Saturday Snapshot -- Big Heads

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme, post a photo that you (or a friend of family member) have taken. Then leave a direct link to your post on West Metro Mommy. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
At the District swim meet yesterday, we held up "big head" pictures of our senior kids to cheer them on. Tucker and his best friend Josh are having their graduation party together. I think we should mail these big heads around the world to have people take pictures of Tucker and Josh at different locations.
Wouldn't that be fun?

Here's the relay team on the podium with their silver medals. I couldn't get Tucker to bite his medal like they do on the Olympics.

Tucker also won a 3rd place medal for the 50 freestyle and a 5th place medal for 100 freestyle, breaking the school record by 2 seconds, which is a lot in swimming time.  We are waiting for one more district meet to post times to see if Tucker will swim at States in an individual event. 

Hope you all are having energetic days too, or at least cozy ones. 

Let me know if you live some place exotic and want me to send you the big heads for pictures! Lol.

Swimtacular

Having a terrific time at swim districts this afternoon.

The last time for this swim meet.

We'll know tomorrow whether Tucker makes it to the States meet.

Saturday Snapshot -- More Swim Pics

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme, post a photo that you (or a friend of family member) have taken. Then leave a direct link to your post on West Metro Mommy. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
Last week I posted some pictures showing how Tucker has changed through his swim years. While the post was up, I was at another swim meet, and one of the mothers there had a camera and took some terrific pictures.
These have been on Facebook already, but I thought I'd share on my blog.

That's Tucker diving in over the head of his teammate during the 400 Free Relay race. The boys won that race. 

 
And this is the next frame as Tucker went into the water.
I'm off to another swim meet today. Three more weeks if they make it to states again this year.

Saturday Snapshot -- Growing Up Swimming

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme, post a photo that you (or a friend of family member) have taken. Then leave a direct link to your post on West Metro Mommy. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
I'm spending this morning at a swim meet. Swim league championships. This is my 7th year in a row to go to high school league champs at the same pool. I know exactly where we will sit so we can get good pictures. But, this is my final year because my baby boy is a senior.
Here's a picture of him being adorable.

This was the age when he used to walk down the stairs, one foot at a time holding onto the rungs under the railing, and when he got to the bottom he'd say, "Here's Tucker!" Oh, what I would give for that kind of excitement now.
And here he is a few weeks ago in his manly hairiness and a Speedo, which really looks good on no one.

When I was looking for a swim picture of Tucker, I found this one from when he was 11. 

Compare it to the one of him a few weeks ago. 

 He still pushes the goggles up to his eyes as a nervous habit. 

Hope you all have a warm and fun weekend. 

Saturday Snapshot -- Swim

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

Today is an exciting day in my house because of a big district swim meet yesterday and we found out my son is moving on to States.

It's also an exciting day because my novel The Summer of France is free on Kindle Saturday and Sunday. I'd really appreciate if you'd download it free. If you don't have a Kindle, you can download a free Kindle reader to your computer then download my book. Thanks. Plus, I bet you'd like the book if you'd give it a chance! Here's the link: The Summer of France.
Now here are some photos from yesterday.
Tucker gets his head shaved every year before the meet.

But first the barber makes sure he looks really silly.

Here they are on the podium one of the three times that they placed in the top four.

I love this group huddle after they dropped 6 seconds from one of their relays.

I can't to see what you all are posting.

Lochte Lookalike

It started with a trickle -- a friend of Grace's said, "You know that swimmer Ryan Lochte, he kind of looks like Spencer."
So, the next time he was on television, I took note. Maybe the nose, the cheekbones.
Then more and more people started commenting on it. A friend from Connecticut sent me a Facebook message. A friend of Tucker's mentioned it during a car ride.
I'll let you be the judge. I snapped a photo of Spencer last night and then borrowed some of Lochte from websites.


