We are attending ISR lessons with our daughter and grandson.
ISR is an acronym for Infant Swimming Resource. They are swim lessons designed to give a child the tools to survive in a body of water if accidentally entered. Thirty years ago, my two youngest children did ISR.
Jillian, the mother in this situation, started ISR lessons when she was three-years-old. She smiled through every ten-minute lesson, five days a week, for six weeks. Her younger sister, whom I started earlier, did not smile--at first.
This is typical.
As the boy's grandmother, when I go to his lessons, I sit on a hard-wood lounge chair on the other side of the pool and cry.
Yet, I know it's good for him. His mother tells me that all his life "He will have to do hard things." If she were to let him get out of swimming lessons, it would set a precedent of quitting.
When she says this, I am taken back to the few times when I didn't persist my children do hard things. I could let them haunt me, but I trust I did the right thing.
When Paloma didn't want to go to kindergarten, I stayed to soothe her. I was appalled at how boring the teacher was. I pulled her out and put her in a different school--I didn't force her to stick it out just because it was a hard thing; I found a better environment to learn. I did however keep her in ISR swimming. After the first few days, she stopped crying.
My own mother took me out of a difficult English class when I complained of headaches. Stern Mrs. McDougal spent months teaching sentence diagramming. I hated it. My mom folded.
I wish I had that diagramming background today.
My mother also made me stick out an eight hour bus ride with the cheerleaders I wasn't getting along with.
Perhaps she too made the right call for my own good.
So I watch with a heavy heart and tears, my precious grandson struggle. He detests the swim-float-swim routine. This requires him to swim and to flip onto his back and float, then flip back to swimming. He screams to his mother, "No more swim-float-swim." His mother says from the side of the pool, "You have two more. You can do it."
After Ms. Marcy, the swim teacher, flips him onto his back he starts counting, "One, two, three, five."
We all laugh. Does he skip the number four because he is clever or because he doesn't know how to count?
Each swim swim-float-swim sequence, after protesting, he counts to endure.
In his mother's agenda to do hard things, the little guy has created a strategy. He is learning to cope, to swim, to live a good life.
Tony and I are entering a new stage of life. It is typical for one's strength and stamina to decline. It is typical for aches and pains to pronounce their presence and demand our slower movements, our moans and complaints.
I think about quitting.
I think about doing hard things.
I think about counting.
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