brb, establishing a waterworld

In the same week, Rowan learned to read full sentences and Zoe learned to swim. To watch a growing mind wide-eyed in total shock at their own capableness was exactly the balm I personally needed to endure this last week of horror.

In bed each night, I read two books to each kid. I am currently reading the Magic Treehouse series to Rowan, which is mildly repetitive and unhumorous for me but a wonderful basic palette world-revealer to children, each short book taking the reader to a different place in history, ecology, or mythology. For the last few weeks, I have him attempt to read the chapter names. He’s getting quicker at it, though it never stops reminding me of this moment, especially each time he encounters a “the.”

He finished one chapter, proud of himself, and I said, casually, “Keep going. Read the first sentence of the chapter.”

“What?!” he laughed, as though it were preposterous.

“Try it! I think you can do it,” I encouraged.

“Ok?!?!?!” he said, giggling at the prospect. And then he did it. He read an entire 7-word sentence aloud to me. He looked at me, eyes wide as fried eggs, laughing maniacally. “I CAN READ?! I CAN READ!!!!!! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! I CAN READ!!!!” he shouted.

I was giddy with him. I hugged and kissed him all over his soft cheeks and tiny button-nose. “YOU CAN READ NOW!!” I hollered.

He read a few more sentences, then we settled down in the dark, me spooning him while he spooned his static cavalcade of stuffed friends. He bucked his butt back into me, then threw his legs up straight in the air. “Mommy I CAN’T. BELIEVE. I CAN READ NOW! Tell daddy as soon as he gets home that I CAN READ NOW. Okay?! I have to tell my teachers. I can READ NOW!!!” The next 10 minutes were punctuated by sporadic giggles in the dark, his pride growing almost as big as my cartoon heart in my cartoon chest, expanding, filling up the whole room.

The second we moved into this house with a pool, I booked swimming lessons for Zoe. I was so worried about her falling in and drowning, I wanted her to learn immediately. Rowan learned how to swim in exactly 25 minutes from this weird, hot swim GURU in the valley who is of course booked until 2023 and I missed the sign-ups in the chaos of the move. So I hired someone else with hundreds of great reviews to come to my pool and teach Zoe and two other kids how to swim.

Everyday, for 9 consecutive days, this guy had nary a single living clue what to do with three 3 year-olds. He would urge them to get into the water. They would refuse. He would implore them to put their faces in the water. They would cry. He would entreat them to kick their legs. They would hover, legs stationary. He practically petitioned for signatures for these three petulant people to do anything he asked, but we three signature-less mothers were equally helpless, as when your child turns three you learn that you no longer have any control over them. Not in any meaningful, practical sort of way, anyway. Spiritually, maybe. Empirically? No.

And so, $350 down the drain, with many tears shed (by her) and many gritted teeth (mine), and some truly traumatic 45 minute swim sessions, we put the damn floaty back on and have just been rigorous about her not going outside without us. But then, yesterday, she just…did it. I think she finally got comfortable enough putting her head underwater and pretending to have tea parties with me while I held her beneath the surface, clinking our little imaginary cups, taking chlorinated sips.

I was knee-deep in “making” dinner [read: spooning hummus and pretzels onto a kids plate] and she came running in at full tilt, dripping so much water that she slipped and fell in it, giggled, and stood back up. “MOMMY. COME SEE. I CAN SWIM NOW!!!! I CAN SWIM!!!!!!!!!!” And sure enough, she jumped in the pool and swam right to Tyler underwater, coming up all full of glee and pride.

Tyler held her aloft, both grinning, him probably forgetting the time at Disneyland a few months ago when she looked at him, squinted, and said, matter-of-fact, “You’re not the best.”

The things we parents let go of, to better usher in the next fantastical scene! It’s living, breathing editing, really.

For a few moments, while watching Zoe glide underwater without a hint of panic in her movements, I didn’t have to think about what kind of wide-eyed panic might lie in wait for her a mere decade in the future. I watched her, for the first time, amphibian and free, feel total ownership of her body and total capability of keeping it safe. I did it while knowing that her unelected arbiters of justice just made that very thing impossible for the terrestrial, future, menstruating version of her. That again, shameful men (and a shameful woman) in suits lied, and now she and thousands like her may/will die or have their and their childrens’ lives ruined, and no one is stopping any of this.

That I have to send my son into a gated kindergarten in two months and hope that no one comes through a side door with a gun. That my only choice, my only truly privileged, savings-account-ed choice, is to make like many women in my mom group and desperately apply for a visa abroad, to a country, any country, that has prioritized and protected the basic rights of its citizens, not its desired accessories. We talk about it a lot, but we don’t do it. Not yet, anyway.

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” Simone Weil wrote.

We’re all peering over the edge right now. Paying very, very, close attention. I couldn’t help but laugh at a protester’s sign that said, “Oh, so god could kill his son, but I can’t?” Breathing absurdist levity into the true gravity of the matter. No one wants this. But it’s a living, breathing necessity, plain and simple. It always has, and it always will be. Gin was called “Mother’s Ruin” because gin joints finally allowed women to drink alongside men, and doing so apparently led to neglecting their children and eventual prostitution. “Father’s Ruin,” on the other hand, doesn’t refer to another type of alcohol, but to…children.

“A foolish child is a father’s ruin,” quotes Proverb 19:13,

“and a quarrelsome wife is like the constant dripping of a leaky roof.”

Cool text! Let’s all keep living according to it!

I move for a nationwide strike, like the 1975 Icelandic Women’s Strike, though this time not just women, but every man that believes in and understands this unimpeachable right to bodily autonomy, and every human that believes our blessed humanity is more important than this positively cursed protection of weaponry.

Monthly playlists are usually for paying subscribers but everything is on fire so let’s move our body and erase our minds for a 51 minutes while we enjoy some very good summer tunes together, shall we? Take it to a body of water, or join mine. Listen to it here.

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