bravery

I held Henry's hand as we walked up the flight of stairs. I told him he was being brave. When we reached the top of the water slide, he freaked out. 'Let's turn around'. I convinced him to watch other people going down, that they in fact were not going very fast and they did indeed look like they were having fun. We sat down in position, him between my legs, when he started screaming again 'No, No'. I stood up and pull him off to the side of the slide. I told him 'sometimes things that look really scary, aren't. Sometimes we have to do things that we might be scared of doing, but in the end, we end up loving them. We learn that they can be fun.' I ask him 'do you trust me? I will hold on to you so tight and make sure nothing happens. I really want you to trust me'. So he does. We sit back down, prepare for the lifeguard to say go when he screams yet again, 'I don't trust you Mommy'. I pull him off and say 'let's be brave. Close your eyes and give it a try'. He silently nods his head, sits between my legs and we go.

I wish I could say that he loved it, that he jumped out of the water shouting 'let's do it again!'. He didn't. He cried. He cried from the time I pushed off to when we climbed out of the pool. He started shaking uncontrollably with quivering lips. It was talked about hours later as the worst thing he has ever done in his life. Nonetheless, I am proud of him, he did something that he thought was going be scary and tried it.

I myself, took my advice. This was the first time I bravely wore a bikini to the public pool. With my son screaming murder at the top of his lungs, mothers giving me the look like I abuse my child, I was trying to calm him down and not draw to much attention to him or to my bikini-wearing self. With my tummy kind of proudly displaying (and somewhat hiding) my three 4" long stretch marks, I wanted to tell my son 'look at Mommy, see how brave I am today' but I really don't think he would have understood.