The Orange Summer of '62

Margaret stood at the kitchen window, watching her granddaughter Emma splash in the old above-ground pool. The girl's wet hair plastered against her forehead in dark streaks, just as Margaret's had done sixty years ago. Some things never change.

She remembered that orange summer of 1962—the summer her father taught her to swim. He'd bought an orange at the market, a rare treat in those days, and promised it to her if she'd just put her face in the water. For three weeks, she refused. The fear gripped her chest like a cold hand.

"Your mother's hair was the same color as yours when she was your age," Margaret called out to Emma, who had climbed out of the pool and was wringing water from her long blonde locks. "Curly and stubborn."

Emma laughed. "Is that why you keep yours short now, Grandma?"

"That," Margaret said, joining her granddaughter on the patio, "and because at seventy-eight, I've earned the right to spend five minutes on my hair instead of fifty."

She'd eventually learned to swim that summer. Her father had thrown the orange into the shallow end, and something about seeing that bright sphere floating in the chlorine-blue water made the fear seem silly. She'd plunged in, grabbed it, and come up sputtering triumphantly. The orange had never tasted sweeter.

"Grandma, will you teach me to dive?" Emma asked, toweling her hair.

Margaret hesitated. Her joints ached these days, and the pool ladder seemed steeper each summer. But then she remembered her father's patience, the way he'd stood waist-deep in the water, arms open, waiting.

"Next week," she said. "I'll need to buy some oranges first."

Emma looked confused but smiled anyway.

Some traditions were worth passing down. Not the oranges, really, or even swimming itself. It was the knowing that someone would be there, arms open, waiting. That was the legacy worth leaving—the simple, ordinary faith that you would be caught when you finally let go and jumped.