Butterfly….

I used to read the word butterfly and think of something delicate, something beautiful, symmetrical, unpredictable, a pleasant and welcome surprise.

Today, as a swim parent, when I see the word butterfly, my toes curl, my stomach churns and I fear for my safety when my kids realize they are registered to race the butterfly stroke at a meet.

Two weekends ago, my 8 year old swam the 100m butterfly for the first time.

Surprisingly, she didn’t have as much anxiety as I had anticipated, certainly not nearly as much as I had.

When I realized she was scheduled to race the 100m fly, (“m” standing for metres and not “maybe just as far as you can go”) I followed up on the Coach’s long standing offer, “Please let me know if you think there has been a mistake with the meet entries.”

“Dear Coach, um, er, uh, Ellie is scheduled to swim the 100m fly in the next meet. I’m assuming this is a mistake?”

“Dear Liz, this isn’t a mistake. We’re going to give it a try.”

Good enough.

I learned so much about the 100m fly that weekend.

For starters, my eight year old swam the race and placed 64th out of 64 swimmers.

The strange thing is, I would rank that moment high on my list of proud parenting moments and I’ve got a child who outsmarted head lice.

Ellie was disappointed in her last place finish. I was elated that my kid, (anyone I knew for that matter) had the courage to tackle something that scared her so much and that was so physically demanding.

I explained to Ellie, as a parent, there are moments when our kids will not only surpass our expectations but they will do something we have never been able to do ourselves and will never be able to do in our lifetime. The 100m butterfly was that moment for me.

If there was a ribbon for 64th place I would hang it proudly on her bulletin board with a picture of a butterfly and a great big smile.

What’s your butterfly moment?

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