The littlest Pike fish

In all actuality, Jess is not the smallest fish in our household (we’ve got a tank of Mollie’s and Goldfish that take that title) nor is she the smallest Pike (Jocie steals that title), but, she is the smallest swimmer we have, so I’ll live with the title having provided that justification.

As her half-year birthday passed this weekend, I’m amazed to reflect on the events that are so ‘Jessamyn’ to our lives. Let us focus on just one small part of this amazing girl.

Water.

Her mother and father started working in the water with Jessamyn when she was a little over six months old. At the local YMCA, we took water familiarity classes that places parents and their infant children in the water together singing songs, splashing, and learning to be comfortable in the this liquid environment.

Jess loved these moments and would scream gleefully through each hour long lesson, never having fear or even questioning the event that she was placed in.

Knowing our own love of the water and that of our children, we decided to build a pool in our backyard the following year, and spent large amounts of time in our new vacation spot just a few steps from the house.

The following Summer saw our little Jessamyn sporting a blue and gold swim vest as she would splash around in our hands and learned to propel herself through and around the massive lake sized structure.

In the Fall and Winter of that year, we again attended swimming classes at our athletic club. Jess again loved this time with us and enjoyed the time spent doing things in the pool.

Another Summer passes with our now fishlike daughter growing in her confidence and her abilities. She quickly passes her older brothers capabilities as she pushes herself to dive off the side of the pool and jump from the diving board.

The first major incident happens late in this year, shortly after her second birthday.

Little Jessamyn and I were cleaning up pool toys from an afternoon spent with neighbors playing in the pool. As I take a load in and put it away on the shelves, I return back poolside to a absent presence of a figure that had standing there handing me things to put away just moments prior. At first, I thought nothing of it, and proceeded to take another handful of swim noodles into the pool house, but, as I walked towards the door, I note that I don’t seem to see Jessamyn between myself and the sliding glass door, which is where I had thought she’d gone to. Hrmm…. I wonder where she went… At this point, about thirty seconds have passed since I last saw my two year old daughter.
She must be somewhere.

More seconds pass.

I hear a splash in the pool.

I look… just beneath the tip of the diving board I see the most horrific thing a parent could ever imagine. This is the picture that my wife and I have agonized about so much in putting this glorious masterpiece in our back yard. This was something all of our friends were so worried might happen. Something relatives said could and would happen. Something we convinced ourselves that through good parenting and diligent monitoring we would avoid. Something we thought and hoped could never happen to us.

Yet, there, near the bottom of the pool is a little face, hand outstretched, mouth open in a silent scream with a trail of pea sized bubbles dripping towards the surface. She’s kicking as hard as she can, but her little musclular body has no buoyancy to keep her afloat and has pulled her to the eight and a half foot bottom of the pool.

I quickly rescue her and bring her back onto the poolside decking where she had been a mere minute before, yet it seems like hours have passed.

Screaming and sobbing from the experience I hold her and try to comfort her. She has no idea that the fear she feels right at that moment is a only fraction of the turmoil I’m feeling inside, yet the shock is very real in both of us.

I almost lost her.

I overlooked my responsibility as a father for a few precious moments and nearly cost my daughter her life.

This event has tormented my nightmares more so than any horror film ever could (even when I was subjected to “Polterguist” at the too young age of eight and had needed motherly intervention into my sleep patterns for weeks to follow).

If this single catastrophe were not enough scar little Jessamyn’s water based fears, another event took place several months later as I was closing the hot tub down for winter, and she slipped into it. Her barely over two foot tall body couldn’t reach the surface of the water as she was again trapped in an un-breathable substance. This time I had seen the whole event happen just as I was emerging from the pool house and was able to immediately run to her aid.

Again I rescued my daughter from certain death and calmed her telling her it was ‘ok’.

My ineptitudes as a parent now having surfaced for a second time formulate into a traumatic fear of water for my daughters psyche.

I can’t blame her.

At this point, she developed a well deserved dread of water, but this was not something either Jenny nor I were aware of until much later.

The first encouter happens shortly after the birth of Jocie, when Mimi was visiting us and staying at a local hotel. We decided to take the kids into the pool for some afternoon fun, but Jessamyn refused to get even remotely close to the water. We figured that this reaction was just a location based phobia and had nothing to do with the water, and so we wrote the reaction off.

The second encounter with water happens while going to see Thomas the Tank Engine at the Henry Ford/Greenfield Village now annual event. Before going to dinner, we decided to spend a little time in the pool at the Ritz Carlton hotel where we were staying.

Jessamyn is TERRIFIED of the water now. Screaming through tear-filled eyes she tells me that she doesn’t like the water and to not make her go in it. Feeling horrible as a partent and rationalizing the cause of the fear, we back off in our encouragement and try a more subtle approach.

After an hour’s full of coaxing, she will only plant her feet into the hot tub portion of the pool yet venture no further.

Realizing how much of an impact the previous year’s events have had on her, we again enroll her in the pool program at the local athletic club.

The first day of lessons, I joined her in the pool (she has always seemed to respond better to me than Jenny), but again the terror prevented her from even touching the pool this time.

“Let her go. Just ignore her and enjoy the lesson by yourself” the helpful instructor said “she may want to touch the water or put her legs in later, but just be positive and don’t try to force her. Let her come in at her own willingness.”

I had explained the previous events that our daughter had endured the previous swim season that lead up to the phobia.

Midway through the lesson, Jess brought herself to the edge of the pool, and put her legs in. Further enticement led her to some splashing and giggles at first then followed later by her jumping on my shoulders. By lessons end, she was swimming at arm’s length, still needing direct contact, but regaining some previously lost confidence.

We continued the lessons for another couple of weeks before it became painfully evident that the age bracketed swim group that she was limited to was holding her back. After switching her to an older class that more appropriately matched her abilities (she would be swimming with 4 and 5 year-olds), a call from the program director bashed our newfound pride as she called to tell us that our daughter was too young to be with the older kids since she would be holding them back as the class would be held back by Jess’s inferior abilities.

Naturally, motherly and fatherly hopes crumbled as what we thought was resolved became undone, and the greatest despair came from an almost two year old when she found out that she could no longer take her swim classes.

Jenny thought to call that program director back and give her a piece of her mind, which she did well (anyone who knows my wife can attest to this). The defensive program director told us that she would like to evaluate Jess’s abilities in person during a 1-to-1 session, probably thinking that she’d easily disprove her parents prodding that she was more than able to succeed in the face of this challenge.

An almost miracle then happens as this little two year old figure overcomes severe water fears from two near drowning experiences to a chance meeting with a triathlon champion who runs the swimming program at the athletic program. The director is amazed as Jess’s abilities. She says she’s never seen anything like this at this early age and immediately asks if she can take on Jess as her own student.

We’re both amazed at parents, yet relieved at the same time that someone else can see these awesome abilities that we’ve known Jess has always had. Within months, she has Jess swimming whole lengths of the pool unassisted by any flotation devices, opening her eyes underwater to see where she is going, holding her breath to keep her strides going, learning to do lane-end turns, and the back-stroke as well as treading water on her own.

At this point, my now three year old daughter has more than passed my own abilities in the water, and I’ve always considered myself to be more fishlike than human.

I’m ever so proud of her. She is my emerald. My diamond. My everything.

jp