On a rainy Saturday afternoon, my eight year-old son marches with confidence toward a near Olympic-sized swimming pool. His feet keep time to the upbeat sound of Dutch carnival music – the kind of music that you can’t help but clap along with and that makes you want to down a Grolsch or two – and he is smiling and waving.
I’m trying hard to take pictures, but my fingers are shaking and my heart is beating fast. Because I just can’t believe that in a couple of minutes, this boy – who one and a half years ago was afraid to put his head underwater – will be diving into that big pool and swimming for nine meters straight without coming up for breath. And that too, fully dressed in long pants, a shirt, shoes and a jacket, as is required for the Diploma C test -- the third and, for most children in Holland, final leg of a rigorous, nationwide swim program.
Will he make it, I wonder? Can he do it? What if he can’t?
I have been told by the teacher that children are not allowed to take the test unless they are deemed ready, and my son is apparently ready. But as he takes his place on the diving board, I am terrified.
One by one, as the teachers calls their names over the microphone, child after child successfully dives into the cold, blue water and cleaves his or her way through the nine meters. My friend’s sons – two of them – have no problem either.
And then it’s my son’s turn. My heart is in my mouth as he makes a clean plunge into the water and easily clears the nine meters, coming up for air as though he doesn’t even need any.
“You see?” my friend – probably as nervous for her sons as I am for mine – says with a smile?
She and I have been in this together from the start and we signed our boys up for lessons not only because they needed to learn but also because swimming in Holland is a cultural Must. A country where much of the land has been reclaimed from the water, where historic floods have at certain times in history washed away much of the young population, completing the requisite swim courses – Diplomas A, B and C -- is for nearly all Dutch families, mandatory, a rite of passage as important as a First Communion. Or perhaps even more so, a father from the audience says, since more Dutch children take swimming exams than get First Communions.
So if ever there is a place to learn swimming, then, this is it and over the past year and a half, I have marveled at how well the Dutch swim lessons are organized and how through the perfectly planned system, novices become pros and fear turns into confidence.
The Diploma C test is the proof of that: Children breaststroking and backstroking 12 times back and forth across the length the pool with ease. Their parents and grandparents, who no doubt have been through the same in their time beaming with pride. Us expats up on the gallery, happy and proud too, but still wondering if this is all a bit much, whether 12 lengths is really necessary.
“Strength and endurance,” we tell ourselves. “It builds strength and endurance.”
“Your son can now swim in any water,” the teacher tells me as I bid him farewell. “You don’t have to worry about him.”
That’s a great thing, I know. But what counts for me here and now is my son’s proud and happy face as he stands in line to receive his Diploma C certificate, and holds it above his head with a big smile for the one photo I have no trouble clicking.
Savita Iyer-Ahrestani is a freelance journalist. She writes a regular column on parenting for Business Week magazine online.
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