CHAPTER 35

Original (Published in "Lun's World"): 2005-11-25

Rewritten: 2025-10-28

When Lun goes to the swimming pool, it’s mainly to play with water, not to swim. After learning the dog paddle, he soon lost interest in actual swimming.

After waiting for a whole year, the private pool in our apartment complex was finally repaired and reopened for residents. When a neighbor told me the good news yesterday, I hurried to check it out. Once confirmed, I planned to take Lun there to enjoy some swimming fun. Over the past two evenings, he’s had a wonderful time each visit.

Lun loves anything related to water. Whether it’s riding a ferry across the sea, splashing at the beach or a lake, or simply playing with sprinklers, faucets, or buckets of water in Grandpa’s backyard — he can go on for half a day, until his fingers turn cold, wrinkled, and pale.

Our building’s pool is about the size of a mid-range hotel pool — thirty feet long, fifteen feet wide, with a depth ranging from three feet at the shallow end to five and a half at the deep end. Beside it is a hot tub. To Lun, both are simply big bathtubs for leisurely pouring and splashing water. Swimming and post-swim showers are secondary at best.

Whenever he goes to the pool, he insists on bringing “toys” — though they’re really just plastic boxes, bottles, or cups used for scooping and pouring water, along with a small towel. He begins by covering one container with the towel, then slowly pours water from another container over it, watching the water seep through — entirely absorbed, almost like in meditation. Occasionally, he switches between pouring and receiving containers, humming pop or Christmas tunes as he plays.

His water games follow the same pattern each time. He starts in the warm jacuzzi — kept at 40°C — where he doesn’t wear a life jacket to avoid overheating. I always remind him five or ten minutes beforehand when it’s time to move to the main pool (mainly to cool off).

Once in the main pool with his life jacket on, he continues his pouring games. I have to coax him toward the deeper end to move his arms and legs a bit; only then will he reluctantly swim a few meters to humor me. In fact, he can swim over ten meters dog-paddle style without a life jacket.

But by nature, he prefers ease over effort. After mastering the dog paddle, he lost all motivation to swim seriously, focusing entirely on playing with water instead. Sometimes, he asks us to take him to the city’s public swimming pool. During holidays, he’ll fetch his life jacket and say, “Swim-swiim!” If we take him to the apartment pool and he still protests, we know he actually wants to go to the big pool.

In our family of four, the division of labor is clear: my wife looks after the younger one, while I keep a close watch on Lun. At the public pool, aside from his pouring games, he enjoys drifting along the current in the lazy river, then doing a symbolic round of dog paddle in the adult pool. We spend about an hour and a half this way, with me shadowing him the entire time — which means I hardly get to swim at all.

Ironically, it’s at our own apartment’s pool that I actually get to swim — the space is small enough that I can still keep both Lun and his younger brother within sight. One pool rule states that after 8 p.m., only residents aged 18 and above may use it. Last year, I finally waited until Lun turned 18, thinking I could now bring him to swim any time of day. But just days after his birthday, the pool was closed for major repairs — and we ended up waiting another whole year.