“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.
July was more than halfway over by the time we first made it to the local wading pool. I helped the kids into their suits and let them tear out into the bustling water ahead of me. I trailed behind to make sure that wee Mary would be okay, though she loves water so I wasn’t worried.
I paused to say hello to a neighbourhood friend I hadn’t seen for a while and glanced over my shoulder at the pool. Mary had fallen and dunked her head beneath the water.
I rushed to the edge of the wading pool and she was back on her feet and crying. I looked down at my own feet. These were my good sandals and I really didn’t want to get them wet. “Come here, Mary,” I called. “Come to Mommy.” I tried tugging at the zipper on my sandal but it was catching.
She fell down again. I strode into the water, sandals be damned, and the teenage lifeguard suddenly sprang to life and strode in past me. “You really need to watch her more carefully,” he said. I picked Mary up and carried her out of the pool. “I’m sorry.”
I was urging Mary to give the pool another try. She really does love water and I hoped that at least one of my children might learn to swim eventually. She finally agreed and I took her by the hand and started walking toward the wading pool, clipping a little girl who was sprinting past. The girl wiped out hard on the concrete and started wailing. Her mother rushed over, newborn infant at the breast, and tried to comfort her.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not allowed back.
* * *
The summer was officially halfway over and we’d gone swimming as a family exactly twice. The cool breeze in the air didn’t exactly scream out for a swim, but the sun had come out, we had a couple spare hours and the local outdoor pool was about to open for drop-in hours.
We stopped at home to pick up our swim gear and heading back to the pool. The sky looked a little grey now and the air was definitely not warm. “It’ll be fine,” I said. We were the first ones there.
They gave the kids colour-coded wrist bands and reminded us to rinse off in the shower before entering the pool.
We crammed into a stall in the family change room and peeled off t-shirts and shorts and pulled up trunks and one pieces. Some of us went to the bathroom and then the rest of us did. We put our clothes and shoes in a coin-op locker and carried our towels toward the shower. Taking turns holding the towels we did as we were told and made sure we thoroughly rinsed off in the shower.
A life guard met us as we turned the corner toward the pool deck. “I’m sorry, guys,” he said. The sky was black and rain drops splashed against the pool’s water. “We have to listen for thunder for half an hour before we can let anyone in. You might be able to swim after that.” A cool breeze whipped down the corridor, making my hair stand on end.
If only they’d called into the change room before we’d gone in the shower. I was not ready to face the dressing room again so soon.
“Hey guys! Who wants to have a family shower?”
So we hung out in the warm shower for twenty minutes, laughing and splashing and making the best of it while hail beat down on the skylight above.
* * *
It’s another free evening with kids clamoring for water play and this time the prospect of changing the entire family in and out of swim suits is too much for me to bear. It turns out that the only thing worse than getting two kids in and out of bathing suits is getting three kids and two adults in and out of bathing suits.
“Let’s pick up a pizza and have a picnic dinner at a park with a splash pad, ” I said.
And so we did.
And it was fantastic.
Of course, it still wasn’t swimming per se.
I guess I’ll have to sign them up for lessons after all.