It’s Sunday and I’m worn out and sore from days of hiking. All I want to do is curl up and sleep, but that’s not an option. I have daughter duty and the little one wants to go to the town pool. It’s our thing – something we’ve been doing for several years, something I used to do with her sister.

I pack the gym bag with towels and sweatshirts, thick socks, two pairs of goggles a water bottle and a seaweed toy that sinks to the bottom of the pool. It’s all muscle memory. “Can I ride without a seatbelt?” she asks as she climbs into her booster seat.  The pool is close and the ride is short. “I think that’ll be OK.”

It’s football season now and almost all the available spaces near the fields and our pool are filled. It takes a while to finally find a spot farther than we usually park.  “I’m gonna swim in the deep end,” she says – less a question and more a statement of fact.  “We’ll see …”

Inside I pay the three dollar admission – one for children, two for adults. “Meet me on the other side of the locker room, OK.” She knows; we’ve done this a hundred times. Less than a minute later we reunite in the cavernous, chlorinated room. The pale blue pool filled with kids screaming and splashing. “Sweetie, where’s your towel?” Her eyes are on the kids playing in the pool. She shrugs. “Um .. maybe in the car?”  

“OK, well I can’t leave you in the pool by yourself so we need to go back to the car.” I point toward the exit. She looks back at the kids. “But … ”  I get it. How many times have we come here? Did she understand that our play was also to make her comfortable with the water, to teach her the basics of swimming and diving, to teach her to respect the element, but not fear it? She’s ready.

I tell the lifeguard to keep a close eye on her then turn to my six-year-old with the shaggy hair and baggy, hand-me down bathing suit and remind her to stay in the “shallow end” – even though its still above her head. She nods and races to the ladder. I head off for the towel.

I’m back in just a few minutes. The world has changed a little though. Typically she’d insist I get in first and catch her when she leapt in.  Then she’d show off a new swimming stroke she invented, or demonstrate how she can touch the bottom of the pool. Instead I watch as she confidently paddles after a trio of older girls (second graders). She doesn’t even notice I’m not there with her.

I sit next to the teenage lifeguard and feel the mix of emotions that mark the moment when “our time” began to disappear.