I have been overcome with this lately. Not for me, though it would be a horrible way to go. I am good enough as a swimmer that something else would have to go terribly wrong for me to drown, and I’d pretty well already be fucked by the time of submersion. Like in the end of Casino Royale, hot girl in a Bond flick trapped in a locked elevator in a collapsing building in the middle of a deadly nail-gun battle — i knew she was a goner when I saw the trailer!

Threats to G’s water safety are far more benign.

Like every summer in AZ, the pool is too cold too cold too cold then overnight its 1,000 degrees, my pool becomes a swamp, G is in it constantly, and I have to instantly re-learn all the ways I forgot to supervise her around the water. She is so mobile in the water and so confident playing around it, it is really really easy to forget she can’t yet swim. Last year she would not get into the pool zone alone, now I caught her climbing a chair to fiddle with the latch.   She knows better, and she is afraid to be in the pool without me near, but playing near it has become comfortable.

I was cleaning up the house and found some PSA from the City of Mesa about kids and water safety.   Usually I think stuff like this is a waste of taxpayers’ money, but guilt made me skim it.   This line I could not get out of my head:     Drowning is silent. Children will not cry, call for you or splash.

Once last year G jumped for me when I was a couple feet out of reach, and for the few seconds as I moved to grab her I watched her slowly sink underwater.   The look on her face made me sick   – it wasn’t panic, which would have meant she was still fighting, it was resignation.   Helplessness.   *blink* she slipped under, and nothing she could do would bring her up.

The thought of what could have happened if I was not an arm’s length away, how in less than 5 seconds my little girl had strolled into the jaws of death…its making me shake, like thinking about a coulda-been commuting to work when I see someone about to not stop before making a left turn into me.   2 seconds… if I was 2 seconds lazier watching the road…I’d be gone.

I have a healthy fear of commuting. And a recent conversation had me thinking that fear is a learned survival mechanism – your mind and body screaming at you to get the fuck out of here. I think my new-found aquaphobia is a good thing. I also think its time I help G put it all together and start swimming.

G swam mostly non-stop from about quarter of 10 til about 3 when she tried to bite Alex.   I saw this one coming, she was getting tired, Alex and her were needling each other, and they were fighting to get out the ghetto step.   but more on that later…

I swam with her for about an hour and a half, after my own long workout, then it was all we could do to trade off and keep her entertained.   She just does not stop, and she is so physical.   I escape the pool having been kicked, clawed and pounced on while hefting, pulling and towing a tireless taskmaster.

Seeing her with Alex was quite a contrast.   G is thick and strong and rugged for a little girl, with muscles starting to be defined in her arms and legs.   Beckie says that Alex especially is not, and how weird it was to have to deal with such a dainty flower, afraid to be physical and also kinda pouty, even though she is a year older and knows how to swim.   Attitude=shape, shape=attitude, nature or nurture? Earlier this week G first learned how to haul herself out the side of the pool, Alex does not even try.   This led to the invention of the world’s cheapest pool step made of a cinder block and an old towel — the beach just don’t feel right if it aint littered like ole Mehico.

G enjoys gravity.

The quality of these is only 640 x 480 since I pulled em off the video, but they are pretty cool.

Favorite daughter is such a horrible thing to say, once there becomes more than 1. i never want to say it, to let them hear me even joking about it.   So much damage will be done along the way by accident, such a fine line keeping them off the stripper pole…why risk more? I can invent the word “cofavorite“, perhaps they will buy it? And yet, there it is in its stark truth: I have one cheerful energetic curious courageous gnarly gurl, and a Pod. My staycation time out of the house with G was all the adventure I could crave.

The day after me, Alana and Kila walked her to daycare, G was sulking about how I didn’t need friends as much as she did, cause I had Alana and Kila and she doesn’t have me. This was the gist of the babbling that came out of her, 3-yr old tinyHuman that she is. It was the deepest conversation we’ve ever had. Lately with the friendship with the new neighbor Alex and her losing my attention to Alana’s needs, I have felt G slipping away. Maybe she feels it too, along with her pulling, and me pulling. She wants to have friends all her own, and I am frustrated after having had to live off mommy’s scraps for so long. I have been leapfrogged and once again am the asshole, the lowest cat on the cat pole.

Every riding partner is a relationship. But always it was us, just us, and now it is so many other things and people and ideas and sayings and parents and sitters and intrusions and demands, and confusion over if it is just us again? Her finding enjoyment in her friends and my not having time for her are facts, as much as excuses. They simply are. It was time to infuse this relationship with some top-notch cball action: I luv G, G luvs Daddy.

