Tuesday Night Lights

MM started swim team this year, and it occurred to me that I have now been on all three sides of the swim team triangle: I've been a swimmer, a coach, and a parent. Let me state for the record that the least fun side is the parental one; you stand around for a while, explain to your sons why they can't swim, stand around some more, chase a son or two, explain again why only swim team members are allowed to swim, and finally give up and buy all the hot dogs your kids can eat.

Incidentally, thanks, Mom and Dad, for sacrificing so many Tuesday nights of our youth to stand poolside. And for the hot dogs.

Anyway, MM was super excited about time trials and her fifteen yards of fame. She is decent at freestyle, although breaststroke and backstroke are unrecognizable. Her dad and I really built up the idea that this was for fun and that winning did not matter. And even though MM is the type of kid who wants to do everything perfect the first time around (she can't paint a sunflower without comparing herself to van Gogh) she seemed to buy into it.

Let me confess that although I spouted the party line of "Have fun! Who cares about winning?" I held in my prideful parental heart high hopes that she would cut through the water and soar to the finish line ahead of her competitors. What parent doesn't secretly want his or her child to excel?

So when they called Six & Unders I walked her over to the Clerk of Course and sat her on the miniature green benches with all the other swim-capped goggled girls. She grinned up at me. "Just have fun," I told her.

"I know. And it doesn't matter if I win."

"Not one bit."

Seconds later she climbed onto the block like a little spider, all gangly appendages and bobbing head. She crouched (she jumps, not dives) and when the buzzer went off she looked at me. "Should I go now?"

"Go!" And win! 

But the second she cannonballed into the water something strange happened; I wanted to laugh and cry at once. She wasn't just lunging off the block; she was lunging into the world of competition, a world that will become more and more her home as she ages. Until now she has been our baby, number one in everything. But now she is out there, in some ways alone, and she will not always win. She will learn that in everything there are winners and losers, that sometimes a race or a game is painful. She will understand that as you stand aloft victorious there is pain for others; you cannot win without making others lose.

It was over quickly. Her strokes were strong. To breathe she had to interrupt her windmilling arms and doggie-paddle as she gasped for air. Then the catcher reached for my little girl and I could read his lips as he told her "Great job!" and I knew by Catherine's look of delight that she believed him. Then he carted her to the other side of the pool, far away from me.

I found her accepting accolades from her adoring fans (Daddy, Grandma and her brothers). With her cap and goggles still in place, cocooned in a hot pink towel, she turned to me. "Did I win?" she asked, but the words were delivered with a child's curiosity, not with angst or expectation.

I thought back to the race. I had watched only her; somehow, in a flurry of splashes, I had forgotten about her competitors. "I don't know," I answered, but I don't think she even heard me because already Daddy had picked her up and she was giggling. I realized then, as the starting buzzer trilled yet again, that for one of the last times, winning truly did not matter. Not to my daughter, and not to me.

We were too busy having fun.