Where have all the diving boards gone?

I spent the summers of my childhood on, in, or under water. My mom believed firmly in getting us out of the house when the weather was good. Sometimes she did this by simply ushering us out the sliding glass door to our back yard and locking it behind us. She would stay inside, ironing our t-shirts and sheets. But most often, she would load us into the back of the old Ford Falcon station wagon and head to her parents’ back yard. They had a pool.

There was a tradition in my mother’s family to throw the grandchildren into the pool at an early age. We were taught a few rudimentary strokes, and then, when a child was judged ready, my grandma would ceremoniously place a bundt cake at the deep end of the pool. The chosen grandchild would push off from the shallow end and pull for that cake. I earned my bundt cake the summer I was four. My brother Pete, only two, claimed his own a week or two later.

Before we even earned our cake, my mom and her sister would get us kids up on the diving board. There is one home movie of me toddling precariously to the end and then gleefully jumping into my mother’s waiting arms. I couldn’t have been much over one.
I’m sure my mom logged hundreds of hours treading water as she waited to catch us. As the summers passed, we got more confident, and my mom was able to just watch from the side. All of us cousins devised very unique ways to launch ourselves into the water. I can still remember the sting of my belly flopping stage as I was moving into diving. We would go off in twos and threes and fours. We always came up laughing. To this day, standing on the end of a diving board brings me great joy.

Only now it’s not so easy. We don’t know anyone with a private pool who still has a diving board. I hear that insurance worries have caused most homeowners to remove them. Last summer my son Eli was gearing up to take the plunge. He couldn’t do it over the winter even though we swam on a weekly basis. All of the indoor pools at the YMCA have lost their boards. So we journeyed up to the Y near where I grew up. It has an Olympic sized outdoor pool. I have fond memories of the high dive and all the crazy tricks we pulled off of that one. When we got out of the car I noticed that the high dive was gone. I didn’t ask anyone, but I’m willing to bet it had to do with risk management. There were still two springboards in action, so my son and I hurried over. He’d never gone off of one before, so I was prepared to get into the water and tread, offering him encouragement and a helping hand once he jumped in. But we met the sign declaring the DIVING BOARD RULES on our way. No waiting in the pool. No wearing goggles or a mask. No wearing a life jacket. Only one person on the board at a time. And all potential jumpees must first flag down a lifeguard and pass a swimming and water treading test. I read these rules to Eli and watched his confidence flag. He could have done it. He has the skills. But he kind of wanted me in the water. He kind of wanted to wear his goggles. When I got to the bottom of the list, I asked him if we should go find a life guard. “No mom, it all sounds too complicated.” I agreed.