Pool Spawn

Swim Lessons are Dad's Duty

Pregnancy is a slog. For me, there was 4 p.m. nausea and 2 a.m. charlie horses. There were sore breasts, fat feet, and a humiliating resemblance to the Fantasia hippos when I slipped, foolishly, into sexy lingerie.

"Poor you," my compassionate husband often said. "You're going through so much."

Each time, I told him the same thing: "It's okay. You're doing the swim lessons."

Different people dread different points on the parenthood continuum. Some fear labor and delivery. Others cower from potty-training. Others cringe at the notion that someone will eventually hand their graceless offspring a driver's license.

My personal Misery Milestone is the one that has me leaping from a soup-like public pool with a slippery toddler and plodding through cold puddles on slick cement in search of a restroom where I must wrestle with said toddler's rubbery swimsuit and stand dripping and shivering while he uses the toilet, then looks up at me with chlorine-reddened eyes and chatters, "R-r-ready to g-go b-back in?"

Any mom who's been baptized in the church of swim lessons, who's donned her least revealing tankini and descended hesitantly into the wet world of "kickers" and "splashies" and other words one would never say in a board room, knows that swim lessons don't improve as your child ages. They just shift.

1 • 2 • 3

Next >>