Rerun: The Summer of the Waterslide Mom

An oldie but goodie: all about facing your (irrational) fears

Hi and welcome to another edition of Chrism + Coffee, stories about finding meaning, growth, and joy in the sacred and ordinary moments alike. I’m Alex: editor, writer, and mom of two wild boys. Today, I’m sharing an older edition from the early days of this letter, now that summer is in full swing. I hope you enjoy it!

Standing water gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I aspire to be a fun mom, but I will probably never take my kids to a water park. I can contract foot fungus for free in the gym locker room. I don’t need to splash my way through fetid water alongside strangers with varying degrees of hygiene.

And because poetic justice is real, my kids just happen to love the neighborhood baby pool. 

I can usually stomach the shallow end of the baby pool provided it’s relatively empty and free of those mysterious little pockets of warm water. But I keep a comfortable distance from the water slide, which both my husband (mid-30s) and my dad (pushing 60) love. They climb the tower and stand among ten-year-olds, themselves like overgrown kids. It thrills my toddlers to no end to watch that twisting half-pipe spit them into the pool in a great gush of mechanically-forced water. 

But no matter the coaxing, prodding, and lighthearted ribbing from my family, I typically decline to join. No, I say. Not today. My body will not be the agent that clears the mysterious flotsam off the surface of that water. Today is not the day to learn whether that is, in fact, a fallen leaf or a waterlogged bandaid bobbing in the filter. Some stones are best left unturned. 

But then 2020 happened and turned everything I ever said or planned right on its head. Everything was canceled that summer, but the water slide twisted and gushed on. And because that was the year of the unexpected, one summer day, the girl who wore shoes in the pool became the girl who climbed the water slide tower, grabbed onto the rusty bar, waited for the lifeguard’s “ok,” and let go.

***

This is the part where I tell that my little trip down the fungus flume cured me of all my water willies. But then I’d be lying to you, and I don’t like lying to people.

I have not set foot on that water slide platform since then, and it’s been two years. I still don’t love community water. I still try hard not to look too closely at the debris swirling around my feet in the baby pool. I still keep a safe distance from bloated water diapers and if I see a runny nose within a five-foot radius, you’d better believe I’m out of the pool like a bat flapping from the very mouth of hell.

But among the universal lessons the past two years have foisted upon us all, life calls you to get in the water even if the sheer thought makes the hair on the back of your arms stand on end. Sometimes the call is lighthearted, silly even, like my trip down the autobahn highway of brain-eating amoebas. Other times, it’s much heavier than a case of the willies. 

But why not practice when the stakes are low? 

The difference between 22-year-old me and 32-year-old me is that I finally accepted that, in most cases, one slip down the water slide won't transform your heart so radically that you go from mildly aquaphobic-germaphobic to part-dolphin.

But it might unlock something else. Maybe sometimes it’s worth getting a little curious.

***

Maybe one day when my kids are old enough I'll climb that water slide tower with them, with their dad and their grandfather, and we’ll place bets on who will go fastest, break down aqua dynamics like the pseudo-scientists we all become when there’s some water-related competition at stake. Maybe I’ll let them win and maybe the competition will get fierce.

But what stands between now and then is a million little steps into water, a few more trips down the slide, another day at the pool with my babies. My sweet boy, James, grabbing my hand and saying “come on, mama!” Liam, the baby, dipping his dimpled hands into the water then looking up at me, eyes shining with glee.

One toe in the water, one pruney baby hand in mine, one tiny yes at a time. I think this might be one small way to close the gap between who we are and who we want to be.