Since I was pregnant, Ikram has been showing me videos of babies swimming and we have both gotten excited over the idea of having a little dolphin child who could transition from land to water seamlessly. The cute little tigger swimsuits! All the underwater pictures and videos we could take! Also, we have been told it is a potentially life saving skill.
In theory, all we had to do was expose Omar to a swimming pool, and then he'll do the rest! After all, babies lived in the water for 9 months of pregnancy, surely they haven't forgotten how to hold their breath, float, and kick right? Ah, the naivety of new parents.
In short, after a few months of intermittent pool trips with Omar (which have invariably produced lots of adorable pics and videos), he still can swim as well as I can. Which is not at all.
Well, that is until two days ago. Because after a while, I started noticing this trend at the pool where the tudung wearing mothers would always be dry by the poolside, while the kids splashed in the pool with the dads. So I thought I would try and be different, and borrowed my mom's muslimah swimwear the next time.
So on Monday, looking like a muslimah seal, I was ready to jump into the kiddie wading pool with my baby boy. That was amusing for about 10 minutes, then Omar wanted to jump out of the kiddie pool and toss himself into the big pool. Once there, Ikram told me to put on the goggles and asked me to hold my breath and submerge under water for just a second. At first I hesitated in the "you're not the boss of me!" line of attitude. But eventually I tried it, and it felt pretty neat. That then led to an hour long lesson about breathing and etc, and by the next day I could pretty much hold my breath for 20 seconds and submarine across a short distance. I still don't know how to actually swim continuously because I cannot figure out how to take in a new breath while swimming-- but I think with a bit of practice it can happen.
So, contrary to what I previously convinced myself, Ikram is a pretty good teacher and/or I am a pretty good student. My last experience trying to learn something from him was skiing, before we were married. His idea of teaching me was to take me up the ski lift 10 minutes after I fitted on ski boots for the first time, incidentally in both our awkwardness I ended up on the ski lift alone (short of screaming the whole way up) and he rode in the one after mine. The plus side (I think) was that he got some nice posterior pictures of me looking like a floating yellow blob with sticks.
Needless to say, I never skied again.
But perhaps, Ikram's second attempt to teach me a skill could only work after almost five years of marriage and a little more understanding of each other's natures. I am not a "learn while you snowball down the hill bleeding" type of person. I like structure, I like steps and plenty of reassurances in between. I also dislike getting hurt even a little bit.
This made me realize that one of the reasons it is a little bit harder to teach an adult may be due to the fact that adults have learned to distrust and grow skeptical over time. That's why its so much easier to learn things like swimming and riding a bike, that have the potential to be painful, from your dad when you were a kid. Who else did you trust more to keep you protected than dad? That said I learned how to ride a bike from the boy living next door to my grandma's place-- but I certainly trusted him when he said he wasn't letting go!
And similarly, this time, I had little fear that Ikram would let me drown and I believed him when he said I could do it. So I guess we have both come a long way.
And so I did! Omar on the hand, continues to drink pool water as a substitute for swimming. But its ok. I had 29 years to learn, he will learn soon enough insyaAllah.
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