This and last week I am catching up on everything I let fly into disarray over the holidays. One thing on my list was to make phone calls, a task I historically revile. Mom Blog has a no advice policy, so Iâll just tell you what I do sometimes: make the phone calls in the grocery store parking lot. Somehow, if the phone calls are shoved inside of another activity, they donât seem to waste as much time. They are held, gently but firmly, by the larger chore, and that feels good. I know this is not how time works, but it is how time feels.
The calls I needed to make last week were not that bad. Just two: a doctorâs appointment and an appointment⌠to go swimming. For months, much to the communityâs despair, our gymâs indoor pool has been under construction. In small, conciliatory text at the bottom of the aquatics webpage there is a phone number to call for a reservation at the sister gymâs pool in a nearby suburb. After weeks of Rosalind begging to go swimming, and my assurances that we would do so, I finally find myself in a place where I can make the call. Staring at the green façade of the Honest Weight Food Co-op, watching fat wet snowflakes thud into my windshield, I listen to the phone ring.
Appointments secured, I make my way inside the co-op. There was a general feeling of self-satisfied bonhomieâmore than usual. It is early January, and everyone is in a good mood about healthy food. I, too, stack my cart with on-sale produce, imagining the salt and vinegar kale chips1 I will make, perhaps with the help of my toddler. At the register, I get into a lengthy conversation about the pesto I picked out with the cashier and the man behind me. I have community! I have fiber! I have an appointment to go swimming!
Last summer and the summer before I got a similar, self-satisfied high from being an Outdoor Pool Mom, a particular kind of Fun Mom: relaxed, sun-burnished, heat-buzzed, with streaks of white zinc congealing in her laugh lines and traces of cheese dust on her fingertips. The outdoor pool was a luxuryâI rarely went to one as a kidâand a pocket of normalcy in Rosalindâs pandemic-shuttered early childhood. Some days it was just me, her, and the lifeguard, gazing awkwardly into the distance while we puttered around below them, me squatting awkwardly to stay cool under the shallow water of the kiddy pool, the rough texture of the poolâs bottom creating a welcome dissonance to the silken waters. We were getting exercise! We were getting fresh air! Time, and my worries about how we would fill it, dissolved into the lapping waters.
This is why, when Saturday rolls around, I am thrilled to have the noon appointment. In the morning, I find that Previous Me has helpfully kept the summer pool bag packed up and within easy reach in the closet. It has everything we need, ready to go: goggles, floaties, flip flops, two grimy rubber snakes coated in a fine layer of sand, several shriveled strawberry gummies. I locate fresh gummies, towels, and changes of clothes for us both. Soon it is almost time to leave.
The pool is a full thirty minute drive away, plus the 15 minutes to get changed in the locker room, plus the 15 full minutes it takes for us to get from the inside of our house to the inside of our car. This, plus the 45 minute swim appointment, plus an hour to come home again, gives us a beautiful 3 hour chunk of time where I am no longer in charge. I donât have to think on the fly, I donât have to make any big decisionsâI donât have to playâmy Plan is in charge, and I can relax.
We speed onto the highway, exit near the airport, and wave merrily to a plane taking off over our heads. Soon weâre on a winding road I have never been on before, one that takes us along the marshy banks of the Mohawk River on one side and a steady stream of enormous houses on the other side. âWeâre on an adventure,â I tell Rosalind, who is also happy to be âgoing someplace new,â something she often requests.
When we arrive, Rosalind insists on wearing her sandals through the salt-strewn parking lot. âIs this salt⌠to eat?â double-checks Rosalind, just in case the neon-blue crystals are suddenly part of a magical outdoor buffet.2 In the locker room, she insists, wrathfully, that her floaties are on âbackwards.â I manage to get us into the stairwell that leads to the pool, and when we yank open the door to a burst of warm, chlorinated air, she begins to cry almost instantly. âI donât like this pool,â she wails, stunned by the gloomy lighting and, perhaps, the mildewed tiles on the deck. We make it to the edge of the water where Rosalind screams again, the sonic vibrations amplified by the echoing natatoriumâa microscopic fly has landed gently and briefly on the back of her thigh.
Despite the emotional obstacle course, I am bolstered and competent. She will get in the pool; she always does. Suctioned to me like a starfish, the two of us lower gently into the water and paddle around. Soon enough, she is clasping my back and letting me take her towards the deep end. I am a competent manatee, lumbering slowly but gracefully through the water. Rosalind giggles with glee as I make a wide turn in the lane, her feet flying out behind her.
There is so much about motherhood that makes me feel ill-prepared or incompetent. The screaming, the sobbing, the hitting, the refusal to poop, the refusal to eat, the refusal to let me brush her hair, hair that looks like someone left Amy Winehouse in charge. The things that make me feel usefulâorganizing the toys, combing the rug for lint, ordering things we âneedâ online, cooking elaborate meals nobody wants to eatâthings I can do by myself that make me feel like an adult againâthese are also things that exhaust me. I crave the power they seem to offer, but it is a false sense of control. When the house is tidy I feel all-powerful but seditious; one dribble of yogurt on the rug and the whole empire is tumbling down.
Anyway, all this is to say: we had a great time at the pool. I didnât need to be in controlâthe plan was. The day was, the water was. The earth was, spinning us around and around. Rosalind let go of me, and briefly, the two of us floated side by side, two planets luxuriating in being held up by cosmic forces.
âLook at you!â I exclaimed, as Rosalind attempted a doggy paddle back to me.
âI can do it!â she shrieked, âI can do it all by myself!â I beamed at her, my eyes fogging up a bit. I felt the exact same way.
Thank you for reading Mom Blog. Here is my note to remind you that paid subscribers get the essays read in podcast formâdownloadable to wherever you usually listen to podcasts! They are fun to record and, so Iâve heard, very fun to listen to. Paid subscribers also get access to the archives and bonus features at the end of the essaysâthis week Iâm sharing the three best things Iâve read recently (high and low brow) and what I plan to read nextâŚ
Please COMMENT and let me know what aspect of parenting, or life, makes you feel competent? Only paid subscribers can comment but regular subs can reply to this email if you want to tell me. I want to hear it!! Oh, and anyone can LIKE the posts, which I appreciate very very much!
My brag for this essay is that someone recently told me that I âread a lotâ and I have been flying high off of this comment ever since. The trick, not that anyone asked, is to read a lot of really fun books. Iâm still on winter break from school and each break I get really excited about the library, and try to hunker down with some immersive, fun, thrilling work as a TREAT. Here are my top three recommendations from December/ January:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to mom blog to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.