Swim Lessons

“Will you wipe my bottom, please?” Sylvia calls plaintively from the bathroom. She is five-years-old and many months past the cut-off for bottom wiping. Still, I admit I have been inconsistent. She is perfectly capable of doing it herself, but inevitably the process takes fifteen minutes and a quarter of a roll of toilet paper, not to mention the half a dozen wet wipes that threaten to clog the toilet.

At the moment, however, I am spreading peanut butter on bread at the kitchen counter and am in no mood to relent.

“No!” I yell back. “I’m way too busy to wipe your bottom.”

The moment the words leave my mouth, I am struck by how untrue they are. It’s true, of course,  that I have three lunches to pack, plus the girls’ snacks for preschool, and breakfast to eat and clean up after. But, for a moment, I make myself remember how unbusy I really am.

Five years ago, when Don was newly back at work after the birth of the twins, one of his co-workers asked after me.

“Well,” Don replied, “When I left this morning, she was standing at the counter breast-feeding and spreading cream cheese on a bagel.”

That was busy. This is nothing.

Being a parent of very young children is like standing in the surf. The demands come in waves, some big enough to knock you off your feet. There are momentary lulls and moments of exhilaration, and then before you know it you are a half a mile down the beach.

The waves pummel you. The sand gives way beneath your feet. Breast milk becomes rice cereal becomes mushed up sweet potatoes become PB&J. Diapers go on forever, and so does potty-training, and even years after that you are still wiping bottoms. And then one day you’re standing at the counter making sandwiches and it feels absolutely impossible that you could have done all that, because suddenly wiping one more little bottom that has already been wiped ad nauseam is just too much to ask a mom to do.

Life is infinitely easier now, there is no doubt about it. How many times did people tell me?

“Don’t worry, it gets easier.” And then inevitably their faces would shift and they couldn’t help shaking their heads a little and adding, “Well, it gets easier in some ways, harder in others.”

I didn’t believe them. They had forgotten, or they had no idea. At the very least, there would be more sleep, so how could it not be easier?

Perhaps I am beginning to understand. Yes, the hands-on requirements of parenting have eased, and yet the hard questions remain. When Clayton was a baby, I agonized about whether to nurse him to sleep or let him cry it out. Was I being too coddling? Was I being too cruel? I fantasized about the day when he would be too old for naps and the questions would be moot.

But yesterday, years and years after his last nap, the same questions climbed from their graves, their faces surprisingly familiar.

It was Thursday, the first day of swim lessons. Gently, I reminded Clayton about it at breakfast, bracing myself for his resistance. I had expected nervousness and whining and eventual compliance. I had not expected the tears and the agonizing, the misery and the fear.

“I was worried about it all day at school,” he whimpered that afternoon when he got off the bus. The next few hours were a torment-- for both of us. While Sylvia cheerfully packed her swimsuit and her goggles, Clayton pleaded, wailed, and rationalized. When would he do his homework? When would he get to play outside? It would be just like the one hour of wrestling practice he attended, with scores of swarming kids and a rock in his stomach.

With wrestling, I had been on his side. The practices were overwhelming and, frankly, I didn’t care if he wrestled. I hated the frozen look on his face as he moved through the exercises, remembered too clearly the agony of elementary school softball games, when all my deficiencies were on display, ready for ridicule. Why wouldn’t I spare him that if I could?

Clayton is very athletic, but he’s also an introvert. Team sports, I tell myself, are just not a good fit right now. Plus, he’s only seven! If all he wants to do is jump on the trampoline and play at home, that is fine with me. I am sure that we will be as over-committed with extracurriculars as the next family soon enough.

Somehow, though, swim lessons feel like a different story. Clayton loves to swim; I want him to have the skills to do it well. I really believe that knowing how to swim will enrich his whole life. Still, in the hours before we left the house for the YW, watching him steamrolled by his fear, I wanted--oh, how I wanted!-- to put him out of his misery. I could sense him waiting for me to relent, to tell him, fine, he didn’t have to do it, not if it made him so sad.

Because isn’t that my job, to see him safe and happy? Every fiber in me wanted to comfort him, but he would not be comforted-- not while the specter of swim lessons loomed. I could feel myself waffling. Clayton knows how to dog paddle; he’s not going to drown. His father has never had a swim lesson in his life, and he manages okay.

But in some deeper place, I knew two things. First, that as much as Clayton was begging me to let him off the hook, he was also counting on me to hold the line, that my waffling was not helping him one bit. Instead of summoning his courage, he was still looking for a way out.

“If we forget my bathing suit, will I still have to do it?” he asked as we pulled out of the driveway.

And I knew-- or rather sensed-- that something more was at stake here. Clayton’s whole life will be full of new situations in which he’ll feel nervous. Did I want to teach him that it’s okay to opt out whenever he feels afraid? I hated to see him so anxious, and yet, more than anything, I wanted him to know that he could do it anyway, that it would never be as bad as he imagined.

I wish that Clayton had taken his first swim lesson and had fallen in love with it, that the forty-five minutes of fun had eclipsed all his fears. Instead, he had been surprised by how hard it was, amazed at how much he still has to learn.

“All those kids can swim better than me!” he told me with surprise.

Clayton’s never going to be the kid who finds joy and excitement in new situations. It was too much to hope for that swim lessons would win him over; given a choice, he would much rather stay at home and play with his Calico Critters. As I watched him through the viewing window at the pool, I never saw him smile, not even once. But when his turn with the teacher was over and she went on to help the next kid, I watched as he held the kick board out in front of him and leaned his head to the side, practicing the side breathing she had taught him. Maybe it wasn’t as fun as I had promised, but it felt like a triumph nonetheless.