Swimming Lessons

I could watch the swim lesson from the viewing room upstairs, I was told, so after getting my little boy fitted out in swim trunks, I led him to a bench by the pool and hobbled up to my assigned seating on the second floor. There was a small-scale set of bleachers, behind a large picture window, in the room overlooking the pool.  I saw some other kids, about his age, join him on the bench.  Most had smiles on their face, but not mine.  He looked cold, and miserable.

We hadn’t lived there long, and I’d hoped to meet other moms, there at the Y. But they must have just dropped their kid off.  It was the YMCA, in a small, religious community, after all.  Other matriarchs were probably headed to the windmill mall for coffee, or home to knit or sew or garden.  My TBI had left me overly cautious, though, and I didn’t knit, or sew, or garden so I was there for the duration. Then, just as the kids got into the pool, one lone mother came in and sat next to me.

The water must have been warm because my boy’s sour expression disappeared.  But this is not about my child’s inability to cope with being cold. It’s about how I met the cousin of a close, childhood friend.

The lone mom and I chatted, as we watched our kids below. When I told her I was from Kalispell, she asked me if I knew her cousin. Squealing in shock I said, Sure, I knew him!  We were great friends, growing up!  My head injury makes me less inhibited, and it’s still difficult for me not to say, exactly what I’m thinking. 

She was new to town, too, I think.  (When I reminisce, all my statements should end with I think, because of the memory issue.)  She was the first real friend I made, on my own, after my TBI.  She liked me, for me, and even though she had not known the old me, she accepted me with all the after affects a TBI can leave one with.  The head injury thing just wasn’t a big deal to her.  We became good friends, and our boys did too.

She had another child, our boys grew up, and she went back to work, in the big city next door.  sometime in there, we moved to Idaho.  

More on her cousin in my next post.