“Put your shirt on, son. Your shirt. It’s right there. No, there. Yes. Put it on. I … just … put it on.”
I was melting. I was standing in the middle of a swimming pool dressing room with a rabid toddler fighting to get out of my arms and to run headlong out of the change room into the pool, a four-year-old who was bouncing off the walls and a newly minted seven-year-old who was rendered incapable of getting dressed by an iPad game someone else was playing across the room. I had been either poolside or in the dressing room for over an hour ushering two children in and out of swim lessons while trying to keep my a one-and-a-half-year-old alive in a room full of hard wet tiles and a deep body of water without the aid of the slim umbrella stroller I brought since it’s not allowed in the change room because of safety. Fire safety.
Man, was I melting. I had shed my jacket and my shirt and was down to a skimpy tank top and jeans and I was still dying. It was hot in that dressing room. I don’t cope well with the heat.
“Okay, now your socks. Your socks. Both of them. Don’t drop them on the floor! Oh great … OUCH!” My own baby just bit me. Then she dug her fingers into my flesh and twisted and started to thrash her body this way and that. Doing this once a week during the spring was killing me. How on earth was I going to manage everyday swimming lessons for half the summer?
We finally escaped the steam room of hell and found sweet relief in the cool spring air. I looked at their report cards. “Nice work!” “Good effort!” Neither of them had passed their level. As usual.
Screw it. I decided these lessons were just not worth the agony. We’d go swimming as a family as much as possible over the summer and revisit the idea of lessons when I’d had a chance to recover.
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