By now you know that Ian has…issues…with water. Some are certainly his parents’ fault: maybe we should’ve gone with baptism by immersion. The rest of it is just the charm of Ian.

That boy is gone; Greg Louganis has taken his place.

In preparation for summer, Kelly registered Ian for swimming lessons. Monday afternoons, half hour, six weeks. I was skeptical. I’ve been swimming with my son, and I couldn’t see how the instructor would be very effective with a thirty-eight-pound barnacle anchored to her neck.

In preparation for the swimming lessons which were in preparation for summer, we asked William Shatner to find us a nice, local hotel with a pool for the weekend. He had connections with the airport Hilton; at least it was local. Actually, apart from the unfinished construction and peeling paint, the pool was nice. The pool area was surrounded by glass walls, and to compensate the Hilton had raised the temperature of the pool to the temperature of the whirlpool—which had been drained.

Sometime between now and the end of last summer, Ian had become fairly comfortable with the shallow end of the pool. He would stay by the steps, and occasionally touch his feet to the bottom whenever I would touch his feet to the bottom. He would even monkey-crawl along the edge of pools, including the deep end, which made no sense to me. He knew he couldn’t swim, he knew the water was deep, and he knew he was clumsy.

He wouldn’t put his face under water. Not his nose, not his mouth, and only reluctantly his chin.

I wish I could describe the wondrous moment of transition of my son into a fish, but there wasn’t one. He entered the water, slipped on his water wings—Spider Man, even though spiders don’t swim—and started swimming. He whimpered a little when we first let him go, but then he was paddling like Steamboat Willie…’s steamboat. He went back. He went forth. We had a race. He won.

Still, I’m a pessimist pragmatist, and so reserved my judgment for the impending lesson.

Please. While other kids were clinging to the locker room door, Ian started swimming laps. The instructor asked her students to start jumping up and down in the water, and he didn’t stop until the lesson was over. He paddled, he kicked, he blew bubbles.

He put his head under water! This child—who berates me each time he gets water in his eyes in the bathtub—put his entire shoulders, neck, and head under water. When the teacher asked the kids to try and put their chins in the water, Ian blew out his cheeks and made like a U-boat.

Gah-wah?!

But I don’t ask questions. My only concern (because I need to have one) is that Ian may now be a little too over-confident. When the class was told to hold hands and make a circle, he drifted to port and started paddling toward the lap-pool.

More jellyfish than barnacle.