A Tale of Two Pool Days
This Labor Day, I want to honor both versions of my pool-going self: the vigilant mom who kept everyone safe all season long, and the relaxed woman who remembered how it feels to simply float.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Actually, no. It was really just two sides of the same coin. It was the same pool, the same Bogg Bag packed to the brim with enough towels and sunscreen for a small army, and the same scorching August sun showing no mercy on the same concrete deck that burned to the bare touch.
But somehow, it felt like two entirely different timelines from two parallel universes.
Pool Day 1.0 - The Safety Patrol Edition
"Teddy, noooooo! Get down! Down!" I call out in a winded tone of voice. Teddy, my 2-year-old human wrecking ball, is doing what he does best: testing the absolute limits of physics, gravity, and my cardiovascular system. At forty pounds and climbing, he's both the most huggable and most terrifying toddler on the planet.
He looks up at me with a mischievously adorable grin, giggling. He stands on the bottom step of the diving board with one foot, letting his other leg dangle off the side. You see, his big brother, Ralphie, just jumped off the diving board for the first time! And naturally, Teddy wants to follow suit.
The early evening sun starts to descend on the pool’s western edge, making it seem like the world downloaded a warming filter across the cypress tree-lined horizon. I want this moment of taking it all in to linger, but I know that it can’t. I’m in panopticon mode scanning for signs of danger, and I can’t get distracted.
No. Not when I have to catch my breath and manhandle Teddy off the steps of the diving board. My husband hangs around in the deep end to scoop Ralphie up after he hits the water and he escorts him right back into safety. While he’s doing that, I try to redirect Teddy away from the deep end and back to the kiddie pool.
When our family goes to our neighborhood pool, it’s always a game of man-on-man defense.
“You got eyes on *insert child here*?” is a question that my husband and I often toss back and forth to one another. It’s a form of verbal reassurance that all of our bases are covered and that both of our boys are safe at the pool.
There are lifeguards, sure. But that’s only for the main pool. And our boys won’t wear puddle jumpers and the like. Which is fine, because I’ve read that they create a false sense of security in the water.
Now, for some reason, Ralphie has chosen 6 as the arbitrary age he’ll be when he starts to go into the big pool. He’s had swim lessons, but I guess he’d rather just hang back in the kiddie pool and kick it old school. That’s why today was a special day— he finally got up the guts to go into the deep end!
“I heard Ralphie went off the diving board!” My mother-in-law exclaims when I talk to her later that night on the phone. Then, she asks: “So, why didn’t you get a video of him jumping?”
“Oh, believe me, I wanted to—But I had my hands full watching Teddy the Terror!” I joke.
She laughs, because #realtalk, she knows that Teddy is a handful. I’m unfortunately just not coordinated nor skilled enough to record a video while lugging a writhing fourty-pounder around at the same time. But I’ll work on it!
"Ralphie, stay where I can see you," my husband says, and I swivel my head like an owl to track Teddy, who's discovered that he can try to use his pool noodle as a water alpenhorn of sorts.
My peripheral vision is working overtime, trying to maintain visual contact with both boys while simultaneously calculating: How quickly could I reach Teddy if he slips? Is that lifeguard actually paying attention?
The thing about hypervigilance is that it makes you fundamentally good at keeping people alive and theoretically terrible at enjoying anything. I'm scanning, assessing, predicting, mitigating. I'm the safety patrol, and every muscle is wound up so tight.
By the time we leave, I'm exhausted. Not the good kind of tired that comes from fun in the sun, but the bone-deep fatigue that comes from spending two hours in a state of high alert. The boys are happy, splashing and giggling in my memory, but all I can focus on is the constant thrum of anxiety humming beneath every moment.
Pool Day 2.0 - The Anniversary Edition
Two weeks later. Same pool, but this time, it's just my husband and I celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary. No small humans to monitor. No mental gymnastics about drowning statistics. No calculating whether we are leaving the pool with the same number of pool toys that we came with (spoiler alert: we never do). No one needs sunscreen reapplied or Cheeto dust wiped off their face or a swim diaper changed. Nope.
As part of our anniversary date, I wanted so badly to go back to the pool as a couple. Not as parents, but as a couple celebrating their marriage.
This time around, I have space to not only notice but to immerse myself in things I've been missing: the way the light hits the water’s undulating gloss, the satisfying sound of someone's crisp dive, the simple pleasure of reading a full paragraph without interruption.
My shoulders slowly descend from their permanently elevated position near my ears. My jaw unclenches. I take a breath that fills my lungs completely instead of those shallow, anxiety-tinged gulps.
So this is what it feels like to be at a pool without being responsible for keeping anyone else alive. Wow! The difference is staggering.
“Are you familiar with dead internet theory?” My husband asks, adjusting his Ray Bans.
“Hmmm. That sorta rings a bell. Give me a refresher,” I reply.
