Invincible and Water

All babies cry when they get their first bath.

Right?

He didn’t. He was born with a head full of hair. I remember the nurse washing his hair after he was born and him gently cooing.

“Oh you like this!” she said to him.

When we gave him the first bath at home, we had the camera ready for the crying baby in the bath photo like a rite of passage. It never came. He sat in the water and chilled. Infant swim lessons at the Y? He was more relaxed about the whole thing than either of us. The first time we took him to the coast, you couldn’t get him away from the waves. He ran towards them, and then away, and then back towards them for hours- and on the Oregon coast, that water is NOT warm. A few years ago when we were in Virginia Beach- he couldn’t resist the warm water and spent hours in the waves, clothed. Last summer we spent a few days in Bend at a hotel with a pool- and he declared that swimming is the best thing in his entire life.

The water makes him feel…invincible.

The words are endless. Eye contact? It’s non stop.

When he’s in the water, nobody’s calling the shots except him.

If I had to guess- when he’s in the water, life makes sense.

Nobody’s correcting his pencil grip, or his sounds.

Can you imagine feeling invincible?

When you’ve spent your life learning how to navigate a world that can be equal parts confusing and inconsistent- what does that feel like to finally be on top of it all? I
imagine invincible is the best way to describe it.

This journey- with its consistent inconsistencies, the self doubt, the questions of are we doing enough? Are we doing too much? What does this all look like in a year? In 5? In 10? It all fades away when you realize that, even for a second- you’ve given him the gift of becoming invincible.