My Mother and Her Surprise

Yesterday afternoon my mom called to see if it was alright if she and my dad came over to use our pool. We've told them time and time again, that they can use it absolutely ANYTIME they want! We want them to use it.

While waiting for them to come over, I was thinking about her first visit to our pool last summer, and I was chuckling to myself. You really need to read about it here before you go any further.

Don't worry. I'll wait.

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Finished? Okay.

So after Mom and Dad got here and we talked for a few minutes, they went ahead and got in the water. I had a couple of things to do, as did Ted, then we got ready to go in.

I have a routine that I follow when I get in the water. First I check the level of the chemicals (so I can report the results to my wonderful "Pool Man" aka Ted), then I go over to the thermometer to check the water temperature. I like it about 89-90 when the air temp is hot, and about 91 when it's just warm.

Then I usually go out to the deep end and move around there for a little while. After that I'll either swim or float on a raft for a little bit, then switch. I'll go back and forth between floating and swimming for a few hours and then get out.

Well yesterday after I got out to the deep end I saw my mom standing at the very edge of the shallow part. I told her to be really careful because (and she already knew this) the bottom of the pool starts to go down and it keeps going down until you get to the deep end.

She said, "I know it goes down, now just be quiet."

Well, excuse me for being worried about my own mother.

Then she held on tight to her noodle and came out to the deep end! AND THEN...she laid back and floated!!! This was something that she'd NEVER done before!

She said, "I've been taking swimming lessons at the Y!"

I am so dang proud of her!

She works out there three times a week and one day as she walked in, she glanced over at the pool and ended up signing up for adult beginning swimming lessons. It was seven sessions, once a week on Monday evenings and there were only three people in her class.

She has the confidence now, and that's what she needed all along. Kudos to "Susan," her instructor.

She said she came home from the Y the day she signed up and she told my dad what she did and then told him that he was NOT to tell me. She wanted to keep it a surprise, and it definitely WAS!

She still feels as though she needs the support of the noodle, but she was going all around the deep end like she had been doing it for years.

This again proves that you can ALWAYS learn new things, no matter what stage of life you're in.

I'm just so happy for her and extremely proud of her!

Look out Esther Williams!!