Playground Benchmark

Returning to “the pool,” a.k.a. Padonia Park Club, after a winter away gave me a sudden snapshot of how much little kids change in a year. The last time I saw my daughter, Lucy, at the pool, she was nearly a year younger, a bit shorter and not as talkative or daring as she was when the pool opened again for the season Memorial Day weekend. My son, Isaac, was a newborn last summer so his return trip to the pool revealed an even bigger transformation. Last summer, he napped in his stroller in the shade. This year, he’s in the thick of it, sitting up by himself in the kiddie pool, even though he’d rather be carried around the big pool by yours truly.

Despite the bigger, more obvious transformations my son has gone through in the past year, it was Lucy’s evolution that really drew my attention. And it wasn’t so much anything she did in the water that was new as it was the way she behaved on the playground adjacent to the pool.

We stopped at the playground at the end of our morning at the pool, on the way to the car, an afterthought to the busy morning of swimming. We were blown away by how Lucy just started climbing, even though she was exhausted from playing all morning in the water. She’d never used the playground before – last summer, she was intimidated by what seemed at the time like a “big kids” playground. She tackled all of its precarious climbing challenges with ease, until suddenly she slipped and was hanging by her hands from a high spot, the rest of her body dangling below, orange Crocs miles from the ground.

The funny thing was, Lucy never panicked. My heart stopped beating for a minute, however, before motherly instinct took over and I quickly darted over to support her. But Lucy never batted an eye as she hung there, seconds away from a free-fall. She just accepted my help when it came and moved on to her next climb.

The incident that wasn’t reminded me of how much she has grown and changed during the past year. It also reminded me how I need to let her grow and change by giving her a little freedom, even if it makes my heart pound to do so.