I Had a Panic Attack in Swim Class
This is my love letter to my fellow single mothers and those who are wishing today would pass quickly.
It happened the day before Mother's Day, and my body can still feel it. In a small way, I guess. And today, on Father's Day, I feel it rising in me again, surfacing the way grief does when it has decided it is not finished with you.
For several months, Rosie and I went every Saturday at nine in the morning. I would wake up flustered, because some part of me still believed Saturdays were for sleeping in. But I have an almost seventeen-month-old. So nine AM it was. And even on a Saturday morning I would rather have spent being lazy, it was still one of our favorite things. For a mama who is a safety girl, it was an important one too.
This particular Saturday, I was already frazzled.
We showed up late. We waded in. Somewhere between row, row, row your boat gently on your back and uppy-downs, Rosie started screaming at the top of her lungs.
Dada.
Dada!
DADA!
All the way across the pool. The very echoey pool, where we all sit like fish in a bowl behind a wall of glass that separates us from the spectators. And the number of eyes pointing our direction told me that said spectators could hear her through that glass. Such a loud scream for such a tiny human.
Coincidentally, out of the eight of us in the water, two were women. Me and a grandmother. The rest were dads.
The very kind dad standing next to me, with a daughter close to Rosie’s age, gave me this sweet, knowing smile. Oh, she misses her dada. That’s so sweet.
And all I wanted to say to him was: she can scream as loud as she wants.
He’s not coming.
Class ended, but not soon enough. My chest and throat began to tighten. My breath went shallow. My panic attack began to build.
All the mommies assemble in the locker room while the daddies rinse their babies off. Then they carry them to their mothers’ waiting arms, to be whisked into a stall. A tag team. The changing of the child.
I was the last one out of the pool. So Rosie and I stood there. Her in a towel, me without one, because of course I forgot mine. Dripping wet, holding my thirty-pound toddler, making small talk with a lovely grandmother who was complimenting her swimsuit. I told her we don’t usually wear this one, but it’s the easiest to get on, and we were running late this morning.
For some reason it felt important to say that.
Then finally, there was a free stall. As I’m shuffling through her backpack, my brand-new walker that hadn’t found her sea legs yet keeps slip-sliding and smacking herself down onto the floor while I try to pull everything out of her backpack at once and simultaneously catch her falls.
And then, from the stall next to me, I hear nine words that were my undoing.
Hey, honey. Can you hand me that diaper, please?
I changed her faster than I ever have in my entire life. Between the hey honeys and the sure babes, I didn’t bother with the little dryer for her swimsuit. I gathered her up, gathered our things, and got out of there as quickly as I could.
I knew I needed to cancel on my way out, since these lessons were a gift from my parents and my dad reminded me our membership was ending. So I stopped at the front desk, holding the tears in with everything I had in me, and the owner kindly asked why we were leaving. I was one more question away from becoming a puddle in the middle of her lobby.
I told her we’re out of town too much on the weekends, and I’m a single mom, and it’s just too hard to make it work with my schedule. But we’ll be back.
She smiled. This woman has always been nothing but kind. But it was in the way she looked at me. Her eyes were warm, but there was something underneath it I didn’t want.
Not empathy.
Pity.
My mind was moving too quickly, and I couldn’t slow down for any more small-talk questions. So I burst out the door.
And as I walked out, I watched the same dad. The one with the kind smile. Helping his daughter toddle up and down the stairs of the shopping center.
For the smallest moment, I stopped. My brain zeroed in on his large hand wrapped around her tiny one.
I have these moments sometimes. It surprises me how infrequent they actually are. But when they do happen, they quite literally stop me in my tracks, and my brain plays a carousel of memories, or visions rather, that never were. Hopes and dreams for small days like these that were never going to be. Of hands I loved so deeply that once held mine and were supposed to hold hers. Rosie was brought into the world on the assumption that I would be the mom at the bottom of the stairs, watching my daughter find her footing with her father’s large hand keeping her steady.
I snapped myself out of it quickly. I was standing in the pathway while other families were trying to make it to their own swim class.
So I whisked Rosie to the car. I buckled her into her seat, and I started modeling those deep breaths I’ve learned to do so well over the years. Showing her how to do them too. Then I jumped into the front seat and into a puddle of tears.
Right in the middle of a panic attack I desperately hoped my child would never have to watch.
✦ ✦ ✦
I think often about what I’ll say to her one day. When she’s old enough to ask the question. When she notices her family looks a little different than the others.
But then I remember.
Baba
Papa
Bo
Niny
Papa
Davey
David John
Andrew
Anders
Miller
Hubert
Father’s Day may never look the way I once imagined it would for her. But she has an army of kind, strong, loving men surrounding her, showing up for her, again and again.
And that is what I’ll tell her.
Today looks different for everyone. Some are celebrating. Some are grieving. And some are just hoping it passes quickly, without fanfare, without incident.
I may be the latter, but I also plan to practice gratitude. For the men in Rosie’s life, and in mine, who have stepped in where they shouldn’t have had to. These two things are not mutually exclusive. We can hold one in each hand.
Grief and gratitude.
✦ ✦ ✦
I’m wishing the happiest Father’s Day to my own dad, who has always shown up for me in ways expected and unexpected. Now he shows up for my Rosie just the same.
She may not live in a home with the man I chose to spend my life with. But she lives in a home with a man whose love is bigger than anything she will ever lack.
A man who thinks she hung the moon and the stars. A man who has cured many a heartache with bear hugs and unconditional love. A man who has picked up the pieces of me, again and again, after other men tried to break me.
I know there will always be a void. Some part of this she will feel the shape of one day, and I won’t be able to fill it.
But if she receives even half the love from her grandfather that he has given me, she will never wonder whether she was loved, or if she was enough.
We love you more than apples and string cheese, Dad.
