None of our girls can swim.  Not at all, even a little bit.  Each summer I think that I will diligently take them to my mom’s pool and work with them, and each summer we go… maybe… three times.  And three times a year in a pool does not a swimmer make.

After another summer of failure in this department, Trevor and I set about to repair this chink in our parenting armor.  We resigned ourselves to doing the unthinkable: spending money on swimming lessons, and this past Tuesday was the big day for the big girls.

We enrolled both Pippa and Romilly  in the “Pike” class for non-swimming 3-5 year-olds at our local Y:  “This is your child’s first swimming experience without a parent or guardian. This class will focus on water adjustment, kicking, blowing bubbles and paddling with assistance.”

Perfect, I thought.  Our sweet Ro can be a bit fearful, as I have mentioned before, of pretty much everything, including the water.  But she did better this summer than last, and with her big sister at her side, I was sure she’d do just fine.

I was a little worried about Beatrix, who turned on the waterworks in the morning before we even left the house when her big sisters put on their bathing suits and she did not.  She whined some more in the car, and some more when we talked to the lady at the desk, and really lost it when we got to the dressing room and undressed the big girls down to their swimsuits.  Indeed, she was still whimpering “Bea want a way-suit, Mommy!  Bea go fwimming, Mommy!” right until we got to the poolside, but that was not to be the real drama of the day.

Pippa and Romilly, on the other hand, were wildly excited about the upcoming event.  They marched into the pool area sporting grins wider than their faces and watched wide-eyed as the senior ladies’ water aerobics class before theirs finished up.

Then, the big moment came.  A rather large, forbidding-looking woman, whom we will henceforth call Ms. I’m-Not-Taking-Any-of-Your-Nonsense, lined the girls up at the side of the pool (apparently our two girls are the whole class, which works out just fine for us.)  She strapped floaty-things on their backs and began the lesson by showing them a safe way to enter the pool by sliding in feet-first on their tummies.

At first, both girls refused.  Pippa, by saying “No, thank you, that looks too scary,”  and Romilly, by shouting, “NO-NO-NO-NO-NO” and trying to make a break for it back to my side.  Ms. I-N-T-A-O-Y-N calmly told her that she could not leave, this was swimming class.  ‘Good,’ I thought.  ‘She’s firm.  That’s just what Ro needs.  Tough love.  Good for her!’

Pippa, after a bit of mild persuasion, slipped into the pool and soon a smile replaced the apprehension on her face.

Romilly, not so much.

After a few minutes of sheer terrified hysterics from our girl, the lifeguard approached me.  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re used to this.”  (If you say so.) “Is it okay with you if I put her in the water?”

I told him absolutely, do what you have to do.

So the lifeguard (or “gardener” as Pippa later called him, though she knew it didn’t sound quite right)  picked up our little Ro and *tried* to put her in the pool.  Romilly arched her back and pointed her toes like an Olympic gymnast doing some elaborate floor routine pose, clinging desperately to terra firma for as long as her little body could keep her there, but at last she lost the battle.

And then, in the water, the real screaming began.  Oh my.

I could barely make out the words she was screaming at her teacher. It was just an ear-piercing string of “NO-NO-NO-NO-NO”s and “GETMEOUTOFHERE”s and “I’MTOOSCAREDOFTHEWATER”s and “IWANTMYMOMMY”s.  Ms. I-N-T-A-O-Y-N, thankfully, took it all in her stride, and just kept towing the party line, “Shh. Romilly.  This is swimming class.  You have to stay in the pool. Your Mommy is right there, and she wants you to stay in the pool, too!”

Every eye in the peaceful, happy mother-and-baby class at the other end of the pool was on us.  The older ladies in the locker room drying their hair after their water aerobics class even heard her (and this is not just speculation, I assure you – the mother of a friend of mine was in that class and wondered what all the screaming was about).  She was that child, and I was that mother.

For the rest of the half-hour class (do you have any idea how long that is?  It’s like…over a hundred thousand seconds!) , Ro alternated between glass-shattering, ear-piercing screaming while she was holding onto the side of the pool for dear life; and whimpering like someone who had had the will to scream tortured out of them while the teacher swam her through the water to do her exercises.  Poor, poor girl.

To her credit, I will say that Romilly did *do* all the exercises.  Through that gaspy mid-sob breathing, she collected duckies from the water, made a starfish shape on her back, and even blew bubbles through her mouth under water.  If she could only do it without the hysterics, I think we’d have a quite a swimmer-in-the-making on our hands.

Meanwhile, Beatrix, who had been watching it all with eyes like saucers from safely behind the plexiglass wall of the viewing area, quietly noted, “Bea not go inna fwimming pool, Mommy.”

We’ll see you next week, Mr. Gardener and Ms. I-N-T-A-O-Y-N!  Ro assures me that next week she is going to do everything her teacher asks her to do, without any “skeaming” or “kying”.  Yeah.  We’ll see.