Here's Spence, 18, on graudation day in May. This is a different picture than
 the one I had on the post earlier

Lochte, 27, at the Olympics. This photo is from the website yimg.com

 I can see it around the eyes and eyebrows too. But what I'm really afraid of is that some  people see a bit of physical resemblance and some attitude resemblance.
The reason I'm afraid is because Lochte really seems to be a douche. It's almost a cliche now, but it's the word that comes up most when people talk about his sparkly shoes that have "Ryan" on the bottom of one and "Lochte" on the bottom of the other or when he shows people his diamond-encrusted grill that he wasn't allowed to wear on the medal stand.
Spencer can give off that sense of bravado too. But Spencer is clever and funny. I haven't gotten that sense from Lochte.
There's a hilarious article about Lochte on the website Jezebel.com. The article is called 10 Reasons Why Ryan Lochte Is America's Sexiest Douchebag. And it's mostly written for women who comment on whether they'd still sleep with him even though he's a jerk, so don't read it if you might be offended!
Well, there is one other way that Spencer is like Lochte. He could be a blue jean model since he works tirelessly to keep his cut body. Here he is, caught in his natural state without a shirt, asleep on the couch.

I think the entire reason he decided to go to college in Florida was so that he could go shirtless through the majority of the year.

I guess there could be worse things than being compared to an Olympic swimmer, even if he seems like a jerk a lot of the time.

Hectic and Hoarse

This morning, I'm a bit hoarse from all the cheering I did yesterday. It was one of those hectic, yet satisfying days spent supporting our boys in their athletic endeavors. And though the boys weren't always victorious, I'm proud of their achievements.
The day started when I dropped Tucker at the high school at 7 a.m. to catch the bus to the swim meet. I had dashed into Panera to get him bagels and we pulled up right at 7. He climbed on the bus, the swim coach stepped off, and the bus drove away at 7:02 a.m. I sat in the car for a minute, then turned it off and walked over to the rubberized track to run a few miles.
The swim meet, the league championship, started at 9:30 and we got home around 3. So it was a long day. But our boys team came in 3rd, the highest they've ever placed. Tucker swam in two free relays. You know the freestyle stroke: that's the one people sometimes call the crawl. In the final relay, our boys were four points behind the second place team. If they won the relay, they could pull into second place. Two senior boys, along with Tucker and his best friend Josh, who are sophomores, swam the relay. Tucker went last because Josh said he couldn't stand the pressure. Usually, the fastest swimmer goes last, and Tucker and Josh trade places as to who is fastest. I wish I could tell you that when Tucker dived in, a great arcing dive as Josh touched the end of the lane, that he pulled them into first place. He didn't, but he swam an amazing race and came in 3rd by hundredths of a second. All the boys had good times.
As an exhausted Tucker pulled himself out of the pool and walked around the corner toward the coach, he stopped in front of the stands where Earl and I sat. He looked up to the balcony and held up his hand with a 5, then a 2, then a closed fist and a 1. His time swimming the 100 free. 52.1 seconds. That's his fastest time ever. But the real thrill was that he wanted to take the time to share it with us, his parents.
He was exhausted, of course, and so were we. After a brief rest at home, plus some paper grading, we went out into the cold night to watch Spencer play a basketball game.
They played a team that had beaten them by 20 points last game and our team was tied with them for 1st place in the league. At the half, our team was ahead by two. The second half, Spencer started with no fouls, which is unheard of for him. In the third quarter he got four fouls -- many of them questionable. In the fourth quarter, his nemesis on the other team gave him his fifth foul by jumping into the air and landing on his back. What? All the parents screamed. How could that be a foul on Spencer? But it worked twice as the same guy gave our other big guy his fifth foul by landing on his back.
We lost by 4 in the end, but the team played hard and Spencer scored 11 points.
We returned home at 10. I had two more papers to get graded by midnight and with a scratchy throat I fell into bed at 11:30 after a hectic day.

And So It Begins...

Sports practices started officially last week and on Saturday I had my first full day of sporting events.
Spencer had a basketball scrimmage at 10:30

It felt good to be sitting in the gym again, even if only four of us parents showed up to watch our boys. In this photo, Spencer is in the navy shirt with the guy in red pushing him.
Then at 1:30, Tucker had a swim meet.

I sacrificed my afternoon of college football to watch Tucker swim.
But, I need to remember that this is my last year of basketball since Spencer is a senior. And I'll only have two more years of traipsing to swim meets since Tucker is a sophomore.
I vow to not complain, but to enjoy every minute of watching my boys play sports this year.

