Time With Mom & Dad

Originally posted January 9, 2012

My kids still don't know how to swim. Bring that up amongst other moms and I feel the icy cold winds of judgement, I just put on another sweater.

For whatever reason both kids are terrified of water and yes, the right teacher and lessons would get them over that but the mere mention of it makes them shake in their boots. If we had a pool or lived near the sea I would force the issue but land-locked in Calgary I see no need to drag to them something about which they are terrified. There will be plenty of time as adults to do things they don’t like. And besides, I didn’t learn to swim until I was 11 and now I could swim the English Channel, if I really, really had to. (And if someone was holding a wedge of perfectly aged cheddar just out of reach.)

The kids have tried this and that and settled on the things they genuinely love. Jack, nearly seven, loves his art class and his karate at Tao of Peace and he even likes going to his Bright Minds math class on Sunday mornings. He wants to add Hip Hop to the list of but only after art is finished - his suggestion, not mine.

My daughter Clancy, nearly nine, also happily heads off to Bright Minds Thursdays after school and takes tremendous pride in her mathematical achievements. She had one session of art, one session of drama and one session of dance and after each said; “OK, I have the basics. Now I want to do it my way.” And she does.

After being somewhat disappointed with Brownies she and her pal, another ex-Brownie, get together every Wednesday after dinner for something they call Fireside Girls.  A club they devised in which they do a craft or play or imagine and sometimes even make a badge for the activity. She wants to start a book club next, she's happy as a clam in her quiet endeavours.

For the longest time I felt inadequate not traipsing all over town for various activities. I figured my age, having kids late in life and my proclivity to sit still (not to mention my sheer disdain for eating dinner in the car and being stressed out about driving hither and yon) had prevented my children from experiencing all that they could from swimming to learning the harp. But as it turns out I have exchanged that feeling of guilt for a self-satisfying and overly exaggerated, self-proclaimed talent for knowing what’s best. And, here's how I know:

Over the holidays the kids and I got into a discussion about time. We were watching the family cat move around to ensure she was sleeping in the patch of warm sun making its way across the living floor. Jack asked me if the cat knew what time it was like we did by where the sun was. I explained she did not even know what she was much less the time or the day of the week. We then began to talk about time and how humans are the only living being who have a relationship with it.

We talked about how fifteen minutes doing what you love seems to go by in a flash but the same amount of time, say at the dentist’s office, takes forever!  I noted that their two weeks off school was nearly up and I thought it felt like they had been home for months, they felt otherwise.

So I asked them how they best liked to spend their time. And you know what they said? “With you and Dad.”

There will be plenty of time for swimming lessons when one day "With you and Dad." won’t be their answer to that question.