Memorial Day Hillbilly Style

In my experience, geography plays a large part in what Memorial Day means (beyond the honor-the-troops part that the newspapers remind us of annually, making me feel chastened for about the amount of time it takes me to finish reading the paper before heading off to one party or another).

Growing up in Los Angeles, it was the last day you could count on having an outdoor barbecue before July, since June is the only month in Southern California that can reliably be counted on to bring cold and rain. In the cities of New England and New York, Memorial Day represented a whispering hope of summer rarely fulfilled, when we found ourselves standing around at some optimistic outdoor venue shivering and hoping we wouldn't have to retrieve the umbrella from the car. Memorial Day was generally pretty warm in the DC environs, but also the bearer of summer thunderstorms and the feel of living in a dishwasher on the dry cycle that comes with endless days of 90 percent humidity. And the Memorial Day parties I recall from my days in St. Louis evoke memories of the scent of Off and citronella candles and of warm-ish cans of Budweiser sucked down in a desperate effort to stay ahead of the heat and bugs.

So how do we do the onset of summer in the WNC Hills?

Here in Asheville, The Boy and I celebrated by going to the pool at the JCC.

This is not, I suspect, what one might expect to hear when being told of a traditional Hillbilly Memorial Day. Jews and corncob pipes don't generally mix in the collective imagination. Nor does a place to swim that does not involve inner tubes, cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and cut-off shorts.

We did, I hasten to point out, spend Saturday at the White Squirrel Festival in Brevard, forty minutes south of town. Turns out the festival wasn't about eating white squirrels, but we saw plenty of amateur replicas, lots of Boy Scouts and Chamber of Commerce types, and some really good live music. (In addition to retaining more of the hill culture than Asheville, Brevard is home to a highly regarded music school.) What we did not find, to Hubby's great disappointment, was a beer tent. But The Boy enjoyed the roasted corn on the cob that was available so much that Hubby forgave the Festival this major shortcoming.

Asheville, however, despite my best efforts to color it otherwise, is not exclusively hillbilly territory. Hence, the JCC pool is a gathering place, not only of Jews, but of other young, upscale transplants from California, New Jersey, and the Midwest. They grill brautwurst and drink microbrew IPA's. Their children rest between bouts in the pool with library books and colored pencils. True, the lifeguard to whom I spoke about possible swimming lessons for The Boy sported a shiny gold nipple ring and a thick hills accent, but Hubby assures me The Boy will speak like us, not like the other adults in his life, so I feel it will be safe for him to learn to swim from this man.

I was thrilled to discover this lovely summer ritual just a half mile from our home -- close enough to load up the stroller with snacks and baby sunblock and towels and hoof it over -- where neighbors greeted me warmly and mothers of The Boy's preschool friends chatted with me around the baby pool.

The Boy, however, was less enamored than I of the social possibilities offered by our JCC membership.

While he adored swimming in my parents' pool last summer, he was determined not to join the splashing, yelling mass of kids in this overwhelming, noisy, hot place. Clutching Buddy, his blankie, he allowed me to take him over to the baby pool to see his friend from school. He even consented to putting Buddy out of harm's way and to sit in my lap while I dangled my feet in the cool of the pool (as Horton the elephant would say).

He showed enough interest in a bucket of toys at water's edge to eventually wander from my lap, and to gaze with round, serious eyes upon the efforts of a teenage girl who volunteers at his school to engage him and his friend in play. His friend was happy to have water squeezed on his head and to race toy cars. But the Boy made it quite clear, for his part, that his head was a water-free zone, although he did shyly demonstrate his knowledge of how toy cars work with the ones he clutched in his round little hands.

What The Boy would not do, under any circumstances, was get in the water. I asked him several times as he sat at the edge of the baby pool but he declined. I decided he could go in the big pool in my arms and thereby get over his fear. While he had no choice in the first half of this proposition, I was dead wrong about the second. As I made my way down the steps, he wrapped his legs around me extra-tightly so as to have leverage to pull them well out of the range of the water. When I dipped one of his feet into the water he whined his disapproval. When playing children inadvertently splashed him, he cried. And I gave up.

We spent the remainder of our short time at the JCC pool sitting on a towel eating grapes and playing with the stacking magnetic bugs he received as a gift when he was ten months old and has recently rediscovered. I managed a few words with other adults, but they were brief and not promising of longterm friendship, anchored as I was to a hot little boy who wanted nothing more than to go home.

We arrived home to a peaceful front yard shaded by maple trees and decorated by lounging hound dogs. I had to concede that a glass of cool water and the breeze playing softly through the trees was just as nice as friendly neighbors and the smell of chlorine, and a lot more sane.

Besides, according to The Boy, blowing bubbles on the steps of his own front porch is the ideal way to welcome summer to Asheville.