When I was little I thought that my mom swam like a mermaid. You know, except for the feet thing. She used to swim laps for exercise 5 or 6 days a week. She's been stopped mid-workout more than once by coaches (including one Jr. Olympic coach) who asked where she trained. She didn't train. She's just a natural swimmer.
From as early as I can remember we did swimming lessons every summer. I think we even did Mommy & Me classes as young as 6 months old. I'm sure that part of the reason was that my mom was eager to share her passion with us. Being a mom myself now, I understand the desire to show this little person who is a part of you all of the things that bring you joy so that maybe it'll bring them joy too.
Unfortunately for my mom, swimming was not a passion that I shared. She swam like a mermaid, I...um...floundered. Don't get me wrong. I'm super grateful for the swimming lessons. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't started swimming at such a young age I wouldn't know how to swim to this day. I consider myself relatively fearless (though not reckless). I've traveled alone through Europe for ten days. Rollercoasters don't bother me a bit. I've even been skydiving. But when it comes to water, I'm a chicken. I still can't dive in head first. Water goes up my nose and I'm miserable for the rest of the day. I can handle water that isn't deeper than I am tall. I just don't like the feeling of trying to keep myself afloat.
My mom said that she knew pretty early that I wouldn't be a water baby. The summer I was two I fell into the baby pool (maybe 12" of water) at the beginning of the summer. For the whole rest of the summer I refused to go in the water, no matter what. This was a pretty resolute decision for a two year old since we went to the pool every day.
Every.
Single.
Day.
Fortunately for my mom, it looks like my fear of water (and her passion for it) have skipped a generation. My friend
Jan blogged about their Spring Break trip to Phoenix last week. From the looks of the pictures, they stayed at a water park that had cots by the pool to nap on between the hours of midnight and 5 am. There may have been a hotel involved, but I'm really not sure that they needed one. I was inspired by her posts to see if Norah enjoyed swimming or not, so I invited her to bring her twin boys, Kyle and Reed and the pool with us yesterday. They're used to the water, having lived in it for a week. I was hoping their confidence might rub off on my girl, since I assumed she might take after me.
At first Norah was just excited to see her friends, to whom she refers collectively as "boyss" and individually as "Kyle". We think Reed might be too hard to say. She was a little overwhelmed by all the noise and kids running around at first, but after about five minutes she got into it. And once Kyle (the actual Kyle) took off for the Giant Froggy Slide of Doom, she proved that she could keep up with the boys just fine.
Norah and the boys getting used to the shallow end.
Norah and Reed playing in front of the giant crab. Kyle had already run off to the slide by this picture.
This series proves that Norah does not share her mother's fear of water in the face.
This is Kyle at the top of the Giant Froggy Slide of Doom. Get a load of how big that thing is! She climbed up there all by herself at least 10 times.
And here she is! My little daredevil!!
Every time she landed she got a face-full of water, and still came up smiling. In fact later (after I'd put the camera away), she went on the slide for big kids (you know, for 5 and 6 year-olds) all by herself. I was so proud! You'd better believe that she and Grammy will be visiting the pool a lot this summer.