Saturday Snapshot -- Swimming

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
The photographer, who took Grace's senior picture and is scheduled to take Spencer's senior picture in August, has some kids on the swim team. Lucky for me. She sent this great photo of Tucker swimming butterfly.


Butterfly has always been my favorite stroke to watch Tucker swim because the muscles in his back ripple and he looks so powerful. You can see from this picture that his arms stretch almost across the whole lane, which might hint that he will grow even taller than the 6-feet tall that he is now.
Tucker doesn't like the picture because his mouth is to the side, but that's just how he breathes when he swims butterfly.

Updates

To follow up on a couple of blogs from the past few weeks:
Bald Tucker did very well at his swim meet. He missed making states but he dropped a lot of time in his events, including more than three seconds in the 100 butterfly. That's Tucker out in front. He won his heat. I know the times don't mean anything to non-swimmers, but suffice it to say that when I texted his YMCA swim coach the time that he swam, she responded: "Holy Sh**". She has asked him to go to Florida in April to swim at Nationals. Tucker is deciding whether he wants to commit that much time and effort to swimming over the next month. I know he is worn out from the season.
Spencer's last regular season basketball game was Friday. Spence played well and the teams went into overtime. With 20 seconds left, down by two, he was fouled. Spence moved his big high-top shoes to the line. Bounce, bounce, bounce. Swish. Now the team was down by one with another free throw left to go.
Time out.
No, not the opposing team's coach. Our team's coach called time out. He iced his own guy! He iced my son.
The other team's coach will sometimes call time out to make the player think about his free throws and increase the chance he will miss it. The other team's coach didn't have to because our own coach did.
Spencer missed the free throw and we ended up losing the game by three, so the blame didn't rest solely on Spencer.
And, finally, my best friend called again this week. She even commented on my blog post about unions! She said she didn't speak to anyone, even her sisters, last week while she tries to figure out her future. I can understand that. I'm here for her if/when she needs me.

Premature Balding -- Really This Time

Well, swim districts morning dawned and Tucker stumbled out of the bedroom at 6:20 a.m.to find me sitting at my desk.
"Goggles," he said. "I need new goggles."
Then he went back to bed.
Of course, he needs new goggles on the morning of swim districts, not the day before or the week before. But we had other things to take care of first.
So after a trip to Kroger for NutriGrain bars and granola, I drove Tucker to the barber. He chose to shave his head for swim team.

Here he is before the haircut. Even with his hair cut very short, it's bleached out, not his normal dark color.
The barber began with a trimmer set long and then reduced it even more.
He was willing to make the pictures interesting. Too bad this one is a little blurry.
The barber made it as short as possible with the trimmer then said he could go one step shorter with a razor.
What? How could it get shorter than this?
But, the barber laid a hot, wet towel on Tucker's head then lathered it up with warm shaving cream. Slowly, he began to scrape his razor across Tucker's head.

Luckily, the weather is unseasonably warm. The morning started at 58 degrees. Tucker walked out of the barber shop and felt the breeze on his bald head.
We drove up the highway and bought new goggles then went to the team breakfast.
There, Tucker met up with more of his own kind -- bald boys ready to swim fast this afternoon.

Early Baldness

I'm in an email fight with the high school swim coach.
She sent a message yesterday about preparation for the Sectional swim meet this Saturday. For boys, "On your head, hair must be completely off."
That's right. Bald.
Tucker has been fretting about this all season. He does not want to be bald.
He's 14. He's the fastest swimmer they have on the team. He can put on a swim cap -- like Michael Phelps did.
My arguments have run the gamut.
*The girls don't have to shave their heads.
*This is high school, not world-class competition.
*The world record holders are not bald.
She responded that this is a bonding experience for the boys.
I gently explained that bonding happens when people decide to do things that bring them closer together.
Bondage is when they are forced to do things.