I take a sip of a glorious citrus margarita and think about how much it “hits the spot,” as they say.
Next thing I know, we’re discussing access journalism, that one time I went to Burning Man, and then, the upcoming season of Stranger Things. Our conversation jumps around from topic to topic, and strangely enough, the topic of our kids doesn’t really enter the chat.
I think about how nice it is to have an intellectually stimulating adult conversation with my husband where I can actually finish a sentence without having to hold that thought! because I’m being interrupted by Ralphie, who can’t stand it when my husband and I try to have an adult conversation.
Or to have to stop midsentence to yell “No, Teddy! No touch dirt!” when Teddy decides to take his stuffed giraffe on yet another “interactive” tour of my indoor plants’ potting soil. (There’s truly never enough shelves when toddlers are on the loose.)
I take another sip and so does my husband.
“You know what’s weird?” I say. “Okay, so remember that part in The Matrix where Agent Smith tells Morpheus that the first iteration of the Matrix was designed as some sort of perfect world without suffering, but humans couldn’t accept that program?”
“Yeah, I remember that scene,” he replies, stoically.
“Well, that’s kind of how it feels for my brain right now. It’s like I can’t accept this idyllic day at the pool without the usual chaos of the kids here with us.”
One thing’s for sure: It’s high time to have some adult time because I’ve been operating on high alert with these kids all season long.
The Science of It All
It turns out my pool day dichotomy isn't just personal neurosis (okay, well, maybe a little)—it's backed by research that reveals caregivers often believe they're being attentive even when they allow themselves to step away to attend to other things while supervising their toddler in a pool.
The study found that parents would claim to give "full attention" to their children while simultaneously agreeing they could "hang out with friends" or "check their phone" during pool time.
One minute of distraction equals potential tragedy since drowning happens so quickly and so silently. Reading this research, I finally understood why Pool Day 1.0 felt so draining. I wasn't just swimming with my kids—I was performing continuous risk assessment while pretending to have fun.
The Permission to Feel Both
Pool Day 1.0 represents the meaningful responsibility of keeping small humans safe.
Pool Day 2.0 represents the meaningful necessity of remembering who we are beyond our caretaking roles.
But for some strange reason, Pool Day 1.0 just felt more “real”—perhaps because it’s the more familiar of the two experiences, and thus, it’s become second nature.
With pool day 2.0, it was like my brain had a hard time recalibrating to this newfangled sense of stopping to smell the roses, or in this case, the chlorine. Wait, you mean to tell me I can literally just sit back and relax and enjoy the ride? Hmmmm. Does not compute.
After a full summer of being a human panopticon at the pool to ensure my boys remain safe, it’s like I don’t know any other way. It’s just written somewhere in my source code that I will forevermore be wired to protect, nurture, and guide my sons.
The research validates that hyperawareness serves a legitimate purpose. High water safety knowledge was the strongest predictor of attentive supervision behavior.
But it also means we need to recognize the cost. The exhaustion is simply the natural result of sustained high-level alertness. And we need to give ourselves grace after that exhaustion and know that the longing for a carefree, easy, breezy pool day isn't selfish at all. It’s restoration.
So what's the conscious parenting takeaway here?
Maybe it's permission to hold both truths:
that we can be appropriately vigilant AND appropriately tired.
That we can keep our children safe AND acknowledge the emotional labor that requires.
That we can love swimming with our kids AND also love swimming without them.
The end of summer always feels bittersweet, but this Labor Day I'm choosing to honor both versions of my pool-going self: the hypervigilant mama who kept everyone safe all season long, and the relaxed woman who remembered what it feels like to simply float.
Both deserve recognition. Both deserve rest.
Pause and Reflect
What activities feel completely different for you when you're "on duty" versus when you're not?
How do you honor the hypervigilance tax without letting it consume your ability to enjoy special moments?
What would it look like to give yourself credit for the invisible work of keeping everyone safe, while also protecting space for your own restoration?
The research discussed here comes from "Predictors of swimming pool supervision for caregivers of toddlers.” The study surveyed 650 caregivers about their supervision behaviors and identified key factors that predict attentive versus distracted supervision during pool time.
I so enjoyed this piece, Courtney. It is immediately relatable. I feel this in my bones every time I hop on the bike to accompany my two boys to school. The hyper vigilance, the safety concerns. The younger son inevitably trying to keep up with the skill set of my ten year old, letting go of the handlebars when he has zero business doing so! Then, I feel my shoulders semi-relax as I say goodbye to them at the school gate, and my ride home is something entirely different. I notice a school bus driver idling in an empty parking lot, the breeze off of our lake, my own internal thoughts bouncing around. Both rides are special and challenging, in their own ways.
What’s nice is that vigilance can start to relax after a while as they get older. We can help guide them but one of the wonders of parenting is seeing them grow and take more and more responsibility for themselves.