Lately, each time Kai and I walk out of the gym, he runs over to the glass wall overlooking the lap pool. “Was the splashing guy there today Mommy?” he’ll ask me. Apparently, at some point I must’ve made a comment about a splashy swimmer. It obviously stuck with Kai and he wanted to see the guy. Luckily for me, the novice swimmer, I normally swim next to fairly calm people… until today.
Water aerobics takes place every Tuesday at 9:30am. This translates into eight to ten women sporting waterproof tennis shoes on their feet and tropical flowered bathing suits with little skirts on their bodies. The lifeguards take away two of the lap lanes and the rest of the lap swimmers share lanes. About half way through my workout, a young mom pushed her stroller into the pool area and parked it and her sleeping newborn on the pool deck. “Do you mind if I share a lane with you?” she asked. “Absolutely, go right ahead,” I answered. As a rule, I try to move over as soon as I see the lanes fill up. Some swimmers try to totally ignore the people waiting. Since it is proper etiquette to ask to share a lane, some determined swimmers just keep their head down, and flip turn their way out of the question. One woman, who I respect greatly, avoids this rude behavior by sticking a kickboard at the end of the lane by the wall. Serving as a big blue stop sign, the swimmer must see and address the person holding it there. She never waits too long for a lane.
The mom, wearing a red Speedo and tinted blue goggles slipped in on the left side of the dark blue line that runs along the bottom of the pool. I proceeded on the right with the rest of my workout. Glancing up at her stroller, I remembered what it was like for me as a young mom, during those first few weeks and months after Elizabeth was born. Working out proved to be a challenge. She was so tiny, and needed to be fed so often. I lived in fear of her angry newborn screams. I feared not being able to find a private spot to feed her, that the baby police would force me to whip out my boob in public in order to quiet her down, feed her, and keep my good mom status.
This woman was ingenious, pushing her tiny baby in here to sleep in the stroller. She could check the baby on each lap, and still workout without any childcare. Plus, the locker room was just a few feet away if the baby needed to be fed. This mom looked so young. Did I look that young with Elizabeth? I was only 27 but certainly didn’t feel especially young, but dreadfully uncertain.
Just as I was about to mentally place this woman into her “brilliant mommy” box; she started in with the kicking. This woman had grabbed a blue nubby kickboard and was kicking as if she were trying to exorcise a demon from her lower body. Her legs churned like an out of control propeller, fist-like knees and slapping feet appeared confused to find themselves no longer safe on land, but instead in the water. To my eyes, those parts of her body wanted the hell out of there. Lost in my own observations, I quickly found myself sandwiched between the bobbing full-figured bottoms of the women in the aerobics class on one and the thrashing of this new mother on the other side.
I tried my best to roll out a bit further to the side on each breath, imagining myself in the first wave of a triathlon. Positive imagery could not match the wake the mom left behind her. Coughing with as much grace as I could muster after I unexpectedly sucked in water, I stopped twice to catch my breath, as we continued to pass each other in our laps. The water aerobics women looked up a few times and gave me gentle smiles as they raised their arms over their heads in time to the music. The leader twisted from side to side and sang out, “Up and down, let’s go ladies, move those arms!”
This weekend we watched old home movies at the request of my kids. We sat in our family room and watched two-year old Kai being led out to us from the back room in a stark government building in downtown Guangzhou. His face turned up to us in a huge smile. It was the first time we met, Mom, Dad and son. He called Josh Go-go and refused to take off his prized new shoes, sleeping in them for months after we brought him home.
We laughed as we saw Elizabeth, just over a year, her hair in tight shiny curls dancing with the stuffed dog who sang, “Singing in the Rain.” Pressing the button again and again, her eyes grew wide with the discovery of the new toy and the pleasure of moving her body to the music. Seeing those movies, it felt so bittersweet. We’ve been so blessed, but it just goes by so fast. Elizabeth has many of her adult teeth now. She is playing the Little Red Hen in her school play. Kai has now been with us longer than he was in the orphanage. He loves super heroes and is in his last year of preschool. For as many times that I say “Our family is the perfect size for us,” after watching those movies, I wanted a third.
Standing in the middle of the lap lane, I waited until the mom passed me once again. Finished with my coughing, I headed back down to the end of the lane, pulling with my arms, slipping them into the liquid sleeves beneath me. I enjoyed the flex of my feet as they moved back and forth stirring the water with gentle purpose. I recalled the thrashing and splashing of my own first years parenting our kids. Like this mom in the pool, I experienced many days of unrest and confusion about what it meant to be a mom. Was I a good mom? A crappy mom? An obnoxious mom? After all, I hated breast feeding. I missed my job. I felt like I would never sleep again, be alone again, or be acknowledged as an individual again. But I did, and I have and I probably was all of those moms at one time or another.
I don’t know if the future holds another child for us. Probably not, but I am certainly not ruling it out. For today, I remained content to let the new mom splash, make her wake, feel her body and its resistance and pull her frustrations through the water. I could take it. I only needed to complete a few more laps. Pushing off from the wall, a sense of gratitude for time, space, children and aging washed over me in an impromptu baptism. Looking to my right, the sneakered water shoes began to march in time to the music, not really going anywhere, but happy to be present right where they were. And that was fine with me.
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