As a freshman, Tucker has made many concessions, beginning with the tiny Speedo swimsuit. Previously, he always wore a knee-length suit. A 14-year-old does not want to put his junk on display. At 17 or 18, he may be happy, even eager, to wear a tiny Speedo. He might also joyously shave his head, first into a mohawk one week then bald the following week.
But 14-year-old boys are a little more fragile than 17-year-old boys. They worry about what people say.
Now Tucker is worried that the boys on the swim team will be mad if he doesn't shave and the kids at the high school will make fun of him if he does shave.
Ah, a teenage dilemma.
I, of course, get no credit for the things I didn't say to the coach, like, I wonder if the athletic director would support this mandate... followed by a pregnant pause while the swim coach realized I was threatening to report her.
To me, the annoying thing is that we have to fight about something that might improve Tucker's time by 1000th of a second. Work on his technique, not his hair length.
As I was writing this post, the swim coach called to talk. I still resisted threatening, although she thought my choice of the word "hazing" was a little strong.
I apologized for that.
In the end, she agreed to let the boys cut their hair very short and wear two swim caps if they do not want to join the team camaraderie.
Tucker doesn't know I fought this battle for him and he wouldn't thank me if he did. As a matter of fact, he might decide to shave his head in the spirit of the moment, but I'll know that he chose that for himself.

Highs and Lows

Saturday was full of ups and downs. It started with a crisp 7.5 mile run with my friends in the 25-degree weather. (I'll have a Dream Girl update tomorrow).
My day was scheduled to be full of sporting events. Not the usual college football that I watch, but a swim meet an hour and a half away, and the first regular season basketball game. Of course, the snow started to fall before I left.
I have no practical shoes for snow. I have clogs and crocs and high-heeled boots. I ended up wearing my hiking boots with jeans, which just makes me feel a little too manly. But I drove through the pelting snow and made it to Wright State University before the first race began. This was Tucker's first high school swim meet invitational.
The swim coach put him in the "B" relays at first. Then, after he swam on Tuesday, she moved him up to the "A" relays.
"She thinks I'm bad," he said.
"You'll just have to prove it to her," I said. And he did.
He came in first in the 50 back stroke and broke the old meet record. Then, as his team and another team seesawed back and forth in first place, they lined up to swim the final event. A 200-free relay.
I was nervous. I shook my leg, I screamed, I smacked my hand against my jeans in place of clapping. "Go! Go!" I yelled as the boys each dived in and swam. They were slightly behind the other team throughout. The final swimmer drew even and out touched the other team, winning the race by two hundredths of a second.
"Whoooo!" I yelled loud so the swimmers would hear. All of the parents had erupted into cheers and celebrations. Our boys' team won the meet against the 12 other teams there.
Then I slogged out into the parking lot. I was going to be late for the basketball game which was taking place an hour away. I turned on the windshield wipers to try to scrape the snow off and I searched futilely for a scraper. I used a CD case -- the Blues Brothers. It worked fairly well.
I had to slow down for a few accidents and one tow truck pulling a car out of a ditch. I made it to the basketball game at the start of the second quarter.
One of the dads explained that Spencer had been in the game but was called for traveling because one of the big guys on the other team was pushing him hard enough to scooch him along the court. Any time Spencer went into the game, the fat guys were put back in by the other team. Spencer's added muscle was no match for these 200 plus pounders. At one point, one of the moms pointed out the fat guy had carried Spencer about six feet.

Things did not go well for Spence or his team. He missed four free throws. His rebounding was done, not with sticky hands, but like a volleyball game as the ball was hit and flew into the air. The coach stopped yelling and sat on the bench. They ended up losing by about 17 points.
I parked Spencer's car at the gym and walked the mile home in the quiet night around 10 p.m. The sidewalk shone with ice and I windmilled my arms a few times to keep my balance.
When Spencer arrived home, he said, "It's just embarrassing to try that hard and be that bad."
"Everybody has a bad night," I told him. "You can't quit trying. Then you'd hate it."
"I did quit trying at the end," he said. I nodded.
That's when the coach finally took him out. The coach could tell.
Someday, maybe both my boys will have great sport days or great academic days or great days in love. For now though, as volatile teenagers, they have up and down days, usually all within 24 hours.
I'm glad I can be there for them, whether to celebrate their wins or mourn their losses.

