When I was about five years old, some family friends took me and my three-year-old sister off my parent’s hands for an afternoon of fun, to frolic beside the pool at the hotel where they were staying. I recall that it was a beautiful, perfect, sunny day: the outdoor pool looked enormous to me but I expect that if I could see it today, I would discover it was really quite small. There was a wide set of stairs leading down into the shallow end and I spent long, pleasant minutes tentatively edging my way down to the floor of the pool. There were a number of other families there and, unable to swim myself, I watched the older kids diving off the board and swimming in the deep end with a great deal of longing.
WEDNESDAY'S CHILD 