Fitting In

Today was the last day of swim team practice. We have a marathon of a swim meet on Saturday…”the championships” that Emma wants to skip because 1) it’s during the annual ward BBQ at Cascade Park which is one of our favorite places in the world and 2) she says she’s the slowest one on the team anyway. She’s no Michael Phelps but she isn’t the slowest one either. I keep telling her the team needs her and she doesn’t even respond. She just gives me her signature look.

The one that tells me teen-ager-ness is right around the corner and I’m not looking forward to it.

I’m an introvert so while I have chatted intermittently with the other swim team moms, I’m not in their group that sits and drinks coffee out of mugs and parks their SUVs on the playground side of the pool. I park my minivan on the pool side and now that Janet’s on vacation, I bring a book to read. Today I was walking past and said hello and they said, “Where’s your swim suit?” That’s when I realized that they all had on swimsuits. I asked if they were all going swimming? They said, “Not by choice!”

Panic filled my heart. Were the kids going to throw the parents in the pool? Is that some last day of swim team tradition that I wasn’t privy to? Why can’t I fit in a little more so I KNOW these things? And why did I wear a white t-shirt?

I spent a few minutes worrying over all of this then remembered that I’m an adult. And I live in America. No one is going to make me do what I don’t want to do, right? Then I noticed a few other mothers without swimsuits. The cool moms (not me) jumped in the pool themselves (thank goodness, no anarchic swimmers throwing parents around). Those moms were good swimmers and they had relays against the kids and did well. I cheered them on, relieved that I could stay safely poolside.

Sometimes I’m surprised when I feel like I’m in junior high again, not fitting in. I think I’m past it all then it sneaks up on me in the form of mothers in swimsuits at the pool or the fact that my sisters are raising their children in rural Nevada the way we were raised and I live in the suburbs and my children’s upbringing doesn’t resemble mine very closely. If I’m the different one, I must be the wrong one, right?

But Billie Holiday said: If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.

And I believe her.

So I’ll continue on my way, continue to be me. I’ll have my nose in a book when I could be finding out that some moms will be swimming on the last day of swim team. I’ll teach my children to paint quotes on the wall and drive them to the YMCA while my sisters are teaching theirs to sew and driving them to 4-H. I’ll home school my kids while most mothers are sending theirs off to school. I’ll ignore the people that are worried about my home schooled kids “socially”. I’ll keep ruining pictures taken of me by having my eyes closed or being in between expressions. I’ll stay behind on my scrapbooks and ironing and food storage but I’ll never not have time to read. I’ve got to be me. I don’t know who else to be.