When the days were cooling off and my maternity leave started, I continued to go up the hill to the pools. The summer was waning, like my pregnancy due to its own conclusion. I would slowly dress and undress in the open-air changing rooms of the outdoor pools. The concrete construction of the changing rooms was exactly the same as the pools of my childhood. After a swim, I needed to sit down and rest before the walk home. I would watch the empty barbecue areas and picnic tables and thought of summers of my youth and summers to come.
Each time I left I would try to take in the sight of the pools, empty in the morning sun of the dying summer, and I would imagine who might be with me next time I would come there.
I returned to the pools recently, but the seasons have changed and I have changed too. We turned up at the pools on a day of howling rain in late winter. The outdoor pool will be closed for several months yet. My husband, myself and our daughter, now resting in her pram. She no longer breathes from within me. I slip back into the water and push off. Up and down the indoor pool I swim. I am no longer slow, nor in the gaze of others. I look just like everyone else now.
Except I have changed so dramatically it almost seems comical that strangers should not see it. Forever now on the other side of the divide that is child or parent, that I was last summer.
Freya lives in Auckland with her partner and young daughter. She writes about her life experiences, particularly her early parenting experiences, on her website. She enjoys getting out for walks and outdoor adventures with her family.
