By AMY RILEY
One Citizen's Perspective

With school out and the hot, humid days of summer vacation settling like a cloak on our communities, there is but one thing on our minds — swimming. Here in Fayette, we are teeming with children and lots and lots of opportunities to beat the heat in backyard, neighborhood and community pools.

Now with the state-imposed outdoor watering ban, sprinkling and kiddie pools are out, and large swimming pools are all that's left to cool our parched bodies. In the interest of public safety, I share the following testimonial — not so that you can be haunted like me, but so that each of us will heighten our awareness and attention and have a safe and happy summer.

Three years ago, my youngest child was 2. Every summer, we spend a week with my sister and her three children, playing with our cousins, cooking out, watching matinee movies in the crisp coolness of the local theater, and swimming in her neighborhood pool.

Near the end of swim time one afternoon, with hardly anyone left swimming, in a pool staffed by two lifeguards, I let my mind wander for just a few seconds. My 2-year-old, who had been playing happily with cups and bowls on the steps of the pool, slipped off the lower step and became submerged.

I couldn't have diverted my attention for more than a few blinks of the eye, but when I looked toward the pool, my toddler was floating suspended, arms stretched out to her sides, feet and legs straight, her body in a vertical position, with the water surface just inches above the top of her head. She wasn't flailing or struggling, just floating.

I spanned a space of about three yards in one step, and lunged into the pool. I scooped her out of the water and moved to the side of the pool. She was fully awake and alert, coughing just a little, and to my endless haunting, too shocked to cry. She spit just a mouthful of water, and had normal color and motor response.

My sister, a pediatrician, checked her out right there, and she was fine. I, on the other hand, was anything but fine. Even today, three years later, the image of her floating in that pool, in a position of complete supplication, can produce a physical quickening in my chest, a tremor of anxiety in my limbs, and from time to time add an extra few minutes to my occasional sleeplessness.

In retrospect, I can say I learned a lot that day. I thank God for the gentle and merciful nudge at my maternal instincts and parental abilities. I always had a healthy respect for the water, but now I have a measure of healthy fear.

It was only an instant, and it happened within 15 feet of the lifeguard's chair. I was reminded that day that the lifeguard's role is to prevent and address unsafe play, to keep a general watch over everyone in the pool, and to apply life saving techniques to victims of near drowning. My job is to watch my children unceasingly. It was a strong lesson, and for me, one with eternal ripples.

I was lucky. Others are not. In 1997, the latest year for which statistics are available, “nearly 1,000 children ages 14 and under drowned,” in the in this country, according to the National Safe Kids Campaign. Children under the age of 4 “accounted for more than half of these deaths.” In fact, the National Safe Kids Campaign reports that, “more than 85 percent of drownings among children ages 1-4 are pool-related.” According to the Centers for Disease Control Injury Prevention Division, 53 children drowned in Georgia in 1997, at a rate slightly higher than the national rate.

The National Safe Kids Campaign encourages parents to never leave a child unattended, “even for a moment,” and to understand that swimming lessons and personal flotation devices cannot be relied upon to protect a child. “Learn CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and keep rescue equipment, a telephone, and emergency numbers poolside.”

Summer times are happy times and water safety is the recreational equivalent of the seatbelt. I hope that our story will nudge your instincts a little, too. For more information on summer safety in Fayette County, contact Robert Kurbes, county environmental health specialist and Fayette County Safe Kids Coordinator at 770-631-0743.

[Your comments are welcome: ARileyFreePress@aol.com.]

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