DOES YOUR MOTHER KNOW?

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You gotta jump back in the pool.

Does Your Mother Know?

Often, she doesn’t

BY TARA ROBERTS

During the skills test on the first day of swimming lessons, my younger son refuses to backfloat. The instructor tries to ease the back of D’s head into the water and the kid curls up like a leggy armadillo.

D is demoted from his class, escorted to the shallow end of the pool, to a pod of kids half a foot shorter than he is. He is a dejected character in a Peanuts comic, head flopping, shoulders bent, eyes downcast. He sobs the whole way home. He is never, ever going back.

That evening, my husband and I talk him into agreeing to give lessons one more shot. We want him to learn to swim. I couldn’t do much more than dog-paddle until my 30s; my husband still sinks like a rock. D, just shy of his 10th birthday, needs this essential life skill. Needs to be better than us.

The next morning, I hear D crying in his room.

He shuffles into the living room in his pajamas, sad Charlie Brown again.

My brain is a mess of worry and sympathy and frustration. His big brother can’t miss his lesson, so D has to at least get in the car. But I can see how badly he doesn’t want to go, how the embarrassment of the day before hangs on him. But I don’t want him to be a person who gives up easily. But he’s tried to float for years. But I want him to swim.

D loves music, so I get out my phone. “We’ll find some songs to get you pumped up,” I say as I type into the Spotify search bar. By the magic of the internet there is a playlist with the name “Random songs to get you pumped up.” I hit shuffle.

ABBA’s “Does Your Mother Know” starts to play.

“Oh, this is a good one,” I say. He stares at the floor. I wiggle to the beat. “Come on, man. This is disco.”

I add the diagonal-point move like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. I roll my arms and shimmy like a Tina Turner backup dancer.

D looks up and raises an eyebrow. He starts to sneak off, and I remember the move where you slowly point at the crowd — in this case, my audience of two bewildered preteens. I funky chicken, run in place, robot, vogue. I don’t know how to do the Bus Stop so I just pretend I’m letting people on and off a bus.

I have exactly zero clue what I’m doing. My older son is laughing hysterically. D’s eyebrow stays up. I can tell he’s trying not to smile.

I groove. I boogie. I flail. I hope. When the songs ends, D stands, rolls his eyes, and declares that he will get dressed and go to the pool.

My knees and lungs ache as I watch him stomp down the hall. I’ve turned off the music but the song sticks in my head. It’s definitely not what ABBA was singing about, but the question from the chorus takes a turn in my mind, and I feel my eyes sting as I think about how completely clueless and helpless D’s demotion at the pool has made both of us feel.

Does your mother know? So often, I don’t. I remember holding him the day he was born, hearing his big brother galloping down the hallway, and thinking, How am I supposed to do this? He gets his swim trunks on. Gets in the car. Gets in the pool. I hear his new instructor praising him for listening well and trying hard. He reaps the rewards of being the oldest kid in the group, of having a little more time to ease himself in.

At the end of class he declares he loves swimming lessons and can’t wait to go back.

As we walk home on one of the last days of his class, I bring up the backfloat. Is he ready to do it when they test him again? I see the nervousness crawl up him, his body start to curl.

“You just have to tip your head back and trust the water to hold you up,” I say. “It’s physics.”

“Physics doesn’t work like that for me,” he says. (This is the same child who announced in kindergarten that he didn’t believe in putting spaces between words.)

I tell him physics works even when you don’t believe in it. I tell him I have faith that if he keeps practicing, he’ll learn. I don’t say how hard it is for me to trust the water, too. How little I know. How little anyone knows. We flail. We hope. Sometimes we manage to swim. n

“You just have to tip your head back and trust the water to hold you up. It’s physics.”

LETTERS

Send comments to editor@inlander.com.

Tara Roberts is a writer and college journalism adviser who lives in Moscow with her husband, sons and poodle. Her work has appeared in Moss, Hippocampus and a variety of regional publications. Follow her on Twitter @tarabethidaho.