Choices

While Grace was home last weekend, we talked a lot about choices. She hates to make decisions. Even when we're shopping for clothes, she'll say, "I can't choose." Choices aren't right or wrong, I told her, they're just different paths.
As Grace ventures out into the world, she is facing more and more paths. The problem with choosing one path is that the other path gets rejected. Most of the time, once we start on a path, we can't go back and try the other one again to see how that might have turned out.
I tried to illustrate my point by telling Grace that shortly after I moved to Clearwater, Florida for a job with the Tampa Tribune, I was offered a job at the New Orleans Times Picayune. If I had pulled up roots and moved to New Orleans, my life would have been totally different.
I met my husband at the Tampa Tribune. Marrying this particular man led to the paths that we have taken. The fiesty kids, the soujourn in Michigan and then back to Ohio.
Would I have settled in New Orleans? Would I have developed a southern accent and improved my French? Would I have married a man who lived on a bayou?
I don't look back and wish I'd taken another path.

Rather than being helpful, I think this example terrified Grace. Now all of her decisions seemed to be crucial and life changing. The choice she faced was whether to continue swimming. We avoided the word "quitting."
At college, she spent about 22 hours per week swimming. She wasn't loving it. She stressed about the classes and the labs and the grades. She saw her friends only in passing. She went to bed early and rose in the dark to ride her bike to the pool. She longed to go to swing dance class and spend more time at the theater learning to apply make up and hem costumes.
Her path seemed clear. Swimming, although a part of her life for the past eight years, was not going to be her career. When it stopped being fun, when it stopped being the place she socialized, she needed to let it go.
Letting go is hard.
On Monday, hidden in a stairwell in her dorm, she called me sobbing. "What have I done?" she wailed.
She met with the coach and told him, slipping into tears right in his office. When she asked if she might be allowed to return to the team her sophomore, junior or senior year, the coach said, "We'll have to talk about that."
So she swiped at tears as she crossed campus and searched for a private place to cry. It's not easy to find solitude on a college campus.
As the days have passed, her mood has soared and plunged.
"Sometimes, especially at night, I think what have I done? I have to go swim," she confessed in one whispered phone call. She thinks about going to talk to a counselor on campus, but in the morning she feels good about her decision.
As the day wears on and the darkness slowly surrounds her, this path looks unfamiliar and she wonders if she can still run back and try that other path, the one that she was on for a very long time.

Childish Adults

"I am the only adult on this campus!" Grace huffed into the phone today as she trekked across her college campus.
I'll have to agree that she was getting some pretty bad advice from the adults at her college. Grace has been struggling with class load and swim practices. She practices 15 hours a week. She had the sprained ankle and now has rotator cuff problems, plus a perpetual cold and sometimes fever in the cold, rainy weather where she has transplanted.
Her major is conservation biology, which requires taking a biology lecture class with a three hour lab and a peer component. They meet five times a week. She's struggling with the class, partially because of the math and the fact that she is not allowed to use a calculator. The instructors banned calculator use because they are so advanced that students can hide information in them and cheat on tests.
Today, Grace met with her advisor who isn't in the biology field. He's in the Communications department and is in charge of her performing arts "house." His wise suggestion: She should drop her biology major. He doesn't think she can swim and major in biology.
Then she had a meeting with the swim coach who had noticed she was struggling. I thought he might offer suggestions to help her deal with all the hours of practice, offer her some sympathy.
He wanted to know why she wasn't spending more time with the swim team when they aren't at practice. He thinks she has social issues. Truthfully, from the first night she got there, the swim team has been drinking heavily. Grace has chosen not to drink at college (Earl and I don't know where that came from, but we admire her decision.)
Grace did not rat out the partying swim team members, including the fact that the 21-year-old captain collects money from the younger students and buys them alcohol. His ultimatum, commit 100 percent to the swim team. Start hanging out with the swim team members.
So that's what she got from the adults in her life today: Drop the major that you have planned on for years and start hanging out with people who get falling-down drunk every weekend.
Grace may change her major before the end of college, but it seems like a choice between spending more time studying or more time swimming should be directed to the academic side.
Neither biology nor swimming are making her very happy any more. She gave up playing on the Quidditch team. She just dropped swing dancing. She may not get to travel to the Rally for Sanity in Washington, D.C. Biology and swimming are asking a lot from her.
What does make her happy these days? Her crazy performing arts friends who sing, dance and laugh. Learning how to do makeup and costumes at the theater, including some pretty cool stick-on wounds.

