Life Lessons from Water Country

I recently spent a long, hot day with my daughter at Water Country, a huge outdoor water park in Portsmouth, NH.  If ever there is a place on Earth to contemplate the human race, this is the spot.  There are few other places to fully observe not only the human form on extreme display, but also different aspects of human nature and the wild variation therein.  For instance, in a place where most people are barefoot (I am particularly partial to highly unfashionable but extreme useful water shoes, but nevertheless) I saw people spitting, tossing gum, and carelessly dropping food with abandon.  There were parents screaming and cursing at their children, teenagers recklessly disturbing other people with their rude behavior and people shoving by each other to claim lounge chairs and picnic tables when the park opened.  But there were the better sides of people on display as well.  I saw parents lovingly teaching their children to swim, couples completely at ease floating down the lazy river together holding hands and smiling, and families taking advantage of a beautiful July to just have fun with each other.  I know, for me, it was an opportunity to forget obligations, responsibilities and burdens, to stop worrying about all the things I normally worry about, and focus on just how big my 4-year-old smiled and how loud she laughed as we went down the water slides over and over. 

Of course, the part that’s hard to miss at a water park, is the profusion of skin on display.  It’s hard to not judge what’s visible all around you, hard not to wonder at questionable garment choices, hard not to compare yourself to 18-year-olds in teeny tiny bikinis.  But, all that aside, three separate but related situations really stood out to me. 

The first was a woman I saw with her young son.  She was a beautiful woman, fair skin and long red hair.  Her son was adorable, bundled in a huge life jacket, enjoying the kiddie play area.  The woman was wearing a moderately revealing black bikini, which she wore quite well and was obviously in great physical shape.  She was also at least 8 months pregnant.  Her belly was perfectly round and lovely, and completely on display.  My first thought was that I was wildly jealous.  She was glowing and gorgeous and seemed to be completely comfortable wearing what she was wearing.  I would never have had the courage when I was pregnant to show my stomach, and it was not long ago that no one would even consider such a thing.  I could see people watching her, perhaps thinking that she exposed too much.  But I was totally in awe and had to suppress the strong desire to walk over and either personally commend her or rub her belly in admiration.

The second situation that stood out to me was a family also in the kiddie area.  They were a large family, with multiple generations present.  The men and boys all wore regular bathing trunks in the water.  The women were completely clothed- khaki pants and polo shirts or t-shirts with leggings or shorts.  They were all swimming and having fun but I had to wonder about the clothes.  The most obvious reason was that it was a modesty issue, but some were ok wearing shorts while other swam in full-length pants.  I wondered why the women didn’t choose to wear men’s bathing suits that would have covered just as much, if not more, than their shorts were covering.  Then there is, of course, the double standard of the men being shirt-less while the women covered up.  Either way, it didn’t seem to stop them from enjoying themselves in any way but I wondered if they felt conspicuous compared to the masses of people hardly wearing any clothes at all.  It made me wonder about social standards and the belief in what is acceptable in public.  My standards of both appropriateness and comfort (one piece bathing suit plus mesh shorts) probably seemed conservative to a lot of the people there.  Just observing the spectrum of choices on display in this one place, only points how just how differently people can think about one simple thing like swimming attire. 

The last situation involved a child of probably 9 or 10 years old.  This child was wearing a bikini bottom and no top.  It was clearly a girl’s bikini bottom, with tie-sides and a floral print.  Shoulder length hair, a huge smile and feet that never stopped running made this child a joy to see.  But it was hard to look and not wonder at the child’s gender.  Either it was a girl who was going topless right at that age where it starts to seem inappropriate, or it was a boy who was not held back by the idea of gender standards.  I could see other parents watching this child, and the young male lifeguard even mentioned the situation to me as “totally wrong.”  I wondered which situation he was judging- girl uncovered or boy in girls’ clothing, and which of those situations would be considered worse.  I consider myself pretty open minded when it comes to gender ideals and admit to letting my son wear my daughter’s princess dress-up clothes if he gets the notion.  If he wanted to wear them in public though, I would certainly have to think twice about it.  It’s not that I care in general if he prefers pink over blue or chooses mermaid stories over ones about trains- it’s the idea that he would be criticized, judged, discriminated against, or physically or mentally hurt by others who are far more closed-minded about those things.  In wanting to protect him, it is possible, unlike the parents of the topless child, that I may influence his choices towards more traditional gender standards, much as I would like to think otherwise.  Even in writing that, it feels wrong.  I want my children to be who they want to be and develop a strong enough belief in themselves to not let the judgment of other bother them.  I suppose, in the end, it is up to me to allow them to do just that.

At the end of the day, my daughter and I went home happy, exhausted and smelling like chlorine.  In reflecting on our experience, I wouldn’t have believed it possible to find so many life lessons at Water Country.  One other lesson I seem eternally incapable of learning- it’s just not possible to ever use too much sunscreen!