?”
“Yeah.”
Forever. Two years. Here I was, considering myself overprotective, knowing the hazard of that pool. But I failed to see that damned trunk! Anytime I changed a diaper in the nursery and thought they were in the basement. All the times I “knew” they were in the woods and kept searching the tree line, looking for a sign of John’s shirt. My boys could have ...
But they didn’t. They’re safe.
“My boys can just step into the pool using that,” I managed to explain with no air coming in our out of my lungs.
She paused. “Gee, I never thought of that.”
"Why should you think of that??" I screamed. "You’re just the #$!%* school nurse! The one who sent the note home about summer !$#!#$ safety!! What the !$##@! were you THINKING?! Why are you TRYING TO KILL MY BOYS??!!”
Well, no. Thankfully that all stayed in my head. I said nothing, and she said, "I'll move it."
“Thanks. The new tile looks great in here, by the way. Well, I see you two are eating lunch, so I’ll get out of your way.”
Later that night, I stopped shaking. My heartbeat slowed back to normal. My brain stopped playing nonstop shorts of Ben or John floating face down in the water. The trunk has been moved, my boys are safe.
My boys are safe.
12 comments:
Man. This gave me goosebumps. I don't know if I would have noticed it or realized the danger myself. Me! With 4 kids!
Good looking out Mom.
First off, the DVD came today! Thanks so much!!!!
My daughter is going to be thrilled!
Secondly, there are dangers at every turn.
I remember seeing a piece on those 5 gallon buckets people use all the time and how little ones can fall in and drown.
Or hearing about a preteen girl who was playing a game and hid in the bottom drawer of a file cabinet and suffocated and died after she apparently fell asleep.
Or a fellow church member who lost her son when he and his brother dug a big tunnel and it collapsed on him.
Good that you noticed and said something about it.
That is the exact reason we don't have one of those easy set pools right now.
I would be a nervous wreck all the time!
yikes! A few years ago my parents had a couple of neighbor girls who would go in their fenced back yard (with a pool) without letting my parents know. He tried several times to talk to the mom and stress the importance of not having the girls (3 and 6) in his backyard, the dangers of the pool, and he talked to the kids too. But they kept unlatching the gate and coming in. Finally my dad went over there and yelled at her, and told her he was going to call CPS if they came in his yard one more time. Which worked, thankfully
here in Wales we don't really have the climate for outdoor pools but fishponds and water features are very much in vogue. There are so many deaths every year that I can't understand why anyone with children would have one. I thank god that we filled ours in as soon as the babies could crawl. I have nightmares about my little nephew who apparently at the age of two and a half is thought to be old enough to understand that he shouldn't go near the fish ponds in his garden.
That totally made cry. My parents have an un-fenced pool and I swear I have nightmares about it. As a result, I never drop Alex off at their house (which has been the cause of WWIII). Even though I know they would watch him carefully and never let him outside, I just physically can not bring myself to leave him there. I cringe just thinking about how easy it would be for him to drown. It terrifies me.
PS- It always weirds me out to see photos of eastern neighborhoods. Out west, a home without a fence all the way around it [A BIG TALL FENCE] is no home at all! How do you keep the dogs in?
My aunt has a pool and frequently watches my two little girls (23 mos & 15 mos). The in-ground pool is located directly outside their house, with four sets of sliding glass doors leading to it. They lock all the doors when we arrive, but throughout the course of the day, I notice that sometimes the doors seem to get unlocked (dogs, people using the pool/deck, etc.) My girls have yet to figure out how to slide open an unlocked sliding glass door, but I know it is only a matter of time. (Just yesterday they conquered the closet doors!) As you can imagine, I have many nightmares about finding their little bodies in the water. So much so that I recently enrolled both of them in Infant Survival swimming courses (http://www.infantswim.com/). After only two weeks, they can both float on their backs and swim to the edge of the pool. I can't tell you how happy I am when I see them do this. I feel a little more at peace. My next step is to get a fence installed around my aunt's pool!
Good job on seeing the potential dangers to your children. Don't beat yourself up for not seeing it sooner. You found it before anything happened which is what counts.
It's just gut wrenching when you realize something you've missed like that. I'm a very protective mom, from bicycle helmets to riding in booster seats even though all of our friends ditched them years ago. I've made some discoveries like that and try not to beat myself up about it, knowing the kids are safe now and trying not to get the "what ifs..."
I also feel for you having to confront your neighbor with it...that can be a hard thing. I do not like confrontation of any kind, even if it's not going to be a big deal it's still a hard thing to do. I applaud you for taking action!!
I'm sorry-- how horrifying.
and good for you for confronting them!
our area has laws that a pool MUST be in a fenced-in yard. maybe call your codes dept??
I think most moms have moments like those. I'm always being the "super protective" mom yet there was a few times when things like that crop up. It's hard to see absolutely everything. We're all human. And how one person posted, I agree: Moms should get combat pay!
PS Most home owners insurances in the state I live in require a fence around the pool as well.
No matter how much I want one or how hot it gets, I will never get a pool. They're extremely dangerous -- I think more kids drown than are killed by guns.
My husband badly wants a hot tub, but even that makes me nervous.
I think most people just don't think about things like this. Either they don't have kids or it's been so long since they had babies that they've forgotten about things like baby-proofing their homes and yards.
Our yard is fenced, so our neighbors can do whatever they want in their backyard. I've made as mine as safe as possible for my own kids.
As a new mom, every now and again I browse random parenting-related blogs and came across yours. It was a refreshing read and made me feel like my sometimes neurotic "what if" and "could have" thoughts are par for the course in this game of parenting!
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