Day: July 7, 2006

The original plan for the reservoir involved a motorboat. The motorboat never put in an appearance. It belonged to the brother of my brother’s neighbor. With a communication chain that long, no wonder there were miscommunications somewhere. My kids never noticed the absense of the motorboat. They’ve never been in a motorboat before and so they happily assumed that floating around in inflatible rafts was what we meant when we said “boating.”

Even without the motorboat it was a good day. All 13 kids found multitudes of ways to entertain themselves. Patches was leery of going out in a boat, but once he did it he didn’t want to stop. Then he happily helped my engineer brother create an elaborate sand castle. After that he drove rocks through the sand making roads and “vroooom!” noises.

Gleek loved the swimming and splashing, but then she got cold so she adjourned to the warm dry sand. At one point Gleek was creating little zen rock gardens with pebbles and hand brushed sand. I don’t think she’s ever seen such a rock garden before, she just liked the patterns. She also helped with a large sand castle creation that the girl cousins were making. It was a structure much devoted to be-pebbled decorations.

Link splashed and played with his same age cousins. One of those cousins seemed to feel it a personal mission to transport all the beach sand back into the water. He’d get sopping wet. Then he’d roll around in the sand until he was completely coated. Once coated, he would dash for the water, usually shedding sand across the adults as he went past. Then he would rinse and repeat. Link didn’t like rolling in the sand, but he did get his legs dirty and rinse them multiple times. He helped build the engineer’s sand castle and put some effort into the pebble decorated girly castle as well.

Kiki loved the boats. She spent most of the day out in them either with a cousin or by herself. By the end of the day she’d shanghaied my brother into functioning as a motor for the boat. The whole group of kids had an elaborate game where my brother pushed the boat and all the kids were hitchhikers who tried to pile on while the boat was in motion. That game continued even when we loaded my van full of little kids and sent me back to the house for the first round of showers-and-pajamas. Apparently my sister-in-law had to rev her engine and threaten to drive away to get my brother and the older kids out of the water. Apparently 5 hours just wasn’t enough water fun for them all.

My kids love to swim. They love every single splashing minute of being at the pool. I do not like swimming. I used to like it, but for the last decade I’ve not enjoyed it much. That is because for the past decade I haven’t been swimming, I’ve been lifeguarding. Swimming is about being immersed in the water and splashing and getting completely wet. Lifeguarding is about sitting on the edge and wearing my glasses so I can make sure that no one drowns. Taking my kids swimming means packing up loads of stuff, carrying all the stuff to the pool, lifeguarding four kids for a boring hour or more, arguing about getting out of the pool, then schlepping all the kids and stuff back home. No wonder I’m less than enthused about swimming.

A complete lack of enthusiasm is what I felt when I first heard about a proposed swim/boating day at a reservoir as part of our family reunion. Watching kids is much easier in the safe confines of a home. However I knew that the experience would be a new one for the kids and that they’d enjoy it, so I was reconciled to going.

I’m not sure when my mental shift began. It might have been on the drive to the reservoir. It might have been when we had to completely repack 13 kids, 10 adults, and assorted picnic gear into vans because we’d unloaded on the wrong side of the reservoir. But somehow an oft repeated phrase from Life is a Road, the Soul is a Motorcycle floated across my consciousness: The journey, not the destination is important. I was having a day at the reservoir with my kids. I could spend the day frustrated because things were not going as planned or because I wanted to be somewhere else, or I could embrace the reservoir experience. Packing up to move to the other side was just part of the experience, I decided to accept it and not be frustrated.

That decision is one of the best that I’ve made in a long time. After 10 years, I finally climbed off of the lifeguard chair and got down into the water. There were enough adults and kids around that I didn’t have to be 100% vigilant every single minute to make sure that my little ones didn’t drown. I got down in the sand and relished the dirty. I took Patches for a ride on one of the inflatable boats. I helped Gleek splash in the deep water. Best of all, I took off my glasses, left my kids under the watchful eye of my mom, and swam out to the edge of the swimming area.

At the far end of the swimming area the sounds of children were distant. I treaded water and wished I could swim out even further, but that was the boating area, not safe for a swimmer. I never realized how relaxing reservoir swimming could be. I’ve been prejudiced by a squeamishness gained during my teen years. Reserviors have fish and bugs and green mosses in the water. In fact the water is entirely green. In movies murky green water is filled with peril. In reality far more water is green than blue. Out in the deep water I treaded to stay afloat. When my arms and legs got tired, I switched to a backfloat and entered a whole new universe. Water seeped into my ears muffling the sounds of people into nonexistence. The only sound that remained was the sound of my own breathing. Bubbles of air floated from my hair and tickled past my neck to the surface of the water. I closed my eyes and felt the sun warming my front while wafts of warm and cold water brushed past my body. I floated there in a world apart, savoring each sensation. It was a beautiful moment of serenity. It ended abruptly when a dragonfly decided to land on my nose, startling me upright again. I stayed out in the deep water for about 20 minutes alternately treading, swimming, and floating. Each time I floated I recaptured that universe-apart feeling. More than once the dragonfly came back to visit.

After I came back to shore and began lifeguarding again I pondered what it was that made those moments in the water so special. Being away from sight and sound of the kids was part of it, but even more was the total focus on the present rather than past or future. I was taking time to fully experience a moment. I found that I could do it on the shore with the kids once I had the trick of it. I could sit and feel the grit of the sand, the whisper of the breeze, really see as Patches drove small rocks through the wet sand making roads for his imaginary cars. It was a truly wonderful day because I really took the time to enjoy the day for what it was rather than wishing for it to be something else.

Life is precious. I need to spend more of it swimming and less waiting for something else to come along.