July 9, 2015
Selah June is now on week 7 of ISR swim lessons with Miss Carrie. Mama is pooped.
Yesterday, Lori at work asked how much ISR costs. I told her about our experience, that Carrie expects kids to be there about 4 weeks and stops charging for any additional weeks after that. SJ has taken longer in part because she’s a little shrimp. She doesn’t have all the chubby baby fat that her baby friends carry with them into the pool. It’s hard to float when you’re so svelte!
Lori expressed to me that she really wanted her grandson to take lessons. He’s 2 and very active. Part of the reason why Lori is so set on it is that she was close friends with the Daigles, a homeschooling family that we all knew growing up. At a birthday party at the Daigles house, their baby crawled out of the house, across the concrete patio, and fell into the pool. No one was watching, and the baby drowned. By the time EMTs arrived, it was too late. They kept the baby on life support for several months, but eventually he died. That event traumatized all of the kids who were about my brother’s age. Miss Carrie’s husband is Sean Glass, who was also friends with Aaron, Abigail, Brock, and Cameron Daigle. That one event shaped so many families and now the offspring of a whole generation of Pensacola teens.
So today Carrie asked that I bring heavy clothes to her lesson. I knew that it would be difficult to watch Selah June in a pool, crying, wearing heavy clothes, and searching for someone to save her. But I wasn’t prepared to experience this lesson against the backdrop of a fresh telling of the drowning of the Daigle baby.
At one point in the lesson, Carrie took off her pink velour jacket and tossed it aside. It floated for a second, but as the water swallowed it up it began to sink – a tiny, billowy memory sinking to the bottom. It made me sick. I felt goosebumps flash up and down my arms. Though it was really hot outside, I felt a chill. And I heard Selah June crying because she was afraid, choking on water, gasping for air.
This is why we are doing this. I am in… as long as it takes to make sure she knows what to do if nobody is watching.
