Keeping Our Heads Above Water

Day 51 - 09:23am, 20 February 2019

I guess I just assumed that the primary school years would be relatively straightforward, a welcome interlude between the sleepless nights of the early years and the turbulent times generated by the teenage brain deleting synapses and forging their self-identity; and, for the most part, they have been fairly smooth sailing, but sometimes a storm comes upon us, and catches me unprepared.

Today was one of those days. Little Master is due to go swimming with the Cubs on Friday and it turns out it's not a recreational swim, but swimming races - breaststroke, front crawl and backstroke. The trouble is that Little Master's only style is doggy paddle. He can swim: it just isn't pretty. My instinct is to say no. I want him safe and I am not sure that going swimming is the way to keep him and others so.

I admit it. I begin to panic. I imagine him in his most distracted, unfocused state. I see him jumping in, getting out of his depth, getting drawn into frivolity, and then unable to keep his head above water. Not so much scenario analysis as serial panic.

I consult with hubby, telling him my fears and then some. He is relaxed, thinks all will be good. As ever, hubby is sensible and measured, pointing out all the times when Little Master has got it right in the water, but acknowledges my fears and where they spring from. This just makes it worse. I want him to laugh in my face, make me believe that I am being completely unreasonable. We agree to leave responding to the email invite for a while, while we decide the best way to proceed.

I return next door and brood. When I next go through, I say sorry to hubby. He takes it that I am sorry for making such a fuss, whereas what I actually meant was that I was sorry for disturbing him when he was studying. We hug and he tells me it's okay, it is just me being a mother tiger protecting her cub, so why then do I feel less tiger and more scaredy cat?