Diving Mom

"What's that?" asked Walt, pointing at the television.

I looked at the mayhem on the screen and realized it was a promo for the reality show, Dance Moms, a show I am proud of never having seen.

Never having seen it, perhaps it's not fair of me to judge, but what I've seen in promos and hear rarely in other places makes me think it is about pushy mothers, pressured kids, and a dictatorial dance teacher.  Loads of fun.  Lot of yelling.  Lots of crying.  Who would watch that train wreck?

Apparently a lot of people, as it is now in its 7th season.  But just reading the Wikipedia description of the show gives me the creeps.

The first thing that comes to my mind, all the time, is -- please don't let me have been one of "those" moms!  I was a lot of moms -- a PTA mom, a room mother mom, a 4H mom, a boy scout mom, a ballet mom, a theater mom, a band mom, a jazz choir mom.  But maybe the most "mom" I was was a diving mom.

 

There was a time when Ned's friend Matt was on the diving team and Ned started copying him when they went swimming at the local pool and seemed to be pretty good, so when he said he wanted to join the diving team, I let him try out and he got in.  I don't remember how old he was, but probably 8 because he dove in the "10 and under" group for a bit.  Paul joined him, perhaps at the same time and eventually all 5 kids were in diving.  It seemed we were at practice (I almost wrote "rehearsal") or diving meets all the time.  We drove all over the state.

A lot of our friends had kids on swim teams and they drove all over the state too, but I loved diving because with swim meets, it was an all-day affair, you competed in several events throughout the day.  With diving you showed up for the time of your event, you did your thing, you got your award (or not) and then you could go home, unless you wanted to stick around and watch your teammates.

Our kids won awards

Sometimes big awards, sometimes small awards, sometimes participation awards, but I hope I was never pushy, never tried to make them do something they didn't want to do.  I only remember being a pushy mother once.  It was before a big meet and Ned was one of the top divers on the team.  He was miffed about something and decided he was not going to go to the meet.  I gave him a lecture about how I didn't care if he never dove again, but his team was counting on him that day and he was going to dive.  I hope the lesson was the importance of the team and not that i wanted him to go and make me proud.  He did make me proud but because he didn't let the team down.

We had some wonderful experiences.  I know I've posted this picture before, but how often do you get to say that you took a picture of Greg Louganis with your kids?

It was at a meet in So. California.  Greg had just won the silver in the Olympics.  This was a fun meet and at the end, the winner in each division did kind of a "best of show" competition.  10 year old Ned competed against Greg Louganis (spoiler alert:  Ned didn't win!)

As a Diving Mom, I learned a lot of stuff.  I learned how to score dives.  I learned how to judge a dive (I didn't learn well, but to this day I can guess judges' scores on simple Olympic dives). 

Walt was brave and judged more complicated dives.  He and another dad were judging the more advanced dives and one said to the other "you count the twists and I'll count the sommersaults."

I did a lot of organizing of the parents and my big coup was when I managed to get the newscaster from the Sacramento TV station to come and do a story on the little old Davis Diving Team.

It was one of those special periods in our lives.  I hope the kids remember it positively, and not the way I suspect those dancers will remember their young years when they are adults.

Splash

We watched the premiere of the new reality show, Splash tonight.  This time it's not romance or cut-throat competition, or starving on some lonely island...this time it's water.  Pools of water.  And jumping (or diving) into them.

As the web page for the show says, "Splash marks the first time 10 celebrities will train and compete in regulation platform and springboard diving at dizzying heights in front of a weekly poolside audience."

As with some of these shows (like Dancing with the Stars, for example), "stars" may be stretching it for some of the contestants.   Here's the line up of the 10 "stars," starting with the best known"   Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Louie Anderson, Drake Bell, Chuy Bravo, Rory Bushfield, Nicole Eggert, Keisha Knight Pullliam, Ndamukong Suh, Katherine Webb and Kendra Wilkinson.

How'd you do?  How many names do YOU recognize.  I recognized three--Abdul-Jabbar, comedian Louie Anderson, and Keisha Knight Pulliam, last seen as the tiniest of the Cosby Kids, on the Bill Cosby Show.

But we couldn't not watch it because it brought back memories of the long-ago history of this family:  the diving years.

Out kids didn't do "normal" stuff.  While most of their friends were on swim teams, ours were on the diving team.  While most other kids were playing soccer or football or baseball, ours were doing theater and band.   I'm definitely not sorry. I loved going to diving meets and marching band events and especially theater

We kind of fell into diving, literally.  Ned's good friend Matt was on the Davis Diving Team.  Ned must have been 8 or 9.  He would go to the pool with Matt, watch him do his dives and then copy him.  He enjoyed it so much that we investigated his joining the Davis Diving Team, under coach Brett Evans, who told us that he had once been on the Olympic Team.

