This afternoon I had the privilege of spending a couple of hours by myself at a friend’s pool. It was a welcome relief from the oppressive heat and the claustrophobia of spending long hours in rewarding but solitary work inside. And not to mention Covid.

But part of the sweetness of the experience of dipping in a pool in summer wherever it may be is the instinctual way a series of sensations lures me back to the pools of summer in my youth, mostly the one in Sarteano, Olympic-size, frigid, and routinely exciting, or interesting, where we spent many days of every summer, from morning—clouds allowing—until departure at dinnertime could be put off no longer.

And always and immediately the experience conjures a set of images on a movie reel of my mind, or my flesh: the ride there on our motorini or on the bus; the stop at the gate to show our summer pass; the little snack bar in the shade of the palm trees with the line of kids and teenagers dripping impatient for a gelato or a panino; the smell of toast lingering; the tanned men in Speedos shuffling in their ciabatte da spiaggia, smoking; the green lawns under the trees, like peaceful oases; the smell of the changing booths and the showers–of chlorine and institutional cleanliness and spartan order that the ladies who worked there enforced with sacred purpose; then the very cold water, shocking, deep, very deep, and the screams and chaos of jumping and splashing. The in and out of the water. A buzzing sound of summer elation.

Around its coveted perimeter where space was at a premium, I remember the boys sweaty and gazing, draped tanned body tight against body under the sun. The awareness of a search, lingering; a positioning to see and be seen. The diving boards and the aura of the beautiful. The virility of the young alongside the aging free of sense of aging. My microscopic bikini. My friends, forever, as friends were, there, then, beside me. The intimacy of holding hands; of bodies touching. Love granted and assured.

And—sweetest of all—no sense that it would ever end, any of it; that it could ever be different from how it was.