the smell of chlorine always takes me back to my memories of the public swimming pool at a.y. jackson s.s. in north york. it was there that i first encountered the now-familiar scent of chemically-treated water. my old man used to drag me to that pool every saturday morning for swim lessons just as i was entering elementary school. i never quite took to swimming though, or swim lessons, or my old man, for that matter. as pavlov would have predicted then, i slowly learned to associate the smell of chlorine with the rather unpleasant experience of being forced to participate in something against one's will. which makes it all the more ironic as this morning i found myself seated on a plastic chair at the local swimming pool breathing in chlorine while viewing my seven-year-old daughter begin her third round of formal swim lessons with the city. seven has "struggled" to find her comfort zone in the water thus far, and so i have found it increasingly difficult to attend her lessons as a spectator. maybe i passed on my "water-averse" gene to my eldest. maybe my eldest isn't crazy about swimming. or maybe my eldest just needed her twenty-first 30-minute lesson to finally believe in herself. because today something wonderful happened. today something miraculous took place. i had left the pool area for a few moments to get some fresh air. when i returned, i noticed a young girl on her back in the pool... stationary... and floating. as i slowly began to focus on the identity of the girl i noticed that she was wearing the same type of bathing suit that my daughter wore. the girl continued floating on her back for what seemed like an eternity... or at least ten seconds. and then it hit me. that was my kid. that was my kid floating on her back. somewhere between the starfish and the water tag and the marco polo, seven had learned how to float.
and suddenly the smell of chlorine doesn't seem all that bad anymore.
"success without happiness is not success." - anonymous
wherever i lay my hat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqg_ZGcuybs&feature=related
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Your daughter only took 21 lessons to float. Two years of swimming in Phys Ed. in high school and I can barely doggy paddle :(
ReplyDeletea.y. jackson???!!! i know where that is! my cousin went there.
ReplyDeletei didn't like swimming at all when i was 7. I was so scared to go to the deep end but i got used to it.i joined the swim team in gr. 4 and i've been on the team since then! i love swimmingggg :)