White Knuckles: My Daughter, the Fish

By Brendan O'Hallarn Wednesday, June 08, 2011

I miss a bunch of stuff because I live in Williamsburg, but work in Norfolk four days a week. I signed up for this; I’m not complaining. But the thing I’m the saddest to miss is the transformation of my daughter into Katie Hoff.

Katie Hoff is the Williamsburg gal who has swum for the United States in the past few Olympics. I’m going to sound like every parent in North America when I say that my daughter is on her way there, too.

It’s my daughter’s first year in swim club. Whatever they pay the coach who instructs 18 six-and-under swimmers, it isn’t sufficient remuneration. My wife played some video she had taken of the kids on the pool deck before a lesson last week. It looked like an anthill had been disturbed, and sounded like a crowd for a Justin Bieber concert.

Does my kid always listen? No. Clearly not. She gets distracted easily. She’s stubborn and strong-willed, and when she does end up focusing on something, it’s almost impossible to get her attention.

But that same hyper-focus and stick-to-itiveness helped her do this last summer:
It was a rare day I was actually at the pool, instead of suffering in summer-afternoon traffic. I was watching the boy wander around the deck of the kiddie pool, when my daughter marched in. She got in the water, which couldn’t have been more than a foot deep, and front crawled her way back and forth across the 10-foot span of the kiddie pool. She must have done it 500 times.

She wanted to learn to swim. And she wasn’t going to take instruction from anyone else.

Two days later, I arrived at the pool to my wife frantically signaling me to come to the deep end. There was my daughter taking repeated running leaps off the pool deck into nine feet of water. It’s started a love affair with the water that shows no sign of abating.

Since the pool opened 10 days ago, our daughter has been virtually impossible to pry from the water every day. She drops into bed exhausted every night, and springs awake the next morning with the question: “Can we go to the pool??”

Every dad imagines his kid being a sports star. I’m already excited to teach my boy how to pitch a baseball, because he’s left-handed.

But seeing the actual blooming of a kid learning to master a sporting activity, seeing the joy in their face as they feel more and more confident? I had no idea I’d enjoy it as much as I do. My wife’s the same, maybe more than me because she used to swim competitively as well.

Again, it’s too bad I’m missing most of it because I’m stuck in traffic.

I have permission to flex shift a little bit, so I can make it to my daughter’s swim meets. I can only imagine how proud I’ll feel, and how many pictures I’ll take.

And I know it’s only a matter of time before I hear this from my daughter, and get my parental comeuppance, because I’m not the strongest of swimmers:

“Come on, Daddy! Let’s have a race!!”

Brendan O’Hallarn writes Tunnel Vision every Wednesday in WYDaily. It’s a weekly blabber-fest about his life as a slightly overwhelmed dad with two kids. Thanks for reading, and Brendan would love to hear from you, either at brendan@wydaily.com, or on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/White__Knuckles.