Christina and Olive and I have gone¹ on a vacation². One of the amenities here is a number of swimming pools open to guests. At home, swimming takes some logistics: you have to reserve a slot ahead of time, and then make sure the swim bag is packed, then drive out, etc, etc. Here, it can be much more spontaneous: if you want to swim, change into your suit in your room, get into the provided bathrobe, head down the elevator.

Olive, it turns out, truly loves to swim. She loves the rush of a waterslide, and the big splash at the bottom. She loves splashing around in the wading pool. She loves hanging onto my arm and just being supported in the deep water. In all matters buoyant, she takes joy.

There is one particular pool here which is absolutely ideal for her. The water is just taller than she is, standing flat-footed: it's too deep for her to breathe comfortably while standing on her toes, but shallow enough that she can bounce up and take a breath without much strain. This is her absolute favorite pool in the entire place.

She's developed a play routine: she climbs up the nearby waterslide, and splashes into the adjacent (shallow) pool. That complete, she splashes over to the boundary to the deeper portion, where I'm waiting maybe 1.5 meters from the edge. She launches herself over to me, tells me about what's happened, gives a quick hug. Then she jumps out again, hits bottom, bounces up, catches the wall, and hauls herself up and out of the pool. Then, she heads back to the waterslide to do it all again.

It sounds all fine, but what deeply impresses me is that she really can't swim yet: she's as buoyant as I am, which means that she sinks without delay. That said, even without any floatation devices on, she takes great joy in immersing herself, bouncing off the bottom, blowing the water out of her nose the moment she hits the surface. I won't quite say that it makes me anxious; the pool is small enough that I can get to her in a second from any part of it, and I don't let her stay underwater for more than a second or two before hauling her up. Still, I feel very alert as she does all this.

It's a comfort when, after some amount of this very active swimming, she consents to have her water wings put on. That signals the termination of the more active style of play³, and the beginning of a more relaxed mode: she'll practice making way on the surface, or just lying on her back to float, or she'll want to go into a deeper pool and be thrown into the water⁴. The nice thing is that, with floatation on, she's fully capable of staying surfaced on her own.

Whenever we go swimming, I remind Olive of the most important rule of the water: "Don't drown⁵" I suppose that, to some degree, she's comfortable in the water because it never occurs to her that I could possibly let her come to grief. It certainly feels like I'm encouraging her in behavior somewhat past the risk threshold that other peer parents permit. On the other hand, she's having a ton of fun, and learning very quickly, and I am after all taking measures to mitigate the risk. I can only hope that I always justify the confidence she has in me.⁶