Charlie’s swimming tournaments started getting serious when he was about seven. He’d been playing baseball too by this time, but I think all of us knew that swimming was going to be his real gig. I have to confess that I still wanted him to give tennis a shot, and would ask him to hit with me most weekends. He did and didn’t seem terribly put off by it, but I think he did it to humor me more than anything else.

I’d kept my promise to Alice and hadn’t attempted to force tennis down either kid’s throat, although I kept a secret hope in the back of my mind that one or even both of them would fall in love with it one day. They could certainly both play it well; this was proven many times at Helena’s youth center as well as the country club, to which the family had a membership even if we didn’t use it often. Still, neither child really seemed to care that they were good. Kallie preferred her books and softball games, and Charlie his swimming. Over time I grew to accept this, although both kids continued to hit with me and watch tournaments well after they grew up.

Anyway, back to Charlie’s swimming. Kallie’s softball games and later basketball games gave the group an opportunity to come support her, but Charlie’s swimming was something we all seemed to congregate around. Even the other kids liked to come cheer him on, probably because he was so good. It was fairly obvious that he was something of a prodigy from a very young age, and by the time he was about seven he was being scouted by professional coaches.

Alice wasn’t really a fan of this. She was incredibly proud of him and supported him, but as she told me, she didn’t want his childhood taken away like mine had been just so he could follow a sport. While I wanted him to have every opportunity he could, I agreed with her for the most part. I wanted him to be able to compete if he liked it, but I didn’t want him throwing his life away to spend it in a pool.

He was too young at this point to really understand what was going on with the coaches coming to his meets to watch him, but he was proud, and we all were too. Al and I decided that he was going to get through middle school at the very least before we even gave him the option of going pro…if that was offered. To that point, it hadn’t been, but we were pretty sure it was coming eventually.