Before we started going to the Y, I just didn’t understand what the big deal was. I mean, the locker room was smelly, and there was like nothing to do there.

WRONG!

Two years ago Curtis and I started going once a week to play racquetball, just to see if we’d use a membership if we had one. I figured out I could finally indulge my swimming passion after racquetball, because we had bought a day pass, hello.

Once we got a membership, I was at the Y at least 3x a week, including taking this fun kick boxing and cardio sculpting class on Saturdays with Annette. I was swimming 2000 yards twice a week when our membership ran out in February 2006. I was a tad preoccupied at the time, since Ma died a week later, and I was pregnant, cold, and sick and all.

But I have sorely missed the Y, and so have the kids. I asked Curtis this fall what had to happen for us to be able to go back to the Y. He told me that if he got this business deal he was working on, we could return. Guess what? And today marked the day that we all fell in on the free swim in the warm pool again.

Imani warmed up by jumping down and touching the bottom of the 4 foot water over and over again. When she was ready, she started challenging herself to swim across the pool, and then down to the deep end and back. She was swimming stronger than I’ve seen her swim in a long time. Xay shot hoops until he came over to me and announced, “that was fun, but now I’m hungry.” Yanni had been making hungry noise almost as soon as she hit the water. Joy was so excited that she was jumping in and out, playing with noodles, swimming to noodles, swimming to me, to the ball, the side–all at a breathless pace. She reminded me of young Yanni just learning to swim crossed with the fearlessness of young Xay. The lifeguard smiled when I told Joy that she made me nervous.

The lifeguard had remembered us from our weekly trips back in ‘05-’06. “You’ve all grown up a lot,” she told us.

An old man with a long beard walked over to me and asked how many of these children were mine. They happened to be on my side of the pool at that time, so I said, “These 5 over here are mine.” “You have 5 children? You have your hands full!” “Yes, and I have one on the way?” “You have one on the way?” he asked, incredulously. “Well, they are 5 beautiful children, like their mother,” he said. I muttered, “and their father.” He continued: “And they are so well behaved. I have been enjoying your family.”

I was a little creeped out by this exchange, and I thanked him and backed away.

I had talked Yanni and Xay into waiting another 15 or so minutes before we left to get them a snack at their Grampy’s house (right up the street from the Y).

I practiced my flip turns and swam a little freestyle, a little back stroke, really excited about how well I float with baby on board.

Esteban was overcoming his fear of water by tooling around the pool with a cube and two floaty arm bands.

I am looking forward to early morning laps again next week. Maybe even tomorrow.