Sibling swim

The kids and I spent the afternoon yesterday at a nearby pond, and I was reminded anew of the lesson I seem to re-learn every summer: swimming is perhaps the one activity at which they always have fun together and they always get along well.

And maybe that’s why I have so much fun watching them. While I sit in a lawn chair on the beach, they plow through the water, indifferent to my curiosity about what they are doing. They race each other. They splash each other. They make up complicated games and obstacle courses. My book goes unread as I gaze over at them and contemplate how kids together in the water, at least for me, is a little like a sleeping infant or a fire in the fireplace: I just can’t take my eyes off the sight, even knowing I could be paying attention to something that would seem to be much more engaging.

Most of the time, my children get along fairly well. I always attribute this to the fact that being four years apart in age and different genders, they don’t find much to compete over. But by the same token, there often isn’t a lot they like to do together. Their interests and hobbies tend to be fairly divergent.

But all kids like playing in the water, and it is truly the one medium in which I can count on them to remain happy together no matter how long we stay. I know I could be catching up on the newspapers and magazines in my beach bag, but somehow I can’t pull my attention away from the fun they’re having.

Eventually, just as it’s getting close to time for us to leave, they ask me to join them in the water. But it turns out this isn’t because they want me to race or splash or try out their underwater obstacle course; they want to show me a synchronized singing act they’ve worked out, and they feel I need a close-up view of it. My sisters and I used to make up performances like this by the hour – we usually connected our water shows to an event such as my parents’ August anniversary, and to this day my sister will call me around that date and say “It’s almost Mom and Dad’s anniversary; have you choreographed the swim show yet?” Watching Tim and Holly raise their arms in synchronicity, then twirl and dunk, I contemplate the reach of genetic memory and laugh to myself; I’m guessing my mother and her sisters practiced a synchronized swim show or two in their day as well.

Yesterday was our first pond visit of the year. It shouldn’t still surprise me, after all these years, that my kids have such a good time together when I take them swimming. But somehow it still does. Water, sunlight and proximity make them treat each other far more affectionately than they do in the car, or in the house, or even in the yard. And bearing witness to the phenomenon remains one of summer’s greatest joys.

In the swim

Yesterday I wrote about the extra effort it took to persuade my kids to go hiking during our Colorado vacation, but also how the extra effort was worthwhile, not because they raved about the experience (they neither raved nor complained) but just because it was something I really wanted to do.

This, on the other hand, is what they really want to do when we’re on vacation: swim at night in the condo pool. Like kids everywhere, one of the greatest novelties about going on vacation, to them, is the opportunity to swim in a heated pool at night. We could have traveled twenty miles instead of two thousand for that particular pleasure, but no matter. It’s a universally appealing activity to kids, and I have to admit I get a kick out of it. The pool is right outside our door. It’s close and easy and free of cost. Moreover, it requires no effort on my part; I can bring out a book or a newspaper or (she guiltily admitted) my phone, and bask in some down time.

But I think what I like best about seeing the kids swim at night is not that it allows me to be lazy but just that it reminds me so much of what I loved as a kid. All kids love swimming pools at night, and I was no different. When I was growing up, we drove from Massachusetts to Colorado and back every summer, with four or five overnight stops along the way. It didn’t matter whether we were in Buffalo or Columbus or Des Moines or Omaha: as soon as we arrived at our destination, we headed for the pool. And in some ways, it seems absurd to me that with all the culture and physical beauty of Aspen laid out around them, my kids still most often choose the pool, but in another way it seems absolutely fitting. When you’re eight or eleven or really any age that still qualifies as childhood at all, it’s a thrill to swim by pool light after dark. I’m not sure why, but as timeless as its appeal once was to me, I now get just as much enjoyment out of watching my kids savor the same experience.

So we hiked and fished and did all kinds of Alpine activities during the day; after dinner we headed for the pool. It didn’t matter what else was going on in town; that was always my children’s first choice. They didn’t care if their bathing suits were still clammy from the day before. They jumped in, and were absolutely happy. Kids always are, when you show them the way to a pool, after dark.

The beach may be fake but the appeal is genuine

The kids are getting a big kick out of reminding me that I said a few months ago we’d probably forego our annual summer membership at NARA Beach this year. NARA Beach is a large man-made pond in the town next to ours, just a ten-minute drive away, featuring mounds of soft fluffy sand, vigilant lifeguards and a playground. We started buying a summer membership there five years ago and have every year since, but when the topic came up back in April, I said probably not this year.

I just thought the kids were getting too old for it. With its very shallow water – you have to walk way out to get more than four feet deep, and the biggest part of the swimming area is only one or two feet deep and usually populated by toddlers playing with trucks or pails – and adjoining playground, it’s generally more popular with little kids. Even last year, at 10, Tim often appeared to be the oldest child on the premises. This year I figured my kids would want to join one of the pool clubs their friends belong to.

But they disagreed with me, so back we went to NARA Beach. And back again and again. It’s not even mid-July and we’ve already been around a dozen times this summer. The kids were right; you don’t outgrow a good day at the beach, even if the beach is imported sand overlooking a shallow swimming hole dug into a former quarry.

I knew already that no one outgrows the real beach, of course. My college roommate lives on a beach in Maine, and she entertains dozens of families during the summers. “I have never yet met a kid who did not like to play at the beach,” she once said to me, and in saying that she was echoing the words of one of my favorite parenting columnists, Barbara Meltz, formerly of the Boston Globe, who said beach play is good for absolutely every age group and every developmental level.

But NARA Pond is no Atlantic Ocean. By definition, it lacks the awesome splendors of a real beach: no surf, no tide, no tidal pools, no shells to collect, no lapping waves. No direct view to Ireland somewhere over the distant horizon. Just warm shallow water.

Yet as Tim and Holly proved over the course of three hours yesterday afternoon, the appeal of sand and water is limitless in scope, unbound by the age of the participant or even the magnitude of the body of water. They don’t care that this is no ocean or that they have to make a significant effort merely to swim deep enough that their feet won’t touch the bottom. They were too busy playing together to care.

They played catch with a soggy fabric ball they keep in the beach bag. They played “bridges,” swimming between each other’s legs. Tim taught Holly to do handstands. Holly practiced swimming close to the bottom, with Tim’s encouragement. They spotted small fish in the clear shallows. They held water-walking races and swimming races.

That’s another thing my college roommate has observed over a decade of countless guests at the beach: kids play together when they’re in the water. No one is too small or too slow. They always find ways to share the experience.

My kids certainly did yesterday, and they always do when we’re at NARA. Unlike at home, they never argue there, or want to do different things. They swim together. They play together. And they were right: there was no reason at all to think they wouldn’t enjoy it just as much this year as any other.

So we’ll probably spend a lot of time this summer on the sandy beach by the pond. It’s not the seashore, but I can’t imagine that the kids would have more fun if it were. They swim for hours, and when they need a rest they play on the sand. Just like the much younger kids more typical of NARA’s clientele. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a great way to spend our summer days, this year just as in so many past years.