You’ll have to wait yet another year for a “Pig Out” food fix. STUART DANFORD PHOTO

Readers react to the news that Pig Out in the Park 2021 has been canceled.

TANASHA L ALDERSON: Good. Maybe this time if we close up sooner it won’t last as long as last time. We all know what’s coming. Mask up and get vaccinated so we can be done with this. If you won’t contribute to the solution by getting vaccinated, then don’t complain.

GENE BRAKE: Hopefully Hoopfest next. It’s the responsible thing to do.

KARI KNUDSEN-STOVER: Sad to have it canceled, but it was the right call to make.

FRED RENTERIA: Don’t worry, they will have another concert in the Pavilion tomorrow.

JANELLE HICCOX: Sad to hear this but proud you took the safety of people as a priority. Hang in there everybody.

DOMINIC VITALE: I miss Pig Out in the Park, but the spread of this variant is not worth risking the health of so many. Pig out in your backyard, folks!

EILEEN FRANCES: If people don’t want to get vaccinated, they should forfeit the privilege of receiving hospital care.

JOSHUA VANDER PLAATS: Remember to thank your local anti-vaxxers!

BOB GOERTZ: Spokane Interstate Fair will be next.

JASON JONES: Next they will shut down everything again. n

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VACCINES

Rob Chase, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Heather Scott: One is unvaccinated, one is vaccinated and one won’t tell us. Can you guess who’s who?

Leading by Example

We asked more than 65 local politicians if they were vaccinated for COVID-19. Here’s what they said

Before we start, let’s get this out of the way: No, it is not a HIPAA violation to ask someone if they’ve been vaccinated for COVID-19.

Thankfully, we live in a country where you are free to ask people whatever you want. By the same token, people are generally free to answer however they want. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act only applies to providers, health plans and other organizations that process your health information.

With that in mind, we at the Inlander asked more than 65 local leaders if they were vaccinated for COVID-19. Most of them were either elected politicians or candidates for office, but a few were nonelected public figures we asked just for fun, like embattled Spokane Regional Health District administrator Amelia Clark. If they were vaccinated, we asked how they were encouraging others to do the same. If they were not vaccinated, we asked why not.

Why are we asking these things? Well, because the delta variant is wreaking havoc on us as vaccination numbers in the Inland Northwest are lagging. As of press time, there are 248 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Spokane County — that’s more than at any other point in the pandemic. More than 90 percent of them are unvaccinated.

While it would be ideal for you to listen to your doctor and the overwhelming number of public health professionals who say you should get the vaccine, we also know politicians have some sway. Counties with the lowest vaccination rates in Washington, we’ve found, are also the ones with the highest percentage of 2020 Donald Trump voters. (“You’ve got to do what you have to do, but I recommend: Take the vaccines,” Trump said at a rally last Sunday in Alabama, prompting boos from several audience members.)

And we must admit that, yes, we have a bias here. We think pretty much everyone, politicians included, should get the vaccine. It has been proven to be safe for almost everybody. It reduces the chance that you get COVID-19 and spread it to others. If you do get COVID anyway, it will drastically reduce the chance of hospitalization or death. Those are the facts. It’s the way to keep businesses open and get out of the pandemic that’s already killed 645,068 in America.

Of the 55 politicians who responded to us, most see it the same way. Only three explicitly told us they hadn’t gotten the shot. Two of them said they didn’t get it because they already had COVID (though the CDC recommends they get a vaccine anyway). Thirteen were cagey about it and refused to answer our question, citing either personal privacy or bizarre misinterpretations of HIPAA. A few, like Spokane Valley Rep. Rob Chase, spouted conspiracy theories to explain their opposition to the vaccine. Eleven did not respond.

Three of the twelve people who sit on the Spokane Regional Health District’s Board of Health declined to tell us whether or not they had been vaccinated.

We should note that we spoke with almost all of these people before Monday’s news broke about the FDA’s plans to officially authorize the Pfizer vaccine. The one person we spoke with afterwards was Idaho state Rep. Tony Wisniewski, who wouldn’t tell us if he’d gotten the shot and said it was immoral for governments to mandate the “so-called vaccination.” He said the news about the FDA did not change his mind.

