We love the pool!

Summer is winding down and the pool is packed with families enjoying our last few days of freedom. Today I am on the top most grassed tier of our pool in a location where I have never sat before. This is obvious as I can see Molly searching for me from her mid pool location bobbing on her typical three noodles. She dips one side of her head in the water, then other other side, and then flings her head backwards and sprays water on whomever is near her. She is oblivious. Then she looks up on the hillside searching for me. This is endearing to me. She's like a little child who still adores her mother and wants to know where she is at all times. My 16 year old typical son hides opposite of wherever I am and keeps his friends away from me too as I might learn too much if they came around. On the other hand, her neediness is suffocating. My stomach cliches knowing that she will be this innocent and dependent until the day she dies. (And now that my kids are older, how can I embark on that fulfilling career? That shall be another post.)

I give her a big wave as I see her scanning the hill and when she finally sees me she gives a tiny fast wave, turns away, and dips her hair again. She seems relieved. She migrates near other teenagers. She probably doesn't know them yet she bobs awkwardly too close to them. She makes her odd verbal stim but often the sound is muted by the loud music playing and all the other kids frolicking in the water. In years past, I would sit near the pool and explain who she was to kids who would give her an odd look. Now I just let them all figure it out :) I'm finally that old mom up on the hill reading my book and I want to savor that hard earned honor. Molly's benign in her ways as she isn't touching anyone or trying to talk to them...she just hangs out near them. Of course I'd intervene if I saw someone being malicious, and I bet the lifeguards would too as they are sensitive to Molly.

Sometimes I have a sadness as I watch her all by herself. The other kids are all playing games together. The "color game" which still baffles me why kids like to play it and play it year after year? You can't possibly hear what color that kid just said with their back to you?! They should learn Red Rover or Alligator which are much cooler games that we played in my childhood. Kids are frolicking on their tubes, squirting guns at each other, creating fond lifetime memories. Molly is the only one all by herself bobbing around. And yet....she is happy. At least she appears to be. She is in water. She is around people. There is music playing. She understands the environment. She is smiling.

We could be there for 15 minutes or 5 hours and Molly would NEVER tell me that she's ready to go. She stays in the water until I sign to her from my perch "all done". The beauty of sign language is that I don't have to walk all the way down to the pool to get her to leave. And I don't have to shout. Sign language was the first way we taught her to communicate so we all have a few signs that continue to this day: "all done", "drink" and "potty" are mainstays. And she never fights me!  I know, I know...that's pretty nice. No back talking, no negotiating, no whining.  But you KNOW I'd give anything for her to do that, right? I wish that she would one day get out of the pool all on her own and come get her towel and tell me "all done". But she's 18 years old and hasn't done it yet, so I'm not holding my breath. Because she is so fair skinned and easily burns, we can't stay all day (though I'd love to). She isn't one to go play volleyball for a little while, or come read a book, or play cards in the shade, and then go swim again. So we come, she swims (bobs), I read, she buys ice cream, we leave.

All things considered; it's a good life. Unless someone poops in the pool like today. No, it wasn't Molly.