The Moral of the Story is....

Today was Hannah's first day of Special Olympics swimming this year.   She participated last year, and was excited to do it again.   She's been taking private lessons all year, and she was proud to show off her new butterfly stroke to the SO coaches.

We discovered last year that SO swimming in our town is basically supervised swimming--there is little coaching in terms of stroke development.  The athletes are told what stroke and how many laps to do it.    They do make the athletes swim for most of the hour, so Hannah is pretty worn out by the end of the session.

I got her settled in today, and then ran to the store across the street to get the last items Kate wanted to bring back to Jordan (tomorrow! *sniff sniff*).    I came back to the pool about 10 minutes before Hannah was done.    I got to see her backstroke (not her favorite), and got to see her crash into another person who also was doing the backstroke in the opposite direction in the same lane.   There were about 5or 6 swimmers in that lane.  Seems crazy to me--there were other lanes available.

When practice was over, we met on the bleacher seats.  She grumbled about the crowded lane.   She's pretty spoiled at her lessons where she has the entire pool to herself (different pool).    So we talked a bit about that.   She was rather surly.  

As she was drying herself to put on her sweats, she was complaining and arguing with anything I said.   I had already mirrored her feelings back to her ("I saw you bump into that girl.  I bet that was frustrating.").   She was grumbling about everything, and getting mad at me for just breathing (don't you love adolescence?).

Then the head coach called everyone's attention ( a good 45 people or so).  She went through a few items of note, and then said, "Oh, and Hannah, you can't do the butterfly.    (hesitation)   It's not that you can't do it, but you can't do it for Special Olympics because of your neck."        

Hannah doesn't know anything about her neck.    That's because I haven't told her that she has borderline AAI.  I'm counting on her "outgrowing" it.   She didn't have it when was was little, but when she was 10 she was in the borderline range.   And the pediatrician said we'd re-test her after she's done growing (almost done! 5'3" now).     I totally forgot that SO was so stringent about AAI.   My bad.  All this time learning butterfly, and now she can't race it.  Ugh.   Hannah asked what did Coach say about her butterfly?  So I had to give her a short explanation, and she was satisfied enough.   She went back to her previous grumble.

I told her I'd wait for her near the pool.   It's sometimes better to put myself in time-out.  She got her stuff together and came down to meet me, all the while mumbling under her breath.

I don't remember what she said, but it was something impolite. So I told her that I wished that she'd just say how she felt, rather than just being mean and rude to me.   "You can say that you're frustrated or mad, but you shouldn't just say mean things to me when I haven't done anything."     Silence.

So we got in the car.   It's a 30 minute drive home.     We had 20 minutes of silence (fine by me!).  

Finally she said, "I'm sorry I said that thing to you."

Me: "What thing?"

I was thinking that she didn't really understand why I was unhappy, so I was curious about what she thought she had done wrong.

Hannah:  "When we get home I'm going to write a story about being rude.  And the moral of the story is that you have to say you're sorry to your mom."

This totally made smirk, but I had to hide it.  I never heard her say "the moral of the story" before--we don't talk about that at all! I think she picked it up from a fable here or there.  It was really cute.

I don't think that she really knew what happened.   She was just giving me a blanket apology to make things better.   (and it worked)

Anyhow.   She's in the tub soaking the chlorine out of her system, and then has plans to finish off the cheese doodles.  I don't think the story will be written, but at least it's the thought that counts.

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Kate is off to Williamsburg for the day/evening.   Tomorrow afternoon we deliver her to the airport.   She'll finish her time of service and be home near the end of the year.   She's sorry she's not able to attend the Celebration of Lois' Life, which is next Saturday, but she is so happy she got to see Lois earlier this week.

We have great sadness about Lois' death, and meander through our feelings up and down at random times during the day.   I can only imagine how Catherine and Jay are navigating through this.   Impossible.