black and (A)broad

My six-year-old has reached another milestone in her brief life: she got her swimming diploma. “What the hell do you do with a swimming diploma?” you’re asking (I know because I asked the same question). Someone once told me their parents let them go to swimming parties. I’ve never known a child to throw one of those. On the other hand, all the children I know don’t have their diplomas. There are so many levels here.

I didn’t know this before moving to Holland ten years ago, but it’s a country of water, a good portion of which actually lies below sea level. The Dutch are in a constant –if not bloodless - battle to keep the sea at bay. Cities and villages are decorated with sloten, grachten and canals (and dykes), which are made to prevent the land from becoming saturated by water and/or flooding. Some windmills work to constantly pump water from the polder (an area of land that has been “reclaimed” from the sea) back out to sea.

The balance of land and water is what makes the Dutch landscape so unique and picturesque. It’s also what makes it so dangerous, even deadly. The Storm is the film version of the tragedy that beset Zeeland in 1953. A major dyke broke after several days of constant rain, and thousands of people lost their lives. Even today most people either lost someone in that storm or know of someone who died.

On a more mundane level, children could fall into a waterway. To prevent large-scale incidents of drowning, the Dutch have structuralized swimming lessons. From the tender age of 4 or 5, Dutch kids spend a half hour, two times a week learning how to float, tread water and do the breast stroke – with their clothes on (once a month).

On Saturday, 24 kiddies swam their little hearts out. One after the other dived into the deep end, squeezed their bodies through an underwater tunnel and swam to the other end of the pool. They floated like a star on their bellies before flipping over like hamburgers and gazing at the ceiling while the man with the deep voice counted to ten.

We parents walked from end to end, taking pictures and video taping them, sweat dripping from our collective brow. No, we weren’t nervous … we were hot as hell. It’s a heated pool and feels like a tropical rainforest. I was this close to taking my shirt off. “Is your bra clean,” asked my neighbor, whose daughter, and Chloe’s best friend, was also swimming for her diploma. I laughed and threatened to drag her with me when I jumped into the pool to cool off.

All the kids “passed” and were given a certificate. Before treating her to McDonald’s, hubby and I let her open her present, a “Moxi Girls” doll, which was probably the highlight of the afternoon.

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter what she does with the certificate. We shared a special moment with our baby, and that’s what really counts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 16:17 and is filed under Geen categorie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.