swimming

This post got eaten. I’m going to blame the beaver at the cottage. Maybe he’s shy and didn’t want the notoriety that being on my blog would bring. I’m not sure why it got deleted but I’m trying to recreate it from memory.

I was at the cottage last weekend for my dad’s birthday weekend. It rained most of the weekend. On Sunday evening, during a break between rain storms I glanced out of a window at the lake and saw what I thought at first was a log floating in the lake. Upon closer inspection, however, the log moved! It was a beaver, swimming about 5′ out from shore! The beaver in question didn’t seem to care that there were people in the cottage, he swam around the bay and returned about 25 minutes later. (this time both Mum and Dad saw it – at first they thought i had just seen a log or something in the water). We tried to take some pictures which really do look like a log in the water due to the fact that beavers swim mostly underwater with just their nose sticking out at the front. It was a cool piece of Canadiana but I put it out of my head as one of those one-off things you see at the cottage.

Monday, Dad left early so he could make it to work relatively on time, leaving Mum and I to stay and clean up the cottage. Tidying the cottage is hot and sweaty work, mum can’t get down to the lake anymore, so she got the shower and I went for a swim. The air was cool and the lake was warmer than the air – which made it a very refreshing swim. I had been swimming for about 10 minutes, had taken a few dives off the raft and was swimming between the raft and the shore when I heard a noise that gave me pause. I looked towards the shore and there was the beaver again. They look a LOT bigger up close and personal! This thing was at least 2 feet long (not including the tail which looked huge!) and about 30 lbs. It raised its head out of the water a bit and wow are the beaver’s teeth prominent. It didn’t seem to care that I was in the water and kept on swimming. I, however, wasn’t taking any chances. I swam over to the dock (the beaver was swimming away from the dock) and got out of the lake as fast as I could. The fact that I got out on the dock demonstrates how nervous I was about the beaver – I never get out there – I use the beach because the dock has dock spiders and I really hate dock spiders! I have since read that beavers don’t attack humans, at least not in the water, but there’s a first time for everything right?

Some recent news articles have made me think about my status as an only child. My mum, asked me a few months ago whether I felt left out because I was an only child. I didn’t then and I don’t now. I loved being an only child. I’m sure I would have loved siblings too but being an only gave me advantages I wouldn’t have otherwise had. That’s not to say that I was spoiled. My parents took great care to avoid that. For starters I had a bunch of cousins within a 10 minute drive from my house who were over a lot and tortured me like siblings. They took my stuff and roughhoused and generally had a good time.

I was also involved in Guiding, hockey, and swimming lessons plus occasionally other things like a little chefs course. I was well socialized and I’m not sure that I could have done all those things if there was a sibling in the mix.

I wasn’t lonely. I was the type of kid who was happiest reading a book, and in books I found all sorts of wonderful people and stories. I also had a lot of friends who I could go and call on and play with after school or on weekends. Yes… go out and play – around the corner or, when i got a little older, down the block and through the walkway. I played with my friends, got annoyed by their siblings and returned to my cozy home.

I am both my father’s daughter and my mother’s daughter. Mum and I would sit and do crafts and she would patiently teach me how to knit day after day when I forgot. Would we have had all that 1 on 1 time if I had siblings? Dad treated me like one of the boys – I got to watch sports with him. Hockey, Auto racing, and football. Dad loves football and as he put it, they were pretty sure they were only going to have 1 kid, there was 1 tv, mum tolerated football but didn’t love it and he wanted to make sure the vote would be 2 vs 1 FOR football. Hence my beginnings as a football junkie. I wonder if I had had a brother, if my dad would have spent as much time explaining all the nuances of football to me? I’d like to think so but I’m not sure.

I know i missed out on things by not having a sibling. Mum’s big worry is that I won’t have family to support me when they die. I told her that I have friends and that just because people are related by blood doesn’t necessarily mean that they can stand each other. I feel loved and supported by the friends I have made and that is enough for me.

I wouldn’t have minded to have had someone else to blame things on either, come to think of it. When there was trouble in the house or something got broken, it was almost always my fault and I took the blame. If I’d had a younger sibling, I could have blamed them. There’s only so much you can blame on a dog.

Overall I feel like I had a well-rounded, happy childhood. I don’t think that I missed anything huge by not having biological siblings, I have a few friends who are as close to me as they are to their biological siblings if not closer.

I know quite a few only children, and none of us feel like we were deprived in any way of part of our childhood. I’ve had friends worry that they don’t have a sibling for their child yet. Relax, I tell them, even if you don’t ever end up with another kid, your firstborn won’t be horribly scarred. I may not get the mushy “sister” cards, but that’s ok with me.

Swimming with beavers

Only Children…