Losing the bubble: a toddler's final frontier

Like her mother, my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Gabrielle is an independent spirit and isn't willing to be constrained if she feels she doesn't need to be.

When she swims in the pool, she generally has to stay where she can stand or wear her flotation bubble so she can swim in the deeper part of the shallow end. She also doesn't love being held up or otherwise supported in the pool while not wearing a bubble. This is a matter for some consternation, because she can't swim.

Or rather, couldn't swim.

After six weeks of swimming lessons, my daughter can propel herself and keep herself afloat in the pool. That's loosely defined as swimming, isn't it?

Doesn't matter. What does matter is that when these things happen we both win. She wins in that she is starting to be able to assert her own independence in the pool, and I win in that I get to share these special memories with her.

At least three nights a week, she and I trek the couple of blocks to Lakeside Pool, where she, like the other kids at our extremely family-friendly pool, romps, plays, swims and jumps to her heart's content.

My role in all this is to let her swim to me as I stand with my arms extended a couple of feet away from where she starts treading water. Then she hangs on for a few seconds to rest and subsequently lets go to start the process all over again.

It delights her to no end and since her mother isn't as much of a pool rat as I am, it's often just the two of us, splashing away happily and getting some serious good times in.

Then the other night, the Mount Everest of three-year-old life loomed: Lakeside Pool's one-metre diving board.

She looked up at it and asked if I had ever jumped off a diving board. I said “sure,” and told her how much fun I had on the diving board at Sunnyside Pool when I was growing up.

Then she got real serious for a second and looked at me soberly.

“Daddy, do you think I could jump off the diving board?”

I said “sure, but we have to ask the lifeguards if it's OK to let Daddy catch you,” I responded.

With nobody else in the pool on this cool, sort of overcast evening, the lifeguards – my daughter's new best friends -- were OK with the idea, and gave us the green light. I helped her up on the board and she waited for me to jump into the water and give her a target.

I treaded water with everything I had and she took a mighty leap into the great unknown.

Then she hit the water, Daddy caught her and we swam together to the ladder to get out.

She was thrilled. So was I. Even the lifeguards were smiling.

It's one of those little moments that makes life worth living and makes parenting so sweet.

Man, I love swimming.