Swimming Lessons

Our mornings, for the past two weeks, have centered around swimming lessons. The kids wake slowly these days, stretching and rolling around in their beds before emerging sleepy-eyed and rumply but smiling because they know that they can stay in their jammies for awhile, through breakfast, and instead of putting on real clothes they get to put on their swimming suits. Suzannah informed me on day one that she would be doing a pattern -- the purple suit one day, the star suit the next. Isaac wears his Thomas the Train trunks for swimming lessons every day. His shark ones are for running through the sprinkler at home. The goggles are also a big deal. Suzannah’s are purple with dragon eyes; Isaac has spiderman. I found out just how big of a deal the goggles are this morning when we inadvertently left Isaac’s at home.

“Where my ah-goggles?” he demanded in the car. The kids like to put them on as we pull out of the driveway, but he didn’t mention his until we were nearly there with no time to spare. I’d left them in the car the previous day precisely to avoid this situation, but last night Matt gave him a bath and he wanted them.

(Sidenote: “Ah-goggles” is the way Isaac says “eye goggles.” I don’t know why he calls them eye goggles, but one of the beautiful things about parenting a toddler is the way they pronounce things the “wrong” way, and indeed it is a bit of a heartbreak when, for instance, they start to say video instead of mideo or thank you instead of mink you. Right now I particularly love the way Isaac substitutes a t sound for the f, as in, “Oh, tine,” as he stomps to the table to eat his vegetables before he can have dessert, or “Mommy, tickle my teet!” as he waves his toes at me. It makes even his unreasonable moods endearing when he crosses his arms and frowns as hard as he can and says, “I don’t wanna have tun.”)

We could have had a monster of a meltdown when Isaac realized his ah-goggles were not in the car, but I managed to brush it off quite lightly and cheerfully, reassuring him that there would be goggles on his face when he went into the water. His sister’s, of course, because her lesson comes before his, but I thought, when he’s right there at the edge of the water and his teacher, whom he loves, is calling to him cheerfully, is he really going to stop to freak out over which exact pair of goggles are on his face or is he going to want to just get on in that water?

And he was fine, really. We had one moment, ten minutes before his lesson began, when he saw another little boy in his class waiting nearby with his goggles on, and my son burst into tears and wailed, “I want my ah-goggles!” I plopped him onto my lap and kissed his cheek and said, “I know, Baby, but today you’re going to be a dragon. You’re gonna breathe fire.” That intrigued him. He stopped crying and practiced his fire-breathing right in my face and then shrieked, “DID I SCARE YOU?”

Whatever it takes.

Swimming lessons go like this: Suzannah peels off her shorts and drops them onto the bench next to me. I call after her, “Walk, Zannah!” because she is so excited to get in the water. She manages to slow to a trot. When she reaches the edge of the pool she jumps right in, all the way under water now. Last year she enjoyed her lessons -- she always has -- but not until now has she decided she wants to do this, to hold her breath and be underwater, all on her own. To move her body through the water, without holding on to someone’s arm or even a kickboard. It’s like so many other things -- not necessarily about ability, because that’s been there for awhile, but about desire, about that little click in her brain that’s all, I am going to do this now. She goes under, again and again. She pulls herself through the water, practicing, her face fierce and determined. She is swimming -- a bit awkwardly, but she is doing this thing, and from here on out we will not need to coax her.

Isaac sits next to me on the bench. I’ve been packing along Suzannah’s Leapster Explorer so the kids have that to play with if they get too bored during each other’s lessons. Now, though, in the second week, Isaac seems more content to sit next to me on the bench, his little feet crossed, and just watch. I’ve been reading a bit, because while I love to watch my children swim it’s also a solid hour of essentially the same thing every day, and miraculously, both kids have been chill enough to let that happen. Every now and then I look over at Isaac and run my hand up and down his back. His skin is still baby-soft, and the curve of his cheek in profile, along with those little feet swinging above the cement floor by the pool, is more than I can resist. His baby chub has turned into little boy leanness, but I still love the way he jogs, flat-footed and rocking back and forth a bit with excitement, when it is his turn to get into the pool. They trade places after Suzannah’s lesson. She climbs out and I wrap her in a towel. She folds herself onto the bench next to me, shivering a bit. She does these ridiculous things like casually shaking water out of her hair, crossing her legs, very un-toddlerlike. How did we arrive at this moment of her seven-year-oldness? I remember her first swimsuits when was all rounded belly. I remember piling her hair on top of her head for her very first lessons and it might still be mostly dry when she climbed out at the end. Now her ponytail drips down her back and her legs are long, lean, tan. The other night she surprised me by vaulting into my arms for a hug, and it was actually hard to lift her, to heave her into the air so she could wrap those long legs around my waist. This morning when she hugged me in the kitchen I did not have to bend over very far to kiss her face. She is proud of her height, proud of how strong she is becoming. Last week we went on our first mother-daughter run over at the middle school track, the first of what I hope are many mother-daughter runs, and the way she pumped her arms and slowed to a walk at the end, wiping a wrist across her forehead before reaching for the water bottle -- it gave me glimpse of her beautiful future self.

The pool, though, is the perfect place to just be in the moment, even though I am so aware of this process of growing and becoming. Time is suspended for that hour. The chlorine-filled air contains the essence of summer and the essence of childhood -- the slap of flip-flops on concrete, the echoes of the swimming teachers’ voices, the splashes as the kids jump into the pool and cross it on their own in varying stages of ability and grace. That much hasn’t changed since my own childhood, and it is a gift of time to exist in that hour with my own children now, that warm and humid and -- despite the chaos -- beautifully still hour.