Swimming

Since we left Red State Capital City Suburb, we have swum in a hotel pool, two ponds, a backyard swimming pool, the ocean, a spray park, and a spray pool. OK, we didn’t exactly swim in the last three, but we did frolic in water. OK, I didn’t exactly swim or frolic in one of the ponds, the ocean, or the spray places. But I watched M and E swim and frolic in the ocean and the spray. And I waded a bit. OK, I’ll admit that I opted out of the second pond expedition.

Yes, I’ve become that child-baffling creature, the grown-up who doesn’t just want to swim.

I remember how my mother would stand in the water up to her knees, chatting with her friends for hours. Eventually she would slowly walk into the deep water and swim long lengths of breast stroke, still chatting with her friends. Then she would get out of the water altogether and sit on the dock or in a beach chair on the pool deck, reading or chatting some more. Huh?

Meanwhile I could swim forever. From the rafts to the dock to the shore in endless circuits. Jumping in again and again. Tipping over each other’s inner tubes again and again. Diving for pennies bright against the blue bottom of the pool. Crying when they made me get out, even as I shivered uncontrollably, my own lips blue.

Now, though, it’s my children who swim forever. M lines up for the diving board and jumps off again and again. E discovers that it’s fun to go underwater with goggles and dunks herself again and again. I make them get out when it’s time to go home. Their lips are blue, but they cry in frustration and plead for just five more minutes.

When they beg me to come in I demur--it’s too cold, I don’t want to get wet, maybe later. Because it is too cold and I don’t want to get wet. I’m happy standing in the water up to my knees, chatting with my friends.

Then I get warm enough and go in and it’s great. I float on my back in the middle of the pond, looking up at the fringe of trees and the great bowl of sky, the din of the beach a faraway comforting murmur. I catch E as she jumps off the side of the pool again and again. I stand just close enough to the spray that it cools without soaking me.

Then I get bored and get out. I chat some more with my friends or read my book or just lie on a towel. My children are baffled. They can’t understand why I don’t want to swim. I am baffled. I can’t understand how I became such a grown-up.