la piscine

{image: David Hockney}

I loved finding out that swimming pool, in French, is piscine, especially when I was more keen to identify my particularly Piscean features-- like an absolute love of being in the water. There's a picture of me as a toddler, my mom holding my shoulders as I float in a pool with the same far away look that I'm sure I still get when I'm able to float, weightless. So when we went yesterday to an indoor public pool with my parents, it was fascinating to see my youngest son immediately shift into that "I've returned to the womb" calmness that I remember seeing in the photo of me around the same age (one and some). He looked like he might fall asleep right in the water. My oldest son, on the contrary, was like a barnacle, if a barnacle could shriek. I hope he someday catches the magical feeling of letting your limbs wave like seaweed, deep under the water, where the weight of it is, indeed, womb-like. Hmmm.