Saturday was cool, wet, and gray, so after a morning of errands I took Little Boy to the indoor pool at my gym for the family recreational 2-hour block. (I gifted Mr. P with 3 hours to see the new James Bond movie, which he proclaimed “the best James Bond ever”… not saying much, ahem). The family swim is in the small “therapeutic” pool, which is heated almost to hot tub temperatures and mostly accommodates elderly/handicapped swimmers who require a phalanx of flotation devices. During the family swim, these swimmers can still exercise in a roped off area and I always feel bad that their workout is alongside a din of screaming, splashing children. (What is it about pools that induce kids to scream? Is it the echo?)
Little Boy and I arrive and change in the family changing area. “I’m excited to go swimming, aren’t you?” I ask. “No,” he said. “I will be excited when we are in the pool.” Fair enough. After we took our pre-swim shower (it’s state law, people! I’m looking at you, overweight hairy-back man) we shiver our way past the lap pool and sink gratefully into the warm water of the therapeutic pool. The best thing about swimming with Little Boy is it’s something we can do together, yet he does not need to be actively entertained. He loves the water and is very content to spend 20 minutes, say, fetching dive toys from the bottom, or trying to stand on a kick board, or just blowing bubbles. Sometimes he likes to hold onto my back as I swim, or play “monster” (which used to be called “beluga”). He can move pretty much on his own in the pool with an underwater doggy paddle, and then he bobs his head above the surface for a quick breath before going back under. I stay close to him and sometimes he’ll grab my arm and pull himself up. Sometimes he tries to swim with above-surface strokes and kicks, but he’s not quite there yet. It’s evolving.
As I watch Little Boy frolic, I couldn’t help observing another family: a father (of either Indian or Middle Eastern descent) and his 6ish daughter and 4ish son. He was giving them a swimming lesson. Both of the children seemed scared of water; one of them would sit on the shallowest of steps while the father taught the other one. When he would switch, the child whose turn it was would howl in protest: “I don’t want to! No! No!” He instructed them to hold onto a floating barbell while kicking. Oh, he was all about the kicking… “Kick! Kick! No, your back needs to be straight! Point your toes! Stop bending your knees!” (All of this is very hard to do when half of your torso is above water). If they managed to sustain a kick that was up to his standards, he’d say “Very good! You’re swimming!” This continued for about an hour and wow — in comparison to every other kid in the pool who was happily playing, those kids looked miserable.
Now, I’m not critiquing anyone’s parenting, especially because I think it’s great when any parent takes dedicated time to do active things with their children; it’s obvious he cares about his children and wants them to do well. And if Little Boy didn’t love the water so much, maybe I’d be doing the exact same thing (“Kick! Kick!”) I guess what I’m saying is… I’m glad Little Boy loves the water. I’m glad he’s figuring out how to move in the water on his own rather than from formal swim lessons (which, in all honesty, he will at some point). I’m glad he’s playing and learning that water is fun rather than huddling on the steps in dread. Who knows if he’ll like swimming for sport in the future? And, who cares?
As a side note, throughout the swim a woman who was with her 7ish daughter kept smiling at me. I smiled back, a little uncomfortable because they were pretty crushing smiles. Later, her daughter came over to Little Boy and handed him some of the dive toys he’d been playing with earlier (and I made him share with other kids because he was monopolizing them). “She wants him to have those,” the mother said. “Her English isn’t that good.”
I looked at them in a new light: here’s this blond woman in her forties with this blond little girl, and I didn’t give it a second thought that they were biologically mother-daughter. I smiled but didn’t say anything, and I listened to the little girl talking: the pidgin English of a beginner child (so familiar) with clips of Russian.
Ah, the ardent smiles suddenly made sense: she was a newbie adoptive parent, eager to share the joy of welcoming a child into your life after all of the paperwork, bureaucratic headache, the waiting, the traveling… and at last the child is home and enjoying an afternoon of family swim. Big smiles to that!