Swim Stars

David Sedaris tells a terrific story about overhearing a conversation on the Metro by some American students who debate which city is better, Paris or Austin. After all, in spite of Paris' benefits, Austin does have air conditioning and the Sonic burger. One of the points he makes is that no country or city has the motto: "We're number two." Everyone thinks they're the best.
Yesterday, Tucker's motto was "I'm number two" as he came in second in every race he swam at the day-long, outdoor swim championships. Tucker is a great swimmer and he is used to winning everything in the outdoor swim meets, because the swimming isn't as competitive. At championships, sometimes swimmers show up who might not have been at the regular meets. Every race Tucker had Wednesday was against a boy named Orion, like the constellation.
And Orion's times were much faster than Tucker's.
When I saw him on the blocks, I thought he looked like a man and wondered how he could be 14. Tucker is big for a 14-year-old, but this guy had the pecs that stand out. Gulp!
Each time Tucker returned from a race, having taken second behind Orion, he had a little more information about the boy. He was homeschooled, Tucker said. Of course, so was Tucker for six years.
He's graduating from high school next year. Okay, Tucker is not doing that.
All of Tucker's times were good. He dropped seconds in each race, but always came in second to Orion.
"I'm sorry, Buddy," I said to Tucker. "I knew I should have named you after a constellation."
"Yeah," Tucker said. "Little Dipper."

Just Keep Swimming

This morning I didn't write from 5 to 7 a.m. That's because Grace and Tucker had to be at a swim meet at 6:15. Waking teenagers to swim at 5:45 a.m. is never a cheery event.
Tucker has been swimming year round since he was 8 years old. Even that first year, he showed promise, making a "star time" in back stroke and free style. Now as he wrestles his way through his thirteenth and fourteenth years, he wants to give up swimming. He has fought me about practices since last fall, complaining each time that I send him out the door with his black Speedo backpack. He swam for the middle school last year and is already faster than most of the high school boys.
Today was a USA meet rather than a YMCA meet. That means the fastest swimmers from around Ohio, southern Michigan and northern Kentucky gathered at Ohio State to swim this morning.
The air was cool as I dropped Grace and Tucker before parking in the garage. They both dogged it on their 100 free, their first events. Then came the 50 frees.
Tucker ended up fifth overall for the 13-14 boys. That means he made it into the finals this evening. USA swimming uses the times in the morning for preliminaries. The top 8 come back to swim the finals and the next 8 come back for a consolation round.
From the stands, I told his coach that he wouldn't want to come back. Tonight Columbus celebrates Fourth of July with Red, White & Boom. Tucker asked earlier this week if he could go to a party to watch the fireworks.
The coach talked with him for a minute, turned toward me in the stands and said, "He wants to come back."
"Okay," I said.
As soon as we left the building, he told me, "I don't want to go back tonight."
"You already told the coach you'd go," I replied. I really didn't want to hash this out. The coach had talked to him; he'd agreed, why did we have to talk about it. Or, more precisely, why did I have to listen to him complain. He is four-tenths of a second behind the first place finisher. Hundredths of a second behind the second through fourth place finishers. He could win this.
Sometimes I wonder if it is worth the constant arguments about swimming.
Pat, one of the dads in the stand with me, said, "If I were as good at anything as Tucker is at swimming, I'd keep doing it forever."
That's just it. When you're 14, you're pretty sure you can be good at anything you want to. You may not recognize that this is a special talent you have.
As we headed back to the pool at 4:30, Tucker said, "I'm not going to do as well as I did this morning."
"Why?" I asked suspiciously. Was this his plan?

"I'm tired," he said.
"I'll let you stay out until midnight tonight if you swim a faster time than you did this morning," I offered.
Game on. Usually he has to be home at 11.
He warmed up then sat and waited. He went to the diving well and warmed up some more.
Finally, it was his turn to swim.

