Autism Vox

At Poolside

by Kristina Chew, PhD on October 10th, 2007

After a trip to Target for some extremely mundane purchases (binders and sheet protectors for a new activity schedule for Charlie, and some on-sale bleach), we went to the pool and I fell to watching a father and his 2 or 3 year old son in the wading pool. The father stayed closely in step with his little son, who had wet blonde curls like his older brother—a preschooler—and splashed his way through the water. There are three brightly-colored levers in the pool that, when pulled cause one of three Nemo-ish fishes up on posts to squirt out water, and Big Brother laughed and tried to show his father.

I have noted both how Charlie and I feel at home at the pool, simply because water seems to be my boy’s natural element, and also how, of late, we have been feeling some limitations at the pool. The only time that Charlie—not being on a swim team—-can swim during the week is during “Family Time” and, since the swim team and adult lap swimmers are swimming in the big pools, Charlie is unable to do the one thing he really wants to do, to swim in a pool that he also calls “blue ocean.” 3 1/2 foot pools and water slides are fun for splashing but there’s only so much serious swimming anyone could do in these (and Jim and I are working on this concern with the pool-powers-that-be).

Charlie having reached the point when he and I are the same size (give or take a few millimeters), I have found myself simply not happy to see him consigned to a wading pool. His routine is to go down one of the slides, hang around in the special roped-off post-slide section which is full of foaming water (recalling ocean waves) until the lifeguard urges him out, and then to go under the rope to the wading pool. Charlie has no intentions of bothering anyone, but one splash of his can be a bit much for a baby and I hang around poolside and occasionally give Charlie “a look” which he knows the meaning of.

The mother of the little boy whom I had first noted had appeared in a tank top and sweats, then left briefly, and returned in her swimsuit. Her husband hung around with their son for a few more minutes in the water before leaving with a gym bag. I was standing by a small yellow slide: Charlie was sprawled at the base, his shoulders just under the water. The mother walked by with her son, and I realized that he had Down Syndrome. And that, while young, he actually was not that much shorter than his brother, and the top of his diaper peeped past the waist of his swim suit. And, he held his arms a bit stiffly to the side. He didn’t smile; come to think of it, neither did his mother as she guided him gently around the pool, her long blonde ponytail down her back, nor his father—indeed, I reflected, the father broadcast an air of patient nervousness to be with his son in the water, a look I know well from having watched Jim swimming with Charlie in the ocean, Jim letting go of the back of Charlie’s bike seat as Charlie pedaled and then, Charlie having taken off, Jim running furiously to leap upon his own bike and race off.

My mind went back over the past eight years and everything we had done, and not done, and tried to do when it seemed too late, so that I found myself standing dressed at the side of the pool instead of in it hanging onto Charlie. Charlie did not need me in the pool, but I did have to be standing nearby.

The mother and her two sons left the pool as Charlie was pulling himself up to sit on a foam barbell, and bobbing around. She picked up one bag, and her son in her right arm, and then a bigger bag. I used to carry Charlie in the same way, using my hip, though with my left arm, which still has the trace of a muscle.

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POSTED IN: Family, Parenting, Water