Owen peeked out the bathroom window. His parents had told him not to spy on Ms. Mikole's pool from the bathroom window, but if he moved the heavy brown window curtain aside he could see right down into the pool. Sometimes Ms. Mikole was swimming and he would wave at her, but she usually didn't see him. Sometimes Ms. Mikole's teenaged daughter and her boyfriend were swimming or listening to music on the pool deck, and they never looked back. Father told Owen that most people didn't like to have people spy out of upstairs windows while they went swimming, but Owen was such good friends with Ms. Mikole's family that he didn't think they would mind. He could see even better if he hadn't broken his binoculars.
There was something different in the pool. It was pink, and it was floating. Owen could hardly believe it. It was a huge inflatable pink flamingo. And it was for him! Was it for him? Father was always telling Owen to stop and think a little harder first, so Owen thought now. Ms. Mikole was too big for a pink flamingo toy. Her daughter was too big for a flamingo toy, and so was her boyfriend. Ms. Mikole had a new boyfriend who was very tall and wore dark sunglasses, and he was DEFINITELY too big for a pink flamingo toy. This was a toy for a kid. And Ms. Mikole definitely liked Owen best, because Felix wasn't very helpful when they weeded her garden and James was too quiet to say anything, and Owen told her that he loved her every time that he saw her. (He even shouted it out the windows when she took her trash out.)
That flamingo was going to be a present for Owen. He couldn't believe it.
Owen ran into his Mother and Father's room and threw open the door.
"Mom, Mom, guess what," he yelled "Ms. Mikole has a new toy in her pool and it's a pink flamingo and it's for ME!"
Owen's mother had bolted up in bed and was looking confused. She rubbed her eyes, then looked at the alarm clock by Father's side of the bed.
"Owen...what time is it? Owen, it's 6 in the morning. Go back to bed. You can get up in a bit..."
She called after him as he went back to his room. "And stop spying on the pool through the bathroom window!"
Owen went back to bed, but he was too excited to sleep. He cleared a race track through the piles of comic books that he kept on his bed and started to push his matchbox cars through the course he had made. He kept his engine and crashing noises quiet, because Felix was still asleep in his crib. But after a few minutes he put his cars away and just remembered all of the swimming he had done last week.
The first family swim was with Mother and Father and James and Felix and had been in Ms. Mikole's pool. It was a hot day, but her pool was cold. Owen and Felix had worn green life jackets (they called them "puddle-jumpers") with red crabs on them and bobbed around the edge of the cold pool. James (at Father's insistence) had tried to swim without a puddle-jumper, but couldn't figure out how to float on his back and kept on elbowing Father in the head when he would clutch at his neck instead of doing a doggy-paddle at the same time he kicked his feet. Felix mostly yelled. Owen was a little disappointed that they couldn't bring any pool toys (or bath toys) in with them, but it was glorious to be in the water.
Owen had asked at the end if they could come back and swim again later, or even to swim just once a day, but he ended up waiting until they drove down to Pennsylvania later that week. They went on a visit to Grandma and Grandpa Davis. Usually the best part about visiting Grandma and Grandpa was tractor rides and pounding nails into old tree stumps in Grandpa's wood shop. But in the summer, when it was hot, the boys were allowed to walk down to a neighbor's house and use their pool. The neighbor's name was Ms. Mary, and she had a pool with a shallow end that Owen could touch in. She also had an entire shed full of pool toys--squirt guns, foam noodles, goggles, watering cans, inflatable balls, and whiffle-ball bats.
Owen got to swim twice at Ms. Mary's pool--once on Thursday and once on Saturday. On Thursday he paddled all around the pool and visited the deep end lots of times. Ms. Mary's pool was much warmer than Ms. Mikole's, and Owen would have stayed in there all day if his parents had let him. On Saturday the weather was much cooler, but the water was still warm. It felt okay if you kept as much of your body as possible in the water, so Owen had Father take his life jacket off and practiced putting his face under the water. Uncle Tim or Uncle Dan came with them and swam that day. Owen could remember which one was Uncle Time and which one was Uncle Dan when he looked at pictures of them, but he always called them by the wrong name when they were together in person.
Uncle Tim was the one who went swimming with them. He let Owen squirt him with the squirt gun over and over and didn't complain about it at all. Uncle Dan couldn't come swimming because he had a new baby.
But now they were back home, and it was almost time to start another day. Owen knew that he would need to be patient and wouldn't be able to go swimming with his new flamingo toy right away. But, maybe, if he was very good and asked politely, he could do it sooner rather than later.
Preferably before breakfast.
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