On the Goodness of Behaving like Children

When I was in the second grade, my parents put a very nice pool in our back yard. They decided to do so after spending thousands of dollars on "experimental" Physical Therapy for me in Florida. It was a failure, but because the water in the pools there was so warm, my mom and aunt were able to teach me to swim. I fell in love the with water. I had never felt more "normal".  I could move freely, walk, relax my muscles and play just like the other kids.   I told my mom excitedly that I wasn't handicap in the pool; it melted her tender heart and the next year we had one.
 For years after they put in the pool, I was practically part fish. I swam, floated , bobbed up and down,  and splashed my poor sister for hours  for hours on end. Any adult in charge of me, had to beg me to get out of my swim suit.

As years went by, I still enjoyed swimming, but because of my dwindling confidence, it wasn't the same.  I began to worry too much about my appearance, and the fact that most of my friends would rather lay in the sun than actually swim. I used the pool for exercise , when alone, and to cool off because my parents do not have air conditioning, but that's about it.  My mom started having to demand that I go in the pool, when my friends were over.

In college, some of my confidence came back, I would lay out with my friends, usually covering more than they did, we had fun though.  This weekend, however, I got a special reminder of what a riot it is to be sure of yourself. 

In March, a family of six moved in next door. They are wonderful people.  The youngest child is ten, and just as funny and adorable as can be. She was ecstatic when my parents told her she had carte blanche of the pool. She and her older sister (16) were here for hours on Sunday. She was in complete bliss in the water: dancing, diving, trying her hardest to do flips and hand-stands. It looked like such a ball that I joined her. We had a great time. I  taught her how  to do a hand-stand and we played a game, my sister and I used to play, in which you try to understand what movie-title the other person is shouting under-water. She and her sister raced.  I didn't think about any of my troubles, or my body issues once. That was the freedom the water used to give me.

What a gift kids have in their ability to live in the moment, to not paint themselves with permanent brushes.  Life gets in the way though. It really is impossible to stay so intelligently happy.   All we can do appreciate the reminders, that either fate , God, or the universe sends our way,  do our best to bottle the feeling up for a particularly rainy day and carry on as cheerfully as possible. Because that kind of bliss does eventually become at least slightly tainted, my wish is that every child is given the opportunity, by the adults in their lives, to be young and carefree for a long time.