Le Monde de La Piscine!

    She was there in the pool at the 'Y' every morning, An 'older' woman, well into her seventies, swimming a nice overhand crawl energetically completing lengths. She had already been there a couple of hours when I schlepped in.
   "Hi Stan", she called, "come and share my lane!"
    Although it was a public pool, the serious swimmers guarded their territory jealously. If it was at all possible, they liked to have their very own lane. It usually was not, so they had to settle for a lane that had as few others as possible.  The splashers and thrashers were particularly to be avoided.
    Despite having been there for quite a while, Jane showed no sign of quitting. As we swam in clockwise formation so swimmers would not collide with each other I was often behind Jane and she would chat. Long ago I had learned that she was from Amsterdam, born during WW2, grew up with all the rationing and restrictions that were the aftermath of the war, had married a Dutch Canadian who had joined the armed forces as a very young man. He was back in Amsterdam, visiting his family, when she met him, married him and came to Canada as a new wife. She was very young, spoke no English and it was not long before she learned that her new husband was an irresponsible womanizer and spendthrift.
    "Just buy anything you want," he would say to her. "You never have to pay for anything here in Canada. You just send them a few dollars every month and they don't bother you!"
    It was not very long before the bailiffs arrived on the scene, repossessing everything she thought she owned.
    "I still didn't speak English, though I started buying children's books and reading them every day. I did make a friend and she helped me with my English and with everything else. My husband was out every night, chasing every woman he met." she said, "I knew I would have to leave him, but I had no money, not much English and nowhere to live."
    Her friend cleaned houses to make some money and suggested that she and Jane might work together and make enough money for Jane to rent a room and get away from her husband. They did this and it worked so well that they incorporated and formed a company. She made no fortune, but she made enough to live on and in the course of her work, some twenty years ago, she met her husband, a builder and they lived happily ever after, until he was stricken with a cognitive disorder that is almost certainly Alzheimer's disease.
    Jane had a wealth of stories from the Amsterdam of the late forties and the early fifties. Her mother had taken off with her boyfriend when Jane and her sister were in their early teens. Jane wasn't surprised because when the boyfriend came she and her sister were dispatched off to 'play'.
    "If you ever tell your father about this, I'll kill you!" she and her sister were told. They remained silent.
When the mother finally left, her father, not the kindliest of characters, did not take it well. She recalls him sharpening his knife and saying that he was going to kill the son of a bitch! The teen aged Jane stayed on as cook and house cleaner for her father until she was old enough to move out. Life was not all disastrous and she would occasionally relate adventures that she and her friends had in post war Amsterdam. Some of her stories merited documentation and publication.
Said I. "You should write a book about it !"
Said she, " I wish my English was good enough. I learned nearly all I know from children's books!"
"Maybe that's all you need!" said I.

      She was a very upbeat woman with a great sense of humour with a great talent for telling a story. She was there in the pool every morning when I arrived there. She got down to more serious swimming when I left.
"How long have you been here ? How many hours do you put in here every day, Jane?" I asked her, one morning.
" Oh, three or four," she said.
" Wow !", said I. "That's quite a commitment!"
"I need it for my mental health, just as much as for my physical well-being."
"Oh, how's that?" I asked.
"I think my husband has mental problems," she said.
She knew I was a physician - everyone knew I was a physician, no matter how hard I tried to conceal the fact. My late great friend John Dell  took enormous pleasure in revealing my cover.
"Why do you think that?" I asked.
"He was a builder and a very organized man. Everything was in its place and he used to criticize me for not always knowing where something was.  He used to calculate stuff quickly and easily, all in his head when he was building and had a memory like an elephant.  Then a couple of years ago, he seemed to be getting a little forgetful and not able to remember what he did with things.  Worse, he would tell me a story, then five minutes later he would repeat it and again and again.  Now he doesn't remember things I told him that morning.  This has been getting worse in the last few months."
"What did the doctor say?" I asked.
"He hasn't been assessed yet." She said. "I went with him on his last appointment and told him I was going in to the office with him, which he wasn't very happy about, but I did anyway."
"And what happened?" I asked.
"The doctor said he should have a memory test and told him to make an appointment for it."
"And?"
  He never did it. "They just want to take my driving license away!"
  "You ought to do it as soon as possible," I said.
We were at the end of the swimming lane. She stopped.
   "We can't have him lose his driving license right now," She said. "We live out in the country and I am having knee replacement surgery right before Christmas and have to have physio after - I can't have him lose his license right now."
" There must be some way to assure your transportation"  I said. "I'll see you Monday, we'll explore it further ."
    It is well into January and I haven't seen Jane at the pool since her operation. I hope she is doing well. I can't even phone her because I don't know her surname, but I will be watching out for her!