A few years ago, I had the responsibility of managing a neighborhood pool. I had to study for and pass a DHEC test to become a Certified Pool Operator. But that didn’t teach me how to take care of a pool every day. Plus, this is what I had to work with. How do you bring a pool back from that? I needed a guide. A seasoned veteran that had done this before. I needed to ask a lot of questions. So I met Sue down at the green pond which was supposed to be a pool.
Fresh from my DHEC training, I asked “Should we dump in a bunch of chlorine?”
She said, “No, that would just waste the chlorine. You have to get all the debris – leaves, sticks, old shoes, and sticks, off the bottom of the pool.”
“But I can’t even see the bottom of the pool!”
“You have to use the right tool.” And she brought out the leaf rake hose. “You have to hook it up and then slowly move it back and forth across the bottom.”
“But I won’t know if it is working.”
“You have to learn to trust that the tool is doing its job. You will learn to feel that in the pole. You will feel when the bag is full and it is time to bring it up and empty it.”
“But this is going to take forever! There might be a ton of leaves down there.”
“Do you want a clean pool? It won’t take forever, but you might have to do this several hours every day for a week.”
So I ran the leaf rake slowly, back and forth through the green soup, emptied the bag, and did it again. Over and over. Until the leaf rake was not picking up any more leaves.
I happily told Sue, “It’s done. No more leaves. Now can we dump in the chlorine?”
“No, that would waste the chlorine. Now we turn on the pump. The pump will circulate the water through the sand filter and remove the algae. But it will need to do it in stages. If you let it run too long, you will burn out the pump as the sand filter will get clogged.”
“How do I fix that?”
“You have to backwash the filter.”
“How do I do that?”
“You have to change the flow of water to run backwards through the pipes to flush the sediment it caught out into the drain. You will need to do this 4 times a day for the next week. It will take 30 min of filtering and 15 min of backwashing. Four times a day. Every day for a week.”
So I started filtering and backwashing. It made a horrible racket. The first few days were nothing but green spewing out of the drain. And then, one day, I noticed that the pool water looked a little lighter, more translucent. By the end of the week, the water was still a light green, but I could see a foot or more down into the murky water. I was excited to tell Sue that the filtering and backwashing were working.
“Now can we dump in the chlorine?”
“No, that would waste the chlorine. Now you have to brush the walls of the pool. There is algae on the walls that needs to get into the water so that it can be removed. Take this long pole and brush and brush the walls and floor of the pool.”
“That will take forever!”
“Do you want a clean pool? Brush the walls each day for a week. Run the filter after your brush, then backwash.”
At first, the water got worse as I brushed the green walls. But the filter and backwash made it better. Finally after a week, the green stains were gone and the water was looking better, but still a murky, light green.
“Now do we dump in the chlorine?”
“No, that would waste the chlorine. Now we need to use another tool. We need to vacuum the algae that you knocked off the walls. But you need to let it settle. Do not turn on the filter for 24 hours. Come back tomorrow, hook up the vacuum, and slowly vacuum the entire floor of the pool. Then let it sit for 24 hours and then vacuum it again.”
“I know, I know. Until the end of the week.”
I have to admit that the water was looking a good deal better than the first day. It was still quite hazy and had a light green tint, but I could see the bottom drain now. I was sure that we would now dump in the chlorine that I had learned about at the DHEC test.
“Now we do we dump in the chlorine?”
“No, that would waste the chlorine. The water needs to be balanced chemically for the chlorine to be effective. We have to add calcium to protect the pool plaster and metal ladder from chemical reactions, baking soda for alkalinity, dry acid for ph balance, and cyanuric acid to protect the chlorine from being broken down by sunlight too quickly. Chlorine is expensive, so we want it to do its job for as long as it can.”
So we added chemicals and took water samples down to the pool store. And they wrote down the numbers and sent me back to add more of this and more of that. Finally the water was ready.
“Now,” said Sue, “we are ready to add the chlorine.”
I dumped in 120 pounds of chlorine which had been prescribed.
“How does the chlorine does its job,” I asked Sue.
“It burns off or oxidizes the smallest organic particles that you weren’t able to get up with the leaf rake, or the filter, or the vacuum. It also kills bacteria of almost every kind so that it is safe to swim in.”
And it worked! Wow! The next day the pool water was totally clean, no green at all. But it was a bit cloudy. I couldn’t really see the drain anymore. I was really disappointed. I thought the chlorine would fix all the problems.
“Sue, the water is clean, but it is all cloudy!”
“You have bleached the algae, but it is still there. You have to use the same technique you used after brushing the walls. Let it settle and then vacuum it up. It won’t take quite as long this time.”
Sure enough, it settled like a white dust onto the floor of the pool and I vacuumed it up. Now the water was sparkling clean. It reflected the blue sky perfectly and looked so beautiful in the bright sunshine. It had taken a ton of work, but I was proud of the results. And I knew what it took to fix a green pool.
“So, is that it, Sue? We just let the kids in for the summer?”
“Oh no. You must do daily maintenance or the pool will have to be shut down if it gets an algae bloom.”
“Oh no! Not all over again.”
“Well, no, it isn’t the same amount of work. You have to check the pool chemical levels every day, backwash the filter, add any chemical that is low, empty the skimmer baskets, use the net to remove any leaves floating on the surface, and wash off any debris on the deck surrounding the pool. When you get good at it, that should only take an hour. Then once a week, you shock the pool.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“You put about 10 pounds of chlorine in at the end of the day and raise the chlorine level of the water to an unsafe level for people. But overnight, it will superclean the pool. And then in the morning, the filter and the sun will bring the chlorine level back down to the normal level by the time you open the pool.”
“If you had dumped in the chlorine on the first day, you might have seen a small improvement, but the effort and expense would have been wasted. The quantity of contaminants in the pool would have overwhelmed the ability of the chlorine to purify the water. You have to systematically remove the contaminants from the pool, patiently and consistently, so that when you are ready, it will do the job it is supposed to.”
“Sue, why did they leave the pool like this all winter? This is so much work.”
“Well, nobody is willing to come out in the cold and clean off the leaves that are floating on the surface. If they did that, the pool cleanup would have been a lot less work.”
“Sue, how did you learn all this?”
“By doing it every day for a very long time. I learned what worked and what didn’t work. I learned what steps to do first and which ones to do next. I’m going to be moving out of the neighborhood soon, but you can call me if you ever have any question about the pool.”
“So, why did you do it, Sue? Did you want a clean pool?”
“Oh no. A clean pool only has one purpose. To be full of happy children, playing, laughing, yelling, diving, playing Marco Polo. You see, I live just up the street in my house by myself. And I love to hear the children laughing and playing in the pool all summertime long.”
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An allegory is a made-up story in which we can see life lessons. A parable is a true-to-life story in which we can see valuable life lessons. This was a true story that I not only lived, but I actually keep living as I go down to my pool every day, summer or winter, and use the net to remove the leaves, empty the skimmer basket, and check the chemical levels. What is interesting that even though I was living in a parable, I had not seen the parallel to my recovery.
I was so ready to dump in the magical chlorine, to find the fix, the cure, to find the shortcut. But it took patient, consistent, and multiple stages of hard work to find the results that I was looking for. I found great value in listening to the advice of those that have gone before and taught me how things worked. I learned the value of daily maintenance which can prevent the huge cleanup problems that seem insurmountable. But the thing I think I appreciate most, is that I really don’t just want a clean pool, or a sober life, just to have it. I want it to be the vehicle in which I can enjoy and experience all that life has to offer and that God has blessed me with. This is why I keep my pool clean.