Keep in mind, we didn’t ask every local politician if they were vaccinated. So for anyone we missed, you can always write a letter to the editor complaining that you feel left out of the Inlander’s pro-vaccine agenda.

BY WILSON CRISCIONE AND NATE SANFORD

THE UNVACCINATED

ROB CHASE, STATE REPRESENTATIVE (R-SPOKANE VALLEY)

On his Facebook page several weeks ago, Chase claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine is “not a vaccine, is not tested” and was “created by Eugenecists (sic) who want a smaller Global population.” The post was so filled with misinformation that Facebook took it down — a decision Gov. Jay Inslee applauded.

Our diligent reporting has confirmed that the COVID-19 vaccines are, in fact, vaccines. If the goal were a smaller global population, then they’re doing a really poor job, since all the evidence points toward their saving lives.

Chase, in an email to the Inlander, went on to assert that although he is not a health professional, he has “heard many health professionals” say that the “recent surge is from people who have been vaccinated and are shedding.” He also says he’s against mandatory vaccination and then complained that “anyone questioning the vaccine is censured and/or ridiculed” by the media.

We responded to Chase and explained that the vaccines don’t contain live virus, so vaccinated people are not “shedding” the virus. We also explained that although the vaccinated may experience a breakthrough infection and spread COVID that way, the chances of them spreading COVID are much lower than with an unvaccinated person. We have not heard back.

WAYNE FENTON, SPOKANE VALLEY CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATE

Fenton called us and said immediately that he is “not an anti-vaxxer.” He then went on to explain that he is not vaccinated and is not encouraging anyone else to get it, calling it an “experimental drug.”

Fenton says he had COVID in October so he feels no need to get the vaccine since he has antibodies (the CDC recommends people get vaccinated anyway). We asked if he’d change his mind at all on the vaccines being too “experimental” if the FDA were to fully approve the vaccines, instead of the vaccines receiving only emergency-use authorization. Fenton said it wouldn’t change his mind.

STEVE VICK, IDAHO STATE SENATOR (R-DALTON GARDENS)

Vick says he also had COVID in October, and for that reason he has not been vaccinated.

“I do not encourage or discourage vaccinations as I am not a medical professional and believe that choice should be left up to individuals based on their individual health conditions and risk tolerance,” Vick says.

THE VACCINATED

NADINE WOODWARD, MAYOR OF SPOKANE

Woodward got the COVID-19 vaccine in April, and she’s been urging others to do the same ever since. City spokesman Brian Coddington notes that recently she and Councilmember Candace Mumm have worked on creating city-hosted vaccine clinics, including some held at neighborhood fire stations.

So far, she’s refused to mandate that city workers get the vaccine.

BREEAN BEGGS, SPOKANE CITY COUNCIL PRESIDENT, SPOKANE BOARD OF HEALTH

Beggs: “I got vaccinated the earliest I was eligible in April and am strongly encouraging others to do the same!” (Note: You will notice that many politicians ignored the part where we asked how they are encouraging others.)

AMELIA CLARK, SPOKANE REGIONAL HEALTH DISTRICT ADMINISTRATOR

Clark says everyone in her family age 12 and older has been vaccinated. She says she’s encouraging others to get vaccinated because it is the best tool for moving forward as a community.

“Spokane Regional Health District has been leading the way with encouraging anyone who is eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” she says.

CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE (R-EASTERN WASHINGTON)

From her communications director: “Cathy is vaccinated and has consistently gone on record encouraging individuals in Eastern Washington to talk to their doctors about receiving the vaccine so they can make the decision that is best for their health.”

After the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine on Monday, McMorris released a statement further encouraging people to seek out the vaccine.

“For anyone in Eastern Washington who hasn’t yet been vaccinated, I encourage you to talk to your doctor. Getting vaccinated is the best way to protect yourself and your family.”