Will It Stick This Time?

Last week, the little angel started crying at bedtime. Howling, actually. Because she was the only kid in her summer camp class that failed the swimming test.

Swimming has been a challenge for her.

My heart broke, again, as it does every time. I'm not a great swimmer myself, and I know that feeling of being the one who can't seem to get it in the pool. I manage to get across the pool and back, but part of my paranoia about her in the water stems from my marked inability to save anyone from drowning, almost not even myself.

The next morning, I talked to the swim instructor at camp. I asked what we could work on with her. She started to tell me, and I started to seize up, because I knew I would be useless at teaching my daughter what to do -- I hardly know how to do it myself. I think the instructor thought I was trying to convince her to let the little angel go with her friends even if she wasn't ready, but I wasn't. I was asking for help.

She offered to give the little angel one emergency lesson before she goes out of town on vacation for three weeks and before the little angel's two-week intensive swim lessons start in mid-July. I thanked her, moved some stuff in my schedule around, and girded my loins for the water. The lesson is in a few hours.

This morning, the little angel tried to talk her way out of the lesson. She said she didn't care if she was the only kid with the babies in the shallow end. She said she hated swimming lessons. But I know she was upset this weekend when I made her wear her life jacket in the deep end when none of her friends had to. And she commented at least eight times how happy she was that everyone was wearing their life jackets when our neighbors took us out for a surprise boat ride last night.

"It's done," I told her as we got in the car this morning. "You have to. There are a few things in our family that are nonnegotiable, and wearing your seatbelt and learning to swim are two of them."

After I dropped her off, I started thinking of other things that are nonnegotiable in my brand of parenting: reading/writing/arithmetic, learning to drive, learning about credit, basic first aid. Then there's a deep gray chasm filled with things I want her to master: how to cook, how to sew on buttons, how to iron and do laundry, how to break down sales pitches, how to blog -- but these things don't fall into the life-and-death arena for me.

Swimming does.

She'll hate it, I'll hate it -- but this? This could be the year. She is so close. She can dive for rings and dog paddle -- she just can't do the crawl across the pool yet.

Hoping for salvation this summer.