Scary Mommy and Me

Up until this weekend, I'd done a pretty good job of avoiding other mommies. I'd thought that I didn't want to hang with other mommies the first few months of Milo's life because they'd all be whipping their breasts out and I'd be there with my bottle feeling stupid and hoping they didn't yell at me because didn't I know that breast is best. But it turns out that that's not why. It's just that other mommies scare me. They scare me so much, in fact, that I tossed and turned all Friday night because I knew that when Saturday dawned I would have to meet other mommies at Milo's first swimming lesson.

I was worried that the other mommies would be better mommies, that the other babies would be better babies ("Impossible," said Steven) that Milo would spit up in the pool, or scream, or yell "My Mommy only breastfed me for 2 1/2 months." Apparently I was also worried about putting on a bathing suit, because when I did eventually fall asleep I dreamt that one of the other mothers at the pool was Terri Hatcher, impossibly skinny in her string bikini.

All of this worry and fear turned out to be pointless, because once I got to the pool I discovered that taking your kid swimming is apparently a father/baby activity. So the mothers were all huddled on the pool deck making sure Daddy didn't drown junior, and I was in the pool with twelve daddies and babies. It hadn't even crossed my mind that swimming=sports=daddy, because in our family, while Steven is the more athletic parent, I am the swimmer. I swam competitively from the time I was 6 until I was in junior high, and then again as an adult. When Steven gets into water he sinks.

In any event, Steven had gone off to the cafe to work and I was by myself in the pool with Milo and a bunch of daddies and other babies, at least one-third of whom were crying at any given moment. And it wasn't always the same third. Milo was wide-eyed and possibly in a state of shock, but he wasn't crying until the baby next to us began to scream. At which point Milo picked up the baby warning signal ("What? There's a fire in the barn?") and began to whimper. I quickly moved to a different spot in the pool and he quieted down.

We floated around the pool for a while and Milo chewed on a plastic fish and I thought, this class is pretty mellow and not bad at all. It was difficult to simultaneously make sure that Milo was the best baby while also making sure that he didn't drown, but I was managing it okay. And then an instructor materialized and it turned out the class hadn't even begun yet.

We spent about five minutes kicking the babies' legs and another five minutes blowing bubbles, which Milo tried to do, but missed, and ended up just licking the water. And all in all it was a lot of fun. And then the instructor said, "Okay everyone, now we're going to sing 'If You're Happy And You Know It!'" And all the daddies and the one or two mommies morphed into a circle and began a hearty rendition of the song, clapping their hands and waving their babies around and splashing the water.

Except me. I was speechless. I hadn't signed up for singing. I signed up for swimming. And this, I realized was why I was afraid of doing stuff with other mommies. Because at some point someone always breaks into "If You're Happy And You Know It". I stared at Milo, who could have cared less if I joined in with the song, and then I stared at all of the grown men and women around me acting like there was nothing they'd rather be doing at 8:30 on a Saturday morning than standing in hip-high water singing songs that would then be stuck in their heads the rest of the day, and, reluctantly, I began to sing.

At some point in the song all the parents lifted the babies up out of the water in unison, and the babies all looked at each other like, "What the hell am I doing in the air above a pool at 8:30 in the morning?" before their parents brought them back down to earth. I wondered how everyone knew when to lift their babies and when to splash them and when to do whatever else they all seemed to know. Had there been instructions issued? Was there some kind of parenting guidebook to songs? I looked at Milo, who continued to wear an expression that said, "What strange place have you taken me to and are you sure we're going to survive?", and quickly determined that he had no idea I was falling behind the other parents in song knowledge.

The class was only 45 minutes, but you have no idea how long 45 minutes can be until you've spent it in a pool filled with crying babies. After the class was over I took Milo back into the locker room and laid him down on a towel and dried him off, and he suddenly perked up and started smiling and talking, explaining to the locker and the ceiling how he'd just had the most marvelous swim class. I smiled at him because it was clear that he'd just discovered the absolute best part about swimming - that moment when you take off your cold, wet bathing suit and slide into clothes that are warmer and cozier than you remembered them being just an hour earlier.