Brett was a charismatic coach who worked well with all ages of kids and got the best out of them. Ned took to diving like...well, a duck to water. It wasn't long before all five kids were on the team and I was spending most of my afternoons sitting poolside inhaling the chlorine and watching bouncing bodies.

I always felt kind of smug, listening to my friends who had spent the whole weekend at swim meets, because their kids would be competing in several events and so had to stay the whole day.

With diving, you drove in age groups.  They told you about what time your group was diving and when your group finished, you could go home.  I loved that.

All the diving parents learned to keep score and to judge diving.   Walt and another judge once collaborated:  "You count the sommersaults and I'll count the twists."  (I didn't say we were good judges!)

Brett had one of the best kids' diving groups in the state and we drove all over the place to compete.  Ned once dove against Greg Louganis, right after Greg had won his silver medal.  Ned had won his age group (I believe it was 10 and under) and Greg had won his in this fun meet, and at the end of the event all the winners competed against each other kind of for "best in show."  I know that you'll be surprised and disappointed to hear that Ned did not beat Greg in that event.

So we had to watch Splash, if only for the laughs.  But it was nice to discover that the coach of the divers competing was none other than a now grey-headed Louganis.  And the show was really kind of poignant.  There was 400+ lb Louie Anderson, who could not climb out of the pool the first time he got into it, standing on the 5 meter board and doing a front dive.  It wasn't beautiful, but what a sense of accomplishment he had when he completed it.

Then there was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whom some would think would be a natural, since he's an athlete (even though he's 65 now!), but I remember when our kids went through growth spurts and their diving suffered because they hadn't yet figured out where their arms and legs ended any more. Abdul-Jabbar's dive was terrible and I'm sure his abdomen stung quite a bit when he got out of the pool, but he got high marks for trying. 

There was the beauty queen who wore a bathing suit that looked like it was in danger of popping off if she twisted the wrong way.  Her dive wasn't great, but she challenged herself  (which Pulliam, who was voted off had not) and so passed on to the next week's competition. 

I think we will be watching this show from now on.  I want to see what happens as the competition progresses.

As for our own kids and diving, sadly Brett eventually decided that he was too good to teach for a city program and so he went to private lessons only and someone much less talented took over the program.  He felt that Ned had talent and he offered us the opportunity to let Ned study with him, but the price was prohibitive and so we had to say no. 

I'm sorry that we couldn't afford to let him continue, but his actions after he went private made me ultimately happy that he wouldn't be influencing Ned.  Ned, who was once one of his rising stars (in his age group, Ned and 2 other boys in Northern California were always top in all the competitions, see sawing between who was first and who was second and third) was totally ignored.  Brett would come to the pool and not even speak to Ned.
  
It hurt Ned's feelings so much that he quit the program and, to tell you the truth, I can't remember the last time I saw him do any dive at all (though I'm sure he got over the hurt decades ago).

Driving Miss Millie

It was a very long day and I'm about to sink into what I hope will be a blissfull slumber.

It started around 5:30 a.m. when I was wide awake and watched the Sex and the City movie, which I had never seen before. It was OK, but I wasn't swept away

At around 10 a.m. I drove Walt to Ned & Marta's house, the plan being to pick up Jeri, take them to downtown Sacramento, where they were going to see The Nutcracker today, then drive out to Peach & Bob's to get my mother and drive her home.

I drove to Ned & Marta's but when I got there, everyone was disappointed that I hadn't brought Grandma, so I drove out to Peach & Bob's then and picked her up and brought her back to Ned & Marta's. We visited a bit and then I took Walt and Jeri to the Community Center and then headed for San Rafael.

ASIDE: I notice that my mother has much more difficulty remembering things the farther she is from home. It's not an Alzheimers type of memory loss, just a 90-years-old short-term memory, but it's difficult for her to remember who is going where or what we are going to do when we get there sometimes and I find myself answering the same questions 2, 3, 4, 5 or more times in a short period of time. It makes me realize that I am starting the same kind of memory loss and it shows me what I have to look forward to (the up side being that you don't KNOW that you don't remember because...well...you don't remember not remembering!)

We stopped en route to run a couple of errands, including having a big Mexican burrito for lunch. The last about 20 minutes of the drive, I was seriously fighting sleep, so when I got to my mother's I literally collapsed on the couch and slept for about an hour, until a phone call from Bob, checking to see if she had made it home all right, woke me up.

It was dusk and I wanted to drive as much as I could back to Davis before it got completely dark, so I got on the road. It was about 6:30 when I got here. Jeri and Walt had taken the bus home from Sacramento and they were ready for Family Movie Night.

Every year when Jeri comes home at Christmas, we try to pick a movie and go together to see it. This year we chose The Princess and the Frog, which was a much better movie than I expected. Loved the New Orleans feel to what was essentially a broad re-working of The Wizard of Oz, with a love interest thrown in. But really, really good.

