The competition moms were going full force behind me.

“LET’S GOOOOO, MAISY!!!….oh noooo. She just missed an AA time.”

“She’ll get it next time. She looks so strong,” reassured the mom next to her.

Next heat it was her turn. “COME ON, JACKIE, COME ON!!!….argh. GOOD RACE HONEY. Darn it. That was a second slower than her entry time.”

“She looks great for her first year!” the other mom encouraged her. 

“You are TOO sweet. Thanks. But she wants a state cut, and that wasn’t it.”

Just then my daughter, who’d swum a few heats ago, appeared next to me. “Mom, look! I found a ladybug.”

“I see that. Good race, honey! You got another personal best time.”

“Cool. Can we take the ladybug outside?”

We trekked up the bleachers and down the corridor with its photos of Olympians on the wall, surrounded by would-be Olympians here for the swim meet. Seemingly oblivious to the atmosphere, my daughter burst out the door and delivered the ladybug to a tree.

This just may be my daughter’s greatest superpower – the ability to ignore the outside world and focus on what’s important to her. Does swimming matter? Yes. More than the life of a ladybug? You know the answer. 

I love this about her. I am learning about this from her. Because mommy is a competitor. 

Exhibit A, skating. I love to ice skate. I love my fellow adult skaters. And, when I lace up my boots on competition day , I want to lay it down, and I want to win. My husband, who still cherishes his memories of Little League victories, completely understands this about me. 

I think we both unwittingly expected our child to be like us. When she first declared swimming to be her thing, hubs and I sat in the bleachers at her first big swim meet. “It’s early, but I’m calling it. I think she’ll get a state record someday,” he predicted confidently. Obviously the god of parental irony was listening, as she proceeded to get personal slowest times in everything that day. Not that she knew, or cared – her focus was on hitting the bouncy house in the parking lot apres-swim. 

That day was big for me. Watching her ricochet around the bounce house, I realized I needed to shift my focus. My kid is healthy, happy, and doing an activity she enjoys. If she wants to take her swimming, or her anything, into a higher gear, we’re there for it. But that has nothing to do with the intensity – we’re there no matter what she decides to do. 

Right now, three days a week in the water is right, as decided by her. When offered the option to practice on Friday, she gave it a hard no, declaring, “I need my Friday chill out.” Which feels like a little bead of truth. Cause there’s the whole rest of her life. The structured and unstructured stuff – building her fort in the backyard, art projects on the living room floor, a friend stopping by unexpectedly after school. As much as my competitive instincts try to trick me when we’re sitting in those swim bleachers, her sport is just one piece of the world of her childhood. Which is an amazing place to be.