So Ends the Summer

I never got the chance to tell you the story of how swim lessons ended. To recap: Lily took three - two week sessions of swim lessons over the summer. That is a total of six weeks of swim lessons four times per week or 24 lessons. Lily had a blast and loved every minute of it.

At the pool there is a big slide. Lily had wanted to go down the big slide since our adventures in swim lessons last summer. The slide was closed due to damage it sustained in Katrina. However, this summer on the last day of our first session of swim lessons the slide was re-opened and all the kids got to go down the slide. All the kids except the little ones in the mommy and me swim class. Lily was so upset because everyday she had been asking me if she could go down this slide for over a year and now others were going down, but not her.

The second session of swim lessons Lily was now in the level one class and eligible to go down the slide. It is all we talked about for the entire week. One of the mothers told me that the kids would be taken down the slide every Friday. I told Lily and it turns out that was misinformation. The plan was to take the kids down the slide every other Friday, on the last day of a session. So dumb. Lily was again devastated, but her very sweet and cool instructors took her down the slide on that day. Lily was on that day the only child who was given the opportunity to go down the slide. She got a pretty good dunking after flying threw the air and I wasn't sure how much she enjoyed the slide.

The following week was the end of the second session of swim lessons, Lily was in a class eligible for going down the slide, all things were a go. Again she was extremely excited. And everything went well and Lily had a blast. Lily was the only child in level one who went down the slide unassisted. The other children went down on an instructors lap and had their precious head held up above the water so as not to be dunked. Lily asked if she could go down alone and she did. She had a blast even with the dunking and she went down the slide several times.

The next Friday there was no slide and Lily understood. But, the final Friday of swim lessons the weirdest thing occurred. Lily was excited and talked of nothing but the slide. However, when the time came for her to go down the slide, another child was crying. He did not want to go down the slide even on the instructors lap. He was hysterical and he was Lily's friend. His mother said he did not have to go down the slide and he sat over with the moms to watch the kids go down the slide.

The instructors had Lily go first because the other kids were all afraid of the slide. They love Lily because she is always so excited about everything that it sometimes rubs off on the other kids. However, this time it worked the other way. At the top of the slide Lily refused to go down. She even refused to go down on an instructors lap. She said she was afraid. What is that some sort of peer pressure?

They had Lily climb down the ladder and in doing so she somehow managed to rip the toe nail off of one of her toes. It was completely crushed and blood was everywhere. Lily was crying and it took me awhile to figure out what was wrong. I carried her over to the lifeguard office to get a band aide. The lifeguard was more worried about putting on rubber gloves then in handing me a band aide. Once she got her rubber gloves and put them on she opened the most awful and dirty looking first aide kit I had ever seen. Everything was wet, rusty and gross. I scooped up Lily and took her to the car. I was not going to let anything from that first aide kit touch my precious baby.

The swimming pool is only a block from Jeff's work and as luck would have it he works at a hospital. I called and told him we were on the way. I had to park very far away. I couldn't put a shoe on Lily so I had to carry her. It was about 100 degrees and with 90 percent humidity and I was carrying my kid in a steaming parking lot for what felt like miles. We arrived at the hospital and of course there is so much construction I had to walk all the way around the the other side of the hospital and then back through all the halls to find Jeff. We arrived and Jeff had an enormous amount of gauze for Lily's tiny little toe. He did not have a band aide. He also had tweezers that did not look clean for me to remove the hanging bits of toe nail. I decided to just use my fingers and then made him go and get me a regular band aide.

After putting on the band aide I put on her she and she was able to walk. We bought cookies from some fund raiser and then went back to the car. Luckily she is brave enough to walk all that way or I would have passed out from heat exhaustion. As we exited the parking lot we had to drive back by the swim lessons and I decided to stop in to say goodbye to her instructors. Even though it ended badly Lily loved her teachers and they treated her so very well. All the other kids and parents were gone by then but we went and gave hugs and said our goodbyes. And so ended our summer swim lesson fun.