After her outburst of frustration, it took a lot to convince her to come to Kila’s park with me and Kila. G usually takes a while to warm up to me. I don’t know if this is typical when children switch gears from men to women, or if I’m just a pain in the ass to deal with, or if the adventures she embarks on with me are just so challenging that she is afraid. G always gets more excited about what we’re doing as we get deeper into it, and on this truth I rest all my opinions and self-evaluations about myself as a parent. The more interesting our adventures become, the more she grooves on it being me who gives it to her. She starts saying things like. “my daddy! my daddy!” and patting me on the shoulders.

We played for a little while, but the park was not the goal – that was the cookie store, the promise I made to get her to come along. Lights, reflectors, slow pace, fun group — the extra effort was really the payoff for me, when she got excited by a totally new adventure. We left Albertson’s with a 30-pack of light beer, a box of cookies, a box of donuts, and a gallon of milk to go along with all her toys and shoes and blankies. The Chariot Cougar hauled it all. Conversation abounded…good traveling banter: casual pace, open honesty. G is going to be the girl who wants to ski til the lifts close, and it makes my heart stop with joy.

The ride to the store was a good start, and when we arrived home the next day i sensed a ride to the mailbox would be a welcome suggestion. Followed by storytime sitting white-trash-like in the back of the F150 with her tricycle, and then a night swim. She was ready for me, the daddy-fuse lit, all day she wanted me to pay attention to her. She is my girl, and I do the best i can for her. There is more to it than hours, I don’t overflow with them, but i think what i bring to the table is special for her. I know it is special for me.

Why the next day was the day she figured out swimming, i do not know. We had our breakthrough just between us, and I can only guess as to whether her swimming breakthrough was related or not. With G pushing her limits, confidence and trust is all about her confidence and trust. I am the only one who can profess that statement, so i will be happy about the why and give myself credit for the day G figured out how to kick and paddle as part of the same general motion. She sure aint swimming yet, but she is now just reps away. The figuring and the getting of it is all in the past.

Then she wanted to jump from the side of the pool. Probably she learned this trick at Alex’s pool, where there are no benches. Our pool is small but has many different challenges – she loves how she can walk its perimeter on the benches, and stand on the rock waterfall, but these are the pitfalls she does not know to respect.   I can not explain how i explained to her to jump only into the deep water. I tried by showing her where she could stand, shoving her in over her head til she swam out, and making her see the difference in color. And eventually she got it,   and got that she had to jump past the shallow into the deep. Reinforcing and spotting and reinforcing again was the mnemonic used, but she got it and so she got it.

She took a running start and jumped by herself twice into the deep. If you were told as an adult you need to clear a certain line, 2 feet more would be no big deal with a bit more effort, but to a 3 yr old 6 inches inches seems the world, a huge stretch, but plunge down into the deep she did. Then twice she jumped with me. I felt in the moments before we jumped her tension knowing she could not make it to the deep water with a standing start (that came the next day), and her relax when i jumped her to it.

The whole day was not a linear thought or progression, too many new challenges confronted her at once, but i felt the joy through her handhold when she succeeded.   We come together in pieces, the most complex and rewarding accomplishments defying a serial approach.     I did not learn to ride the Waterfall from top to bottom, but from middle to bottom and from top to middle.

The next few days went downhill fast.   Her friend Alex has been over at the house seemingly non-stop, along with her older sister and friend and her father and all the assorted accouterments.   Its not that I don’t like them, they are all very nice.   Its just that I hate kids, and we have gone from 0 to 60 in about 3 weeks; from G having no one at the house to there being 4 girls running around screaming, and in the cul-de-sac with their too-chatty dad, and following us to the parks, and taking Beckie away from whatever she was doing, offering one more contention to my attention,   suddenly fighting for my girl’s time in the few hours a day we overlap anymore.   and I   just don’t like neighbors being that neighborly.   The firehose got shoved in my mouth, I am stuck in the house with Pod, and feel like I have lost my daughter and my privacy in my own home.

Beckie and I had a few ugly arguments over this, and she forced me to separate my reaction at being overwhelmed by the new kid next door from the transition G was making into having friends.   With friends comes baggage, time at your house, and time when your girl is not at your disposal.   Its a lot to process, and i need my privacy.   Then G told me before her birthday party the other night that mommy did not want her to have her friends over since it would make daddy mad.   It made me so sad once again.   So I’ve been wrestling with aspects of it for several days, struggling to put on a happy face around the children while tuning out the screaming, and a happy face around the parents while i tuning out the chatter, and a happy face when my girl is gone.   Stand pat and fail, or grow beyond this with skill and trust in my daughter.   I try for a little goal each time, from different angles, until it finally becomes easy,   or at least easier.