Wonderful first day of beach yesterday evening at Peguera. I was joyous to see how Mika's grown up —in size as well as in ways of doing— since the previous summer.

Lately, it seems as if having children learn to swim the early the better (at one, two, or three years-old) is the parents' mission number one —swimming pools crowd with toddlers. But one figure I'd like to know — the ratio of swimmers versus not swimmers who drown every year. I'd venture the ratio be greater than one — that people who can swim drown more often than those who cannot, just because they take far greater risks.

If my guess is true, and you add to that how many infections children get at swimming pools; the horrible whiff of hot air when you go inside covered pools; the disgust and dangers of filthy shower floors; and how far away, as a rule, swimming pools are from home, I think my son will learn to swim from me, at the beach, when he'll be seven or eight years old. Surely he'll swim as clumsily as I do... Good enough, though, to survive a mere capsizing and bad enough to dare chance those silly red flags...