Aqua-Babies!
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
2:30 PM We arrived, soaking wet (at least I was) from the steady drenching rain that started as we walked the mile across town. I peeled off our clothes in a locker room that was significantly better than any I came across during my years in school. No snide comments and sideways glances that screamed "omigod you still wear an undershirt?" No sounds of muffled banging from the inside of the lockers. No goatlike smell of damp towels and old socks.
Of course, the first thing the impling wanted to do was climb into a locker and grin at me while I crammed myself into my swim suit. Then I wrestled my squirming girl into her swimmies and her own little bathing suit, and headed for the showers. Of course, I couldn’t for the life of me get them to work. I read the instructions twice, turned the knob, pushed in the button, nothing. It was getting late. All the other babies were probably already perfecting the butterfly.
We gave up on the shower (M doesn’t particularly enjoy them anyway, something she will have to get over) and headed for the pool. Sure enough, there was a small group of mothers and their peanuts bobbing around. The impling’s face suddenly became very serious, so we snuggled a bit closer and I went down the steps into deliciously warm water. 4 ft at the deepest. M didn’t like this very much at all. It’s hard to know how much of her discomfort was her reacting to the shrieks of the other babies, and how much was her own little brain recognizing something new and strange and not quite sure whether it was a good something new or not. Her little legs clamped around my waist and her arms around my neck and she started chanting her buh-buh-buh song...her “I’m going to put up with this for now but if one more thing happens that is new and weird I’m going to scream my tonsils out” song.
So we took it slowly.
I want so much for M to be at home in the water. I learned to swim pretty naturally when I was little. I remember pretending to swim long before I could actually float and do the crawl. I’d mimic the crawl and place my hands on the sand beneath the water and drag myself around. It didn’t matter how much sand went down my pants. I was “swimming”! Now I just love the feeling of the water, how easily my body relaxes into it, bobbing to the surface. Sometimes I think learning to float is just as much imagination as anything else. If you think you are heavy, you will sink. If you imagine your body as full of air and water, (which, it is) it’s much easier to see yourself bobbing on the surface. Your body follows (so I like to think).
But M is so little, and house in Lakeville, where I learned to swim, was sold long ago. So we walked and bobbed around this wonderful pool together with complete strangers, who felt just as strange as we did, and followed the directions of an instructor who couldn’t have been old enough to graduate from high school. Very pleasant, very enthusiastic. And she was fine with us doing our own thing.
So I bobbed around with my unhappy little one, gauging her chant, wondering if I was going to have to give up and get out of the pool before I scarred her for life, when she saw the depth marker. Interesting. She reached out for the letters. So we sang the alphabet song first to F and then to T, and a ghost of a smile crept across her face. This at least, was something familiar. So we swam around to the other depth markers and did the same thing, and somewhere along the way, I manouvered onto my back so the impling was riding on my stomache, and we swam around the pool together.
And at the end of class, the impling smiled and clapped her hands.
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
Today, at the end of our second class, she laughed and clapped her hands. Things are looking good.
2:30 PM We arrived, soaking wet (at least I was) from the steady drenching rain that started as we walked the mile across town. I peeled off our clothes in a locker room that was significantly better than any I came across during my years in school. No snide comments and sideways glances that screamed "omigod you still wear an undershirt?" No sounds of muffled banging from the inside of the lockers. No goatlike smell of damp towels and old socks.
Of course, the first thing the impling wanted to do was climb into a locker and grin at me while I crammed myself into my swim suit. Then I wrestled my squirming girl into her swimmies and her own little bathing suit, and headed for the showers. Of course, I couldn’t for the life of me get them to work. I read the instructions twice, turned the knob, pushed in the button, nothing. It was getting late. All the other babies were probably already perfecting the butterfly.
We gave up on the shower (M doesn’t particularly enjoy them anyway, something she will have to get over) and headed for the pool. Sure enough, there was a small group of mothers and their peanuts bobbing around. The impling’s face suddenly became very serious, so we snuggled a bit closer and I went down the steps into deliciously warm water. 4 ft at the deepest. M didn’t like this very much at all. It’s hard to know how much of her discomfort was her reacting to the shrieks of the other babies, and how much was her own little brain recognizing something new and strange and not quite sure whether it was a good something new or not. Her little legs clamped around my waist and her arms around my neck and she started chanting her buh-buh-buh song...her “I’m going to put up with this for now but if one more thing happens that is new and weird I’m going to scream my tonsils out” song.
So we took it slowly.
I want so much for M to be at home in the water. I learned to swim pretty naturally when I was little. I remember pretending to swim long before I could actually float and do the crawl. I’d mimic the crawl and place my hands on the sand beneath the water and drag myself around. It didn’t matter how much sand went down my pants. I was “swimming”! Now I just love the feeling of the water, how easily my body relaxes into it, bobbing to the surface. Sometimes I think learning to float is just as much imagination as anything else. If you think you are heavy, you will sink. If you imagine your body as full of air and water, (which, it is) it’s much easier to see yourself bobbing on the surface. Your body follows (so I like to think).
But M is so little, and house in Lakeville, where I learned to swim, was sold long ago. So we walked and bobbed around this wonderful pool together with complete strangers, who felt just as strange as we did, and followed the directions of an instructor who couldn’t have been old enough to graduate from high school. Very pleasant, very enthusiastic. And she was fine with us doing our own thing.
So I bobbed around with my unhappy little one, gauging her chant, wondering if I was going to have to give up and get out of the pool before I scarred her for life, when she saw the depth marker. Interesting. She reached out for the letters. So we sang the alphabet song first to F and then to T, and a ghost of a smile crept across her face. This at least, was something familiar. So we swam around to the other depth markers and did the same thing, and somewhere along the way, I manouvered onto my back so the impling was riding on my stomache, and we swam around the pool together.
And at the end of class, the impling smiled and clapped her hands.
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
Today, at the end of our second class, she laughed and clapped her hands. Things are looking good.
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