Rose-Colored Goggles

Full of dread, you grab the kids (they’ve been in their swimsuits for hours), pile into the car, and head to the pool.

Liz Sarb

The goggles are always missing. 

This is what I’ve learned after a year of swim class: when you’re running around the house trying to locate all the necessary swim supplies and stuff them into a very large tote bag, the goggles will always be missing. Either they’ve sunk to the dark recesses of the tote and you have to unpack the previously organized bag and then stick your entire arm in there to feel around for them, or you’ve left them at class the week before. So that’s your first problem. 

Your second problem is that you keep forgetting to buy sweatpants for your kids to change into after their lessons. You know it will be impossible to stuff them into leggings while they’re wet and sticky, but you have no other option. Into the bag the leggings go. Full of dread, you grab the kids (they’ve been in their swimsuits for hours), pile into the car, and head to the pool.

Once you get there, though, something magical happens. 

First of all, it’s very warm inside the building: close your eyes and it’s not a pool deck covered in who-knows-what germs, it’s a sauna! 

Second, as your kids walk-don’t-run!! to their lanes and you settle in to watch, you find yourself enveloped in the warm glow of humanity. (Honestly, maybe you were just cold.) It’s like the montage at the start of Love Actually: your heart swells as you watch new moms braving swimsuits in their new-mom-bods; toddlers stuffed into their suits like the cutest mini breakfast links; dads gently shampooing their daughters’ hair under the showers; older kids crossing the pool like dolphins while their parents cheer them on. 

The instructors are glowing too. They’re a special breed of merpeople with probably three other jobs—at least one in musical theater or improv comedy and someday, baby, they’re gonna make it big! But to me, they’ve already reached their most perfect form. These angels spend hours in a pool teaching kids how to tiger paddle and birdie flap and, no big deal, stay alive in a body of water. If I had to spend half an hour getting splashed and manhandled by five hyped-up kindergarteners, I’m not sure what I would do. I might lose track of at least one child. I definitely wouldn’t end the lesson with a “washing machine,” which is where an instructor allows two children to clamp themselves to him or her and then swirls said children around in the water like they’re on a spin cycle. Where do they get this energy? Does chlorine have speed in it??

Also, science should study their skin- and hair-care regimens. Five hours in a pool? I’d be a shriveled up scarecrow. These people are unbothered and moisturized. Teach me your secrets.

When my youngest started her first session without a parent required in the pool, there was a little boy in her class who was more afraid of water than a cat wearing cement shoes. He cried and clung to his parents as the instructor tried to coax him in. That was lessons one and two. Before the next lesson, the instructor convinced the parents to wait in the lobby. They crouched down and peeked through the viewing window as he lifted the boy into a piggy back and stepped into the water. He called another instructor over to teach his class and then spent the entire half hour walking slowly back and forth along the length of the pool, singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to his screaming barnacle. That was lesson three. Lesson four, the little boy hopped right down the steps and into the water. Honestly I’m getting emotional just thinking about it! Everything was there: the kindness and dedication of the teacher, the willingness of the parents to let go, the bravery of the little boy to keep trying. Love, actually, is at the pool! 

Love is not in the changing room. The changing room is a disgusting thunder dome. The floor is mottled with muddy puddles of unidentified liquid. The leggings are just as impossible as you feared. Everyone is straight up losing their collective minds. And goddammit, you forgot the goggles by the pool. You run back in, soak up the warmth for one more second, and then jog out into the cold night, love flowing out of you like water.