They were swimming long course, which means they swim 50 meters all the way down. Most pools have a lane that goes 25-yards across then they come back 25 yards.
Tucker climbed on the blocks, his cap a bright green.

He dove in the water and moved his arms fast. He was ahead for much of the race. He finished in second place overall and dropped more than half a second. For anyone who cares about swim times: he had a 27.66 in meters long course. That translates to a 23.79 in short course yards.
I could tell he was proud afterward as he walked me through the race.
"Those other guys were all wearing Speedos and I wanted to show them I could beat them not wearing a Speedo." Tucker hates those little suits like underwear. He wears the suit that comes down tight to his knees. The guy who won wore a suit like Tucker's.

As we walked through campus, emptied by the holiday weekend, Tucker was satisfied with his hard work for that day. That doesn't mean that we won't argue again on Monday when it is time for swim practice again, but I plan to make him stick with it.

Motherhood is a Tightrope

Being a mom means walking a careful tightrope. I need to give my kids enough room to try new things and fail or succeed, but keep them alive and healthy. It's tricky sometimes.
Last week I wrote about my dilemma as to whether I should allow Spencer and some other 16-year-olds to camp alone in the country. I opted to keep him home. That's why I was reluctant to say no again on Sunday when he and three other guys decided to go swimming at the quarry.
My kids had never been to the quarry since we moved here three years ago. The old marble quarry is surrounded by townhouses and apartments now. I don't know if signs forbid swimming. I do know there are supposed to be freshwater jellyfish there.
Spencer explained that there is a sandy beach and that they would swim around beneath the rocks before they did any jumping or diving in to make sure it was clear of underwater rocks.
Spencer is also a lifeguard, so, even though I was reluctant, I let him go. I have to admit that I called his phone a few times before he walked in the door in his swim trunks, no shirt and flip flops. He was home safely with stories of swimming out to rocks far into the quarry. He'd taken the risk and he was home. I wiped the sweat from my brow.
Now, two nights later, we're flipping between Glee and the NBA playoffs when my editor husband texts me. A teenager from a neighboring suburb has died in the quarry tonight. He is a football player and was swimming with other football players.
I don't know the details. I don't know if they were rough housing or trying to see who could try to reach the bottom of the quarry. I don't know if they were diving off cliffs and hit a rock. I don't know if he was a weak swimmer who couldn't make it back.
I do know that it feels too close, like one of my feet slipped from the tightrope and I had to reel my arms like windmills to regain my balance, checking to see that they were all safe. And I can't imagine how that other mother feels. It's so hard to let them take risks when anything could happen when they walk out the door.

Swim World

While all around me here in Ohio people are obsessing about basketball, my weekend is all about swimming.
They call it March Madness and it's the college basketball tournament. Everyone, even people who care nothing about basketball, predict the winners of the 64-team tournament. Then they watch the results, suddenly invested because of those brackets they filled out.
As for me, I'm in a hotel room near Bowling Green State University for the biggest swim meet in the region. It's called the Great Lakes Zones and includes swimmers from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia. My kids events are conveniently timed so that they swim only one or two per day -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Both Grace and Tucker have dropped time on each event they have swum, so I guess it's a success. As for me, I am scrambling to finish grades which are due today and after I finish this swim meet Sunday then run to my writer's group on Sunday afternoon and take Spencer to basketball practice Sunday evening, I am taking some time to myself.
I mean it too.

Sad Grace

Tucker is in charge of the picture slide show for the high school swim team this year so we have over 600 photos of swim team members. This one kind of sums up how Grace felt after her disappointing swim at Districts.
As we were driving home from play practice at 9:30 last night, I broached the subject of skipping swim championships for the Y next week. She will have play performances Thursday, Friday, and twice Saturday. Then she'll have to get up at 6 on Sunday and drive two hours to swim. She is setting herself up for more disappointment.
"No, I can't skip. It's my last championships."
Then I pictured how the "last" anything is so sad for Grace and I imagined the tears I will have to deal with.
"Well, if you skip this year then last year was your last year so you won't have to be sad," I reasoned.
She didn't buy it.