Amazed

Sometimes I look at my children and it amazes me.

Hailey tried out for the HAST swim team last week. Swimming is something I never learned how to do. And there she was, at age six, swimming across an entire pool, beautifully. It was pouring rain and 52 degrees. As she glided across the pool I just stared. How beautiful to watch someone in whom you invest your entire heart, soul, money and life; to watch them succeed. I've been front and center to observe Hailey's progress over the past six months. I drove her to lessons, waited with Libby and drove her home. I took her swimming by ourselves to coach her, repeating what her swim teacher tells her to do as I (humiliatingly) doggie paddle beside her. I know nothing about swimming, but she wants to do it. So I learn.

She swam across that pool at her try out and it was as if all her hard work culminated into that moment. She didn't know if she could swim the whole way and back without stopping. But I knew she could. And she did. With grace, and of course more than a bit of that Hailey spirit: wild, vivacious, glorious.

We'll find out today at 4 if she made the team or not. But no matter what, she takes my breath away.