Underwater Swimming

This was a fun picture to paint. Once again I used Crayola watercolor paint.  I'm not sure why I've become fascinated using this paint over my nice tubes, but perhaps it’s just fun to see if I can paint something half way decent with paint like my grand-kids use in elementary school. The paint is vibrant and with only 8 colors it just makes painting less serious – and feeling less serious allows me to be a little more creative!!  

I painted this just a couple of weeks ago when I was in Southern California with my parents while my mom was dealing with some serious health issues (August 2016).  I guess being with my parents in the summer and having some downtime caused me to want to paint something summery and something that reminded me of growing up in California. I remember my summer days as joyful and relaxing, without too much structure. I often called my best friend, Dawn, who lived down the street, to meet me at the pool. In those days, it was very rare to have a neighborhood pool. Now days, there are more and more of them. But for us, it was unique. So swimming and being in the sun was just part of regular summer living, along with laying on our backs to look at the clouds, going bike riding, and buying ice cream from the ice cream man whenever we were lucky enough for our parents to give into our begging for such a treat. Memories!! Aren’t they fun?!

My parents, Keith & Lucile, taken a couple of years ago.

I think being with my parents for 2 weeks has caused me to reminisce a bit. What a joy it was to spend time with dad and mom, even though it wasn’t under the best circumstances. I hope mom gets well soon, but thanks for the sweet memories I’ll have of this summer being with the two of you.

As part of my reminiscing, I took some time to search for photos of me swimming in our pool while growing up, but sadly, I couldn’t find any. But here’s a few depicting some of my other summer memories.

This photo of me was taken in August of 1964

If I wasn’t in the pool, I was often running through the sprinklers! 

This photo is of my younger sister, Regina, and me. 

Watermelon...summer! They go together!

I sell tags on Etsy called: Tags by Trudy
This is one of them.

Trudy Tibbitts & Linda Rameson

This is a picture of my next door neighbor, Linda, and me. She was a great friend, but she moved when we were fairly young. Her dad taught me how to swim and so just for fun - going along memory lane - I’m adding this photo to my post and a paragraph from a history my mom wrote about me, as if I was the writer.  

A very good friend and neighbor, Fred Rameson, taught me how to swim during the summer of 1964. I was just 4 years old. I always wore a life jacket when I went into our pool to swim and had lots of fun. One day I got my finger shut in the door just as we were all going down to the pool at the end of Ramona Vista (a pool that 12 families owned who lived on our street called the Ramona Vista Recreation Center). I told Mom I wouldn’t put on the life jacket because I was just going to sit on the step and hold my hand up. I sat there for a while and before I knew it there I was in the water swimming just like I usually did when I had the life jacket, only I was without the jacket. I surprised myself as well as Mom who was watching. So from then on I really practiced and got better all the time. Fred would come over and make me swim across the pool several times telling me to “reach way out” and pull my arms down by my body, which really helped me a lot. During the summer of 1965 I learned to jump off the high dive and dive off the side of the pool and swam the length of the pool lots of times. And finally, just before the swimming season ended in September 1965, I went down the slide. For some reason I couldn’t get enough courage to do that one thing. But I love to swim. I took a swimming course at the city pool during the summer of 1965 and I was advance from the beginner’s group right through to the divers group in about a week. I was one of the littlest and youngest there. My very good friend and next door neighbor, Linda Rameson, is a very good swimmer and she was in that class, too. Our hearts were all heavy and we were so sad when Fred Rameson died on September 4, 1965. He had been our very good friend ever since we moved here to Hemet and had taught me how to swim and enjoy it. I wondered how Regina would learn to swim now that Fred had died because he knew just how to teach beginners. (End of paragraph from my history)

Swimming...part of my growing up years. I love summer. I always have! It's such a carefree time of life. 

In closing, while at my parents my dad and I often took our projects into the family-room so we could be with mom as she lay on the couch trying to regain her strength. Sometimes we watched t.v. or a movie. On several occasions we watched different things from YouTube, including this darling interview of 3 women and their daughters. The interview took place on Brigham Young University in 1999 and the women interviewed were the wives of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This interview is so very entertaining and so well worth watching. I wanted to add a link to it with this post because Marjorie Hinckley, the wife of the Prophet at that time, and the last speaker, talked about her summer days growing up and how they had their children spend their summer days. And so I thought it would be fitting to share this on this post about summer. Besides, Marjorie Hinckley was just absolutely darling and funny.  I hope whoever is reading this post will watch this. It was wonderful. Here's the link: Wives & Daughter of The First Presidency (1999). 

Happy summer!! Actually, school starts in my town this week...so summer is coming to a close. So sad!