A few days ago, I headed to the gym for a morning spinning class and then took the kids for a swim. After being at the pool for over an hour, it was time to go, and as much as I was ready to leave, I wasn’t ready for the struggle of getting three wet kids from the pool to the van, especially when those three wet kids were also three hungry kids. My legs were sore from spinning, the middle child was protesting and my body was ready for nap time, but I knew I had to muster the energy.
Then the music started.
The pool had been relatively quiet that morning with the typical squeals of kids, but no background music playing overhead. But then the beat started. I had watched several senior citizens migrating into the pool over the last few minutes. They had taken their positions in the water and, as the beat started, they began to groove and sway and Zumba. But they weren’t the only ones feeling the rhythm.
I was about to call the kids out of the water. I had given the five-minute warning about 15 minutes prior. I was hungry. They were hungry. It was time to move on with our day. But then I saw Kenna. She had been having a rough morning at the pool. Being the middle child isn’t always easy. She had wanted to swim without a floaty (just like her big brother), but she needs direct supervision to do so. My hands were full with the youngest, so I was only able to give her a few minutes without the floaty. In her opinion, she needed more. She was sullen when I told her she had to put the floaty back on or go back to the shallow end. I knew that getting her out of the water would be the biggest challenge, and I wasn’t sure I had the energy for it.
But then it happened. The music started and Kenna spotted the instructor. In no time, she was swinging her hips, raising her arms and shaking her joie de vivre right along with the class. She had walked to the edge of the shallow end to get as close as she could to the instructor. She watched her and mimicked her. And then at times, improvised her own choreography. At first I laughed a bit and I nearly ended it all by telling her it was time to go. But, instead I watched. And I laughed some more…a lot more. I sat in the water a few feet away from her, watching the pure joy in her movement. Her sullen, pouty mood had totally washed away and had been replaced with complete euphoria.
As I sat in the water, my chuckles turned to belly laughs. Soon enough the instructor spotted her and began to smile. Lifeguards and other swimmers took notice. I sat watching Kenna Zumba her little heart out. She didn’t care who was watching. She didn’t care if it was perfect. She just knew that she was having a blast and that she was making other people smile, while doing it.
And I had nearly squelched the moment before it began. As I sat there laughing, I was so thankful that I had put the schedule on hold for just a few minutes. Those few moments of shaking her little tail feathers had lifted the mood for her, me and others around us. We left on a high-note instead of the whine-fest that I had anticipated. Not only did she help me forget about my tired legs or how much I was dreading the lunch/nap/afternoon routine that lay before of us, she showed me that sometimes in parenting you just need to sit and watch and laugh. And sometimes you just have to Zumba like no one’s watching.
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