Swimming Memories

Swimming was one of my favorite summer sports as a kid.

Well, I think I actually played more Marco Polo and Tea Parties than actually swimming, but we'll call it a sport.

Most of my summer days, as a kid, were spent in a pool. On the days I wasn't swimming, I could be found tucked away in my bedroom mastering  Pitfall on my Atari.

I split my swim time between our local community pool, and my neighbor's backyard, above ground. Clocking countless hours cannon-balling, 'Nestea' plunging, learning to dive, and doing a mean butterfly stroke, until my lips turned a deep shade of purple complementing my pruned fingers and toes.

Keeping that tradition alive, I have taken my children  to the local pool. On more than one occasion, the day ended with an entire pool evacuation to remove a suspicious substance. 'Probably poop', I whispered to my kids as we packed our bags.

We now have our own 4-foot, above-ground pool, just steps from our back door. Yet, my kids' lips rarely reach the shade of purple mine did at that age. They don't clock the pool hours I did. Having our own pool doesn't pack the same thrill as a bagged lunch and a thermos of Kool-Aid at the community pool.

Our backyard pool is kept under lock and key and is only used when supervised. My older children can swim on their own. My youngest could very well make his way with water wings, but insists on wearing his life jacket, complete with crotch strap, I don't argue.

My kids have donned various types of life saving apparel, 'swimmie' arms, back bubbles, even the full body armor built into a bathing suit. The armor suit appears to be the furthest from comfortable. Nothing says I'm ready to swim like a huge bubble protruding from your belly, back, and hiney.

I don't recall wearing any float-ie bands as a kid, the only time we wore a life jacket was when we were on a boat. We would don those fluorescent orange jackets up to our necks, whee lovely boat ride, feel like I'm in an orange neck brace, this is fun.

Like most things in life, swimming seemed so much cooler and fun when I was a kid. Now that I'm a Mom my swimming consists of tiptoeing into the pool bobbing up and down a few times, then back up the ladder.

I'd much rather be sitting in the warm sun with a good book, cooled by the splash of a cannonballing kid.

Shivaun Williams is the author of dar liomsa (my opinion).