8 a.m. Saturday morning. Location: A sleepy, small town in northern California. Nearby a woman is driving to the town’s natatorium as she has done before on countless Saturdays. She knows that the regulars will be there, chatting, waiting in line for the facility to open. But this Saturday morning everything was different, strange. This disruption in her routine would continue to puzzle her in the days to come and made her question whether she got the date and time wrong or she was experiencing cognitive decline or whether she had temporarily entered….the twilight zone.
As the woman arrives, she looks for a parking space and notices her preferred parking spot is available and silently exclaims “Yes!” But her enthusiasm quickly turned to puzzlement when she discovers that empty parking spaces abound, unusual for this time and day. And although it is early, it is noteworthy that no one is walking by and no cars are driving by.
As she gets closer to the entrance, she notices there is no line where there usually is one. There’s no pre-swim chatter, no sign of pool shoes or towels hanging out of backpacks. What is going on? Where is Jan or Marlon or Michelle, some of the pool regulars? There’s only silence, broken up occasionally by croaking frogs.
She walked up the stairs and there was a Closed sign on the door. She checked her phone to make sure she had the right time. That checked out. She checked the bulletin board to see if there were any announcements about pool closures, after all there had been pool closures due to lack of lifeguards before. Nope. There was an announcement about lifeguard jobs available and a schedule from 2023. But nothing about a pool closure.
Things weren’t adding up.
She walked back to her car and checked her phone to make sure it really was Saturday. It was, at least according to her phone, if she could trust that. Puzzled, she reluctantly started to drive home. But couldn’t let go of the uneasy feeling-why wasn’t anyone else here? So she turned her car around and waited to see if anyone else showed up to the closed pool. She did see someone carrying a towel walking toward the pool. Then another person parked in front of the facility. This person didn’t get out of their car but she could see him getting on his phone, undoubtedly to let a friend know the pool was closed.
Relieved, somewhat, she drove home still feeling unsettled. She theorized the others must have gotten some kind of heads up about the pool being closed. Once home, she immediately checked the web site to see if the pool closure was announced there. Nope.
This inexplicable disruption in her routine occupied her thoughts the entire weekend. Was it her reliance on things the way they had been for years not allow for this change? As an elder was this emphasis on something others would consider minor a cause for concern? Could this be the first of many experiences pointing to a cognitive decline?
She sent an email to the manager expressing her disappointment that the facility was closed but made sure to let her know how much she loved the pool and appreciated her and her staff’s efforts. “It’s such a friendly place and wonderful resource.”
The manager responded, letting her know that she checked with her staff and the pool was open on Saturday. Emails were exchanged, each describing their version of the events. She decided that she would wait until Monday to see if things would return to normal.
It did. The next Saturday all was well, too.
Recounting the details of a seemingly insignificant event may seem overly dramatic. But this was my experience. I felt the unease intensely and made me wonder about my sanity a bit. Things have returned to normal, expectations are being met each time I go back. But what lingers from the event is a mystery to me and I can’t shake the odd feeling from that day.
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