Swan Dive

May 11

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In honor of Mother’s Day, I bring you my favorite post about my mother. I could not have asked for a better role model and friend. Happy Mother’s day Mom!

I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Phillipians 4:13 NIV

My mother taught me how to swim. She taught my brother, all my cousins, and me. Where I grew up, my family all lived on the same road. Aunt Marilyn lived five houses down from us, and she had a pool. Many summer days were spent there. With swim suit clad bodies, we’d throw a towel around our shoulders and flip flop all the way to Marilyn’s.

When I was too young to swim, Mom put me in a galvanized tub of water beside the pool and let me watch. My cousins and brother would run and jump, slide and splash to my delightful squeals. As I grew, mom taught me to leap in the shallow end and slip down the slide. By the time I was four, I was flipping off the side.

I loved when my mom swam with me on her back. She told me to hold my breath and her neck. She would swim underwater to the deep end with my little body floating up behind her. Sometimes, I would pretend she was the Mama fish and I was the baby. And together we swam.

My mother was unsurpassed. She could do anything. Always athletic, she played basketball in high school. During softball season, she threw balls in the backyard. And basketball season found her coaching my team.

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But in summer, Mom was diving. Most of my friends and family attribute their knowledge of diving to my mother. When other moms would sit on the side of the pool not wanting to get their hair wet, my mom would launch herself in with a beautiful swan dive. A few steps and a hop, then her arms flew gracefully through the air as her body floated up, up and with a tilt, she slipped in the water. It was an attitude. That swan dive was the way my mom has always approached life – with style and grace.

Many years have passed since our pool days at Marilyn’s. The diving board is long gone, and the pool closed for good.

That swan dive attitude stills lives within me. When I think of the insurmountable, I think of my mother floating through the air. The pool may be gone, but my mother can still swan dive. If you’re sitting by a pool this summer and an older lady approaches the diving board, don’t be surprised if she leaps into a swan dive.

It just might be my mother.

*Photo credit

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