I take my daughter swimming at the YMCA

A new Sunday poem

Hi all,

A new sunday poem to you and yours :)

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I take my daughter swimming at the YMCA

On a Monday evening at five p.m. as the sun is setting,

I take my daughter swimming at the YMCA. To combat the

monotony of long evening stretches inside, I have hatched

this plan earlier in the day, when the sun was still up, when I

felt energetic and new. Still, I go. I pack a bag. Swimsuits,

towels, new diapers. We head to the car, drive through the dark,

park and walk in. It is a lot of effort, all of it, the preparation,

the travel, even once we’re there, the wrangling of a toddler who

wants to swim on her own. A toddler who wants to use my chest

as a springboard to dive into water headfirst, who does not want to

get out of the pool even as her lips turn blue and begin to shake.

It is a lot of work. The drying off, the pulling on of wrinkled clothes

over half-wet skin, the wrapping up of used towels and suits,

the stuffing them in a bag. And at home, the inevitable forgetting of

these wet garments, the aftermath of a moldy bag. It is a lot, all of this,

and many people would say not worth it for the twenty minutes we

swam. I, too, wondered the same. But I want my daughter to know

something about joy. I want her to know that, even though it was a lot,

all of it, there were at least three minutes during the six p.m. hour on

a dark winter night that she and I floated together, that I held her in

an empty pool, that she stopped flinging her toddler body and rested

gently on mine. At least three minutes that we giggled back and forth,

our faces so close that our noses touched and I want my daughter to

know that joy, even when it is brief and surrounded by so much effort

and work, even when it seems like it might not be worth it,

I want her to know that it always is.

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Thanks for reading,

Hannah