Go Ahead and Get Your Hair Wet

A couple weeks ago my 10 year old son and I decided to spend a few hours at an indoor pool. Within seconds, he had already jumped into the water. After he came up for air he asked me, "Well, aren't you coming in, too?"
For a minute I hesitated, like most women do at the thought of standing there in a swimsuit.
"Why not," I shrugged, stepping out of my swimsuit cover up. I figured my son wouldn't give two sh*ts what his mother looked like in a suit, much less notice any imperfections.
He gave a slight smirk and said, "You have wrinkles on your legs."
"Ha!" I laughed. "You mean you could see the wrinkles more than the cellulite and stretch marks?" I figured he needed to know most grown women don't look like an airbrushed Kardashian in a swimsuit. It was about time he faced the cold, hard truth.
But something pretty cool happened once I realized I didn't care what I looked like either that afternoon. Once I got over my wrinkly legs and realized that I was going to get my hair wet.... I had a really, really good time.
For the next hour and a half, my son and I played hard and furious in that pool. We staged various races - sometimes I let him win, sometimes he let me win. We came up with our own games, like Search & Rescue, and Mama Dolphin (where he had to hold onto my neck and stay on my back while I swam underwater).
The last time we came up for air, Wyatt announced "I could feel your butt muscles jiggle when you were kicking your legs underwater."
I rolled my eyes. "Trust me, kid. That's not the only thing that jiggles on me. A muscled hard body, your mom does NOT have."
"Yeah," he agreed. "More squishy."
We both pondered the idea for oh, a nano-second, then proceeded to play some more. By the time we pulled ourselves out of the pool, we were wiped out. We decided to go down to the old fashioned candy store so he could pick out some treats. It's not too often that I'll walk into a store with no make up on, wet hair plastered to my head and smelling like chlorine. But I didn't really care that day. We had had too much fun, and I wasn't going to ruin it by saying "Let's go home first so I can dry my hair and put my makeup on."
So we walked into the store and WHAM, we were instantly hit with a blast of air conditioning. Within a couple seconds, my son looked at me with raised eyebrows and slowly pointed at my chest with his index finger. Confused, I looked down until I realized what he was trying to bring to my attention.
"What, my nipples?" I asked. "Sorry, your mother IS a mammal after all. There's not much I can do about 'em."
Horrified, he started walking away from me.
"Wait," I said, laughing, while I walked behind him. "Am I embarrassing you?"
He wouldn't make eye contact with me, so I decided to end the torture. "Fine," I whispered to him. "Me and my nipples will go sit down and wait for you until you're done looking around."
So Nipple-gate aside, it was truly a wonderful afternoon. And it got me thinking that night... look how much fun we can have in life when we don't care what we look like, and we get our hair wet and let our wrinkly, jiggly legs show. I don't think our kids will remember what their moms looked like in a swimsuit, but they'll remember if we swam with them.
They may see images of Kim Kardashian on Instagram looking flawless in the water, but hopefully they'll smile more thinking of their made-up game of Search & Rescue, regardless how squishy we are.