Just keep swimming!

The other day I went swimming with my son and my nephew and although they drove me insane, I learned a few things about trying, failing, and succeeding.  My nephew Sweet Pea took swimming lessons for I believe about a year or maybe less.  Sweet Pea swears he can swim like a fish but in reality he seems able to sink like a rock.  I tied the floaty around his waist and told him to stay in the shallow end of the pool.  I looked up only to see him entering the deeper end (3.6 feet) by way of jumping.  My heart skipped a dozen beats and I jumped to grab him.  The floaty bought him back to the surface, but not as quickly as I would have liked.  He had swallowed a little water and his eyes were tearing up.  He was coughing and had the appearance of  a drowned rat, but other than that he was fine.  I on the other had, was a little more nervous.  “Sweet Pea!” I said to him.  “Don’t do that again!”  “Ok Adji.”  he said as I took him back to the shallower end of the pool (3.0 feet)  I placed him on the edge of the pool so he could jump in here and I went to grab my Pun’kin who is tall enough to stand in the water alone but having had no lessons I still liked him to stay close to me.  “Mommy let me go” he told me.   I refused for  but eventually I  let go.  All night Sweet Pea and Pun’kin performed these death-defying stunts.  Sweet Pea would jump I would panic and then Pun’kin would do the same or vice versa. You guys can not swim I would tell them.  They neither cared nor listened.  When it was time for the pool to close the boys asked if they could jump in one last time.  I said ok reluctantly thinking that they meant on the safe side.  That is not what they meant, they went over to the section where neither of them can stand and said they were going to jump from there.  My heart stopped beating I swam as fast I could to the other side , reaching it at the same time as Sweet Pea jumped.  I reached down to grab him but before I had he and the floaty(still attached people) came back to the surface of the water.  “I did it Adji” he said smiling.  He had managed to teach himself how to go to the bottom of the water(4.o feet) and push himself back to the top, with the help of the floaty, he made it back to the top in a timely, non choking, drowned rat way.  Now it was Pun’kin’s turn I wanted to tell him no but Sweet Pea had already done it and I didn’t want to not give him the chance to succeed as well.  1,2,3,4,5 he counted and then he jumped.  He did not come back up right away instead he began to move his legs and arms and I saw that he had taught himself to move from one point to the other in the water.  He was swimming! Not the greatest swimmer ever, but he had learned. I was/am proud of my boys.  They had not stopped even when I was afraid.  They had kept swimming.  I was proud of myself as well because I in my fear had let them keep swimming and they had learned lessons that I did not teach such as perseverance and self-reliance.  I can promise you that it will be a long time before I take them swimming together again because my nerves can not take it, but I know that if they apply the lessons learned on this one day to other aspects of life the journey will be well worth watching.

~ by adjoapacheco on March 5, 2010.