After the movie, we tried to find a place to eat, but there are very few restaurants open in Davis at 9:30 on Sunday night, so we finally ended up at Stave's pizza, the sign to which said it was open until 10. We each had a salad and an individual pizza and brought home enough leftovers for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. We were the last customers to leave the place.

I got home in time to watch the end of Survivor, which I had DVRd. The ending was pretty much as I had anticipated and I was happy with the outcome. I was also happy that I could zip through all the boring parts and just get to the finale in less than 2 hours!

Now Dexter is barking and barking and barking and letting me know that he is tired of my fooling around on the computer and he wants me to bring him his lap right NOW so he can sleep.

I'm glad I don't have to drive anywhere tomorrow.

Bouncing Bodies

I've probably spent more time sitting and watching Olympic events in the past two days than I would have normally, if I hadn't been feeling out of sorts. Just blown away by the incredible strength and agility of the human body and the enormity of the human spirit. I loved it this morning when Matt Lauer was talking with Michael Phelps mother and asked her about this "8 gold medal" thing and she said that Michael has never once mentioned wanting to win 8 golds and Matt admitted that it was a media driven goal.

Last night I watched the men's synchronized diving, as I had the women's earlier in the week. What a gorgeous sport. As I watched the Chinese team's first dive, a forward in the pike position, it just took my breath away. I don't know that I'd ever seen a tighter pike, and to watch them do it as mirror images with each other, entering the water with hardly a splash. Well, it just doesn't get better than that!

I couldn't help but think of the years that we spent poolside watching bouncing bodies.

It all started when Ned was about 8, I think. His friend, Matt, was on the Davis Diving Team (coached by Brett Evans who was, it was rumored, on an Olympic diving team in his youth). Ned would watch Matt on the diving board and then try to imitate him. Matt's father thought Ned was pretty good and suggested he join the diving team.

And the path of our lives was changed for the next 4-5 years.

Originally it was just Ned and Paul who signed up for diving lessons, but soon all five kids were going to Manor Pool every day and spending hours learning how to leap up, out, and off of high platforms. And of course there were the swim meets, the "rec meets," where they dove in competition with other amateurs, and the meets where they dove in competition with other Olympic hopefuls. Not, of course, that most of the kids on the Davis Diving Team were actually Olympic hopefuls (though I think one did, eventually, get onto an Olympic team). But they were, like today's athletes, all after that elusive prize.

Dave, age 5, with his first place ribbon

Paul, age 8

The difference between having kids on the swim team or on the diving team is that when you go to a meet, the swim folks are there all day. All you have to do is look at the Olympic swimming events to see that there are relays and individual competitions in various swim strokes. With diving, there are age divisions. When your age group finishes its competition, you're free to go home. We really liked that!

But nevertheless we spent a lot of time poolside, whether at practice sessions or driving all over No. California to meets. I was in charge of publicity for the group (of course--that seems to have been my role in most organizations I was involved with!) and even got the team some TV time at least once.

We had our share of difficulties. Swimmers' ear was always something we had to be aware of, and once, when Ned was practicing on a 5 meter platform, he hit the water so hard he broke his ear drum and was out of the pool for several weeks. But I was always so proud of him that no matter what the adversity, he always seemed to get up and continue on.

The kids learned a lot about diving, about self-confidence, about being part of a team. But Walt and I learned a lot too. I often worked the scoring table at meets and we both learned how to judge dives.

Oh we didn't judge dives well. I still can't look at a turning, twisting dive and figure it all out without a slow motion replay. I listen to the instant commentary by former divers during the Olympics and wonder how they can see those small imperfections when I'm not sure if it's 2 twists or 2-1/2 twists. Walt remembers the time he sat by another father, judging dives. They decided that one would count the sommersaults and the other would count the twists and between them they might come up with a proper score for the dive.

(I don't think they do that in Olympic scoring!)

We met a lot of interesting people during those years. I still remember the mother of twins who drove about 30 miles to bring her kids to Davis to practice. She was a large woman and drove a Volkswagon bug with a Great Dane in her lap. Quite a sight, lemme tell you! I was glad I was never on the freeway with her.

Ned even got to dive against Greg Louganis once. It was at a fun meet in So. California and at the end, the winners in each age group dove against each other. Greg (then 16) had just come from winning the silver medal in the 1976 games in Montreal. Ned had won the 10-and-under competition, so at the end of the event, he got to compete with Greg (and the winners of all the other age divisions). (Uh...Ned didn't win that competition!) I still remember watching Greg do a back dive in the pike position. He seemed to go up in the air forever before he finally headed toward the water, straight as an arrow, entering with barely a splash. Amazing.

Those were good years, or at least I remember them as good years (I never know if the kids share my memories). But it all ended rather abruptly when the coach decided go to pro and we couldn't afford his fees any more. Ned continued for awhile after that with the rec department coach, but his heart wasn't in it any more and I don't think he finished out the season. I've always felt a bit angry about how it all ended, but that was a long time ago. I haven't seen Ned dive in...probably decades.