It's 2018, I'm six years old, and the whole world has lessons for me to learn. Many of the lessons are scripted, some are hidden in the laugh tracks of the Richie Rich sitcoms that stream on Netflix, and others are seemingly unintentional.
This week, while hanging at the pool with my dad and the Clark girls, I went to lean on the pool chair while slipping on my flip flop. Who designed these pool chair death traps anyway? Did somebody have an extra bag of large rubber bands lying around and a metal chair frame and decide that one could complete the other? I leaned my entire body weight on the seat of the chair, I mean, I just sat in it, so I know it can hold my weight, but, the joke was on me because the seat is no seat at all, but a series of elastic straps. When my butt distributes its weight across the straps, it holds my body up, but when my tiny hand leans in, it finds its way right through the straps and I fell headlong right into the edge of the table.
Oh, I wasn't going to let the world know that I had been beaten by a poolside chair. I quickly shot up, looked around to count the number of observers who may have caught my bobbled balancing act and then made a bolt lock eye contact with my dad. He didn't realize that the pain behind my eyebrow had already started throbbing, but he knew by my look that I was holding something back. He intuitively picked me up and whispered, its ok, even though it wasn't. We walked to the car, drove quickly home, and by the time we hit the drive a goose egg bump was closing my left eye and by morning...I had a shiner!
I was mortified. I didn't want to go to church the next day nor horse camp that was to begin the day after that because I didn't want anybody to see me and think I looked weird. My parents tried every trick in the book: they tried to teach me that beauty was only skin deep, that it didn't matter what others thought and they even pointed to the lessons of a recently watched American Girl movie: our true friends will support us when we need them most.
Truth is, at six years old, a little of each of those lessons all came to fruition in the next couple days, so it would be easy to congratulate them on their prediction of my future, but in all honesty, it was the lesson that they didn't teach me that taught me the most. You see, my dad has learned to be one heck of a cook and my mom taught me to ride a bike. It is 2018, and roles don't seem to matter the way they did a hundred years ago when my parents were kids. There is no one size fits all solution to any of life's problems, and I know that because my parents are just regular hard working people who get as much wrong as they get right, but above all, no matter what role they are playing in the production of the day, they never waiver when it comes to loving me.
That is the lesson, the one that nobody planned, the one that hasn't been said, but is behind it all: I am worth loving. At the end of the day, that is what made it ok to go to horse camp with a black eye, as nervous as I was that the world would laugh at me, I know two trust worthy characters who have learned to stretch outside their own comforts to show me that I am worth the effort, and I believe them.
Today was the first day of horse camp, it took some courage, but just like in the American Girl movie, I told my best friend about my eye and she showed me she cared.
Monday, June 25, 2018
Sunday, June 3, 2018
The Pool
So, it isn't like I don't shower. I am no stranger to a bathtub either. I try my best to get in eight servings at eight ounces per serving everyday. I have never lived in the desert. And my dad waters the lawn everyday, sometimes twice a day. Basically I am no stranger to water. I am surrounded by it on a daily basis. I love it in all forms. I love ice in my glass and water in my cup. I don't drink juice (my mom goes out of her way to buy me water boxes, so I have something to drink when the other kids bust out the 36 grams of sugar filled boxes of "juice"). I even love steam. When the shower steam does its thing, I'm always good for a steam etched finger drawing, usually calling out my love for my mommy - I <3 You Mommy.
So, if water is such a typical daily occurrence in my life, why then is it that my heart goes a flutter, my pupils dilate, my smile seems wider and my squeal just a bit louder when my parents announce that it is Memorial Day weekend, thus marking one of the most important annual events of the year in the Eick House: the opening of the Westlake Community Pool!
This wonderland is filled with adventures of every kind for me. The trek from the parking lot itself can be an obstacle to overcome, you see, in my excitement to scurry out to my dad's car, it is not unusual for me to forget my shoes. The hot lava dance across the scalding black-top asphalt parking lot is just what it takes to get a ride in my dad's arms - today, my brother Tyler carried me - Score! Just to get into the pool, you have to code your way through a labyrinth of locked doors - I feel like a spy every time: the first door takes a magnetic card key and the second a sequence of numbers, just beyond which sit two secret agents disguised as a couple pimple-faced teens "pretending" to be working a summer job...nice cover boys. On a busy day, every table, and every umbrella is taken, but this is our home court, and it is not unusual for us to know at least 3 umbrellas worth of friends, each of which wave and say hello as we sneak past the guards.
My dad always brings snacks. Every time he acts like I might eat or even want to sit for a moment prior to or instead of charging across the deck and plunging into the crisp cool goodness that is 10's of thousands of gallons of water - I never snack. I strap on my goggles and I partake in every routine we have developed in my six summers of life at this pool. This was the first place I ever floated, and now I am able to almost swim across the entire thing. We play submarine, surfboard, and we dance the tango; then there is the climb on the shoulders, the stand on the shoulders and the claw the shoulders; there are all the areal maneuvers like air-splits, cannonball, and the pencil; and finally there are also the mandatory moves that my dad forces on me: the back-float, the distance swim and the crawl.
Upon reflection, it may be more than the water itself, the pool is a place where community comes to share time with each other, and truth be known, that is my favorite past time. More than anything else, I love it when my people and I are in it together, no technology, no hustle and bustle, just neck deep in maneuvers to keep ourselves from going under, and the feeling that if you start to slip, the strong arm of your family will always be there to pull you to the surface. It reminds me that this life was made for living together. Yeah, I love the pool.
So, if water is such a typical daily occurrence in my life, why then is it that my heart goes a flutter, my pupils dilate, my smile seems wider and my squeal just a bit louder when my parents announce that it is Memorial Day weekend, thus marking one of the most important annual events of the year in the Eick House: the opening of the Westlake Community Pool!
This wonderland is filled with adventures of every kind for me. The trek from the parking lot itself can be an obstacle to overcome, you see, in my excitement to scurry out to my dad's car, it is not unusual for me to forget my shoes. The hot lava dance across the scalding black-top asphalt parking lot is just what it takes to get a ride in my dad's arms - today, my brother Tyler carried me - Score! Just to get into the pool, you have to code your way through a labyrinth of locked doors - I feel like a spy every time: the first door takes a magnetic card key and the second a sequence of numbers, just beyond which sit two secret agents disguised as a couple pimple-faced teens "pretending" to be working a summer job...nice cover boys. On a busy day, every table, and every umbrella is taken, but this is our home court, and it is not unusual for us to know at least 3 umbrellas worth of friends, each of which wave and say hello as we sneak past the guards.
My dad always brings snacks. Every time he acts like I might eat or even want to sit for a moment prior to or instead of charging across the deck and plunging into the crisp cool goodness that is 10's of thousands of gallons of water - I never snack. I strap on my goggles and I partake in every routine we have developed in my six summers of life at this pool. This was the first place I ever floated, and now I am able to almost swim across the entire thing. We play submarine, surfboard, and we dance the tango; then there is the climb on the shoulders, the stand on the shoulders and the claw the shoulders; there are all the areal maneuvers like air-splits, cannonball, and the pencil; and finally there are also the mandatory moves that my dad forces on me: the back-float, the distance swim and the crawl.
Upon reflection, it may be more than the water itself, the pool is a place where community comes to share time with each other, and truth be known, that is my favorite past time. More than anything else, I love it when my people and I are in it together, no technology, no hustle and bustle, just neck deep in maneuvers to keep ourselves from going under, and the feeling that if you start to slip, the strong arm of your family will always be there to pull you to the surface. It reminds me that this life was made for living together. Yeah, I love the pool.
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