Kalina Hyde

When I first met Kalina, I hadn't said a word to her and I was already terrified. Mostly because on a scale of one to ten she's like a twenty five and I'm a negative six. She was head guard and had been working at Soak Ya since it opened; so, that made her a million times more important than I'd ever be. And to make matters worse, I was a new guard. (And now that I'm an old guard I understand the rep that comes with the term new guard. Trust me...it's not all that great)

I didn't know any of the rules and I didn't know any of the people. I had no idea how the guard world worked. But within a few weeks, I started to get to know everyone there, including Kalina. And slowly, from 10:45am to 6pm...I had a home.

Sometimes, being a guard is stressful. You have to deal with freaks who decide that jeans are swimsuits. You get yelled at and sometimes bitten (that's a story for another time), but somehow Kalina manages to make every summer bearable for us. She kept us laughing and entertained. She was the center of our water-filled universe. Kalina kept us together.

I got to know the ridiculously beautiful, goofy person that Kalina is. She continuously makes me laugh and I don't even think she realizes it. She is The Valley's joy, the presence in The Valley's existence that brings it happiness without it asking. She has the most contagious and genuine laugh that I’ve ever heard. She is a gift that is earned and never given lightly. She is a light that guides us home.

She reminds me a lot of a lighthouse. When you're stuck in the oceans of life, terrified of what lies beneath and above; you always swim toward that beacon in the distance. You know that light means land, you know that light means home. And when your crawl ashore, tired and broken from the waves that tried to drown you, you can hide in the shadows of the light and breathe, the lighthouse becomes your safe place. It becomes where you belong.

Kalina, thank you for being my beacon of light. Thank you for always being in the distance to capture me and bring me home whenever rain, wind, and thunder threatened to drag me away. You saved me from a countless number of psychos, you tolerated my insanity, and you made me feel valued, like the moment I went away, there was a missing piece.

You are a joy that doesn’t come often, and that is why I recognize you for what you are. You’ve been a gift since you were given, you are a light that can’t be diminished. The sun has no place and the moon hides its face in the wake of you.

You’ve been around for sunburns, broken bones, angry moms, pounding heat, smelly feet, and 3 foot water that every last human being can find a way to drown in. You’ve sheltered us from thousands of gallons of rain, you’ve sent us on missions through murky water to find diamond rings. You made guard life something that I’d give everything to live again.

You made slow days our favorite days. You watched tons of us tumble our way down water slides in the most unsafe of ways. You did it all, in one summer you made a home. You turned a season into a lifetime.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again.

Ain’t no life, like guard life.