The Secret Formula



Having grown up in the tropical land of Florida, I should know something about swimming pools. However, we never had a pool, because most of our neighbors did – and it was a lot easier to maintain a neighborly friendship than a pool of your own. So it’s taken four Ohio Summers for this Floridian to finally learn how to clean a pool.

Pool maintenance isn’t one of those weekly duties that can be relegated to the indigent slave labor (i.e. teenagers). Getting the water in your test kit to turn just the right shade of pink or yellow every morning requires copious amounts of chlorine, hours of filtering, and a weekly trek to the pool store where you buy the other chemicals needed to compensate for over-chlorinating. Then, of course, you have to run the filter, rinse the filter, and … replace the filter.

For two years, we ran this course and were still faced with slimy green water. How in the world bacteria was able to breed in my four foot, above ground, chemical spill, was beyond me. Looking for a magic solution, I asked a fellow pool owner to have a look.

"Why, that’s not a chemical problem," he observed. "That’s a bacteria problem."

"You’ve got debris in there, breeding bacteria", he insisted. "All you need is a daily brushing and skimming."

Skeptical but desperate, we started brushing and skimming. We worked every day for a week. We scooped out leaves and seeds as quickly as they fell. We cut back the cottonwoods that had provided such lovely shade over the deck. Every little wrinkle in the liner was brushed out, and every corner attended to.

The pool was sparkling and inviting – for a couple of days. As soon as we let our guard down, the pH was up, the chlorine was depressed, and those little green bacteria were smiling from their water wonderland, "We’re Baaaaack!"

We finally realized: there is no magic formula. Maintaining a pool takes a daily dose of thought and care. A little brush here, some attentive skimming – a few hours of pumping… and three months of happy screams from splashing children make it all so worthwhile.

Now that spring is again in full bloom, we are again dancing the daily Pool Shuffle. Brush, Skim. Brush, Skim.

The water shimmers, the birds chatter, and I often enjoy the time to think as I work.

Brush, skim. Brush, Skim. The net ripples the surface. The widening circles have a hypnotic effect on me. The disturbance accentuates my sorrow this weekend. My peace has been capsized with the news of a friend’s impending divorce.

I still can’t believe they are having such difficulties. We shared such blessed moments of our early marriage with this couple. We supported each other through those first giddy days of several pregnancies. We prayed for one another when a child needed stitches. Moreover, they survived so very much in the last eighteen years: financial struggles, intense needs of the extended family, then the birth of a Downs’ Syndrome baby. How could he walk out on her now?

Quite honestly, it makes me feel a little insecure.

I lean out to reach for another drifting leaf. We have to be vigilant about this now that the swimming season is upon us. The strongest chemicals at the pool store won’t do a thing if there are leaves in the pool, fodder for bacteria.

I’m finally finished. The pump is humming, and I can start putting my tools away for another day. The crystal clear water is deceiving. Despite a four hundred-dollar pool pump, and seventy-eight dollars worth of chemicals, we have to check the water daily. Chlorine levels have to stay at a certain level, the pump must be run and then rinsed, and there is that daily brush and skim. Occasionally, a summer storm leaves too much rubbish in the bottom of the pool. On these occasions, a certain additive will create chemical buoyancy in the water, bringing all the debris to the surface of the pool, where we work to skim it off the top.

This was a lot easier when it was the neighbor’s pool that needed attention. Makes me wonder when my friends’ stopped paying attention to each other.

I know it’s not that easy. No one marries intending to fail. They are full of wonderful, principled, ideas that they believe will last forever. But life is dirty. It’s full of unkind words, and unspoken hurts. These sit in the water, attracting the growth of other unsavory little bugs. Suddenly, one is standing in nasty, murky, green water – and all they want is to get out.

The hard, daily use of an intimate relationship requires daily work. There is no magic chemical to dump in by the caseload. Strong daily doses of love and sacrifice are only the beginning. We skim daily for those innocuous little pieces of debris that give the bacteria of hurt and discontent a place to breed. We take time to talk; to bring out hidden concerns ready to be skimmed off the surface and made new again. .

Any successfully married couple will probably tell you, this kind of work doesn’t last for just the season. But then, neither do the rewards.