Photo: Michelle Siu / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Sometimes a 6am dog walk can reap unexpected benefits. I was groggily telling my neighbor that I found parenting my son to be, so far, a terrifying experience, given as he is to climbing, falling, climbing again, falling again, and recreationally smashing his head into walls. The more experienced father (he has two sons, both grown into, voila!, functioning adults) smiled knowingly and said, "You just have to set that fear aside. Know there will probably be a couple trips to the ER, and that everything will end up okay."

Set that fear aside. Right. Maybe that's why I teared up when I saw this image of Annaleise Carr's parents embracing her after her historic swim. This bad-a** Canadian teenager just became the youngest person to swim across Lake Ontario. In case you're unfamiliar with the great lakes, that is a very serious lake. Carr's swim took her 27 hours, and spanned 52.5 kilometers (or, in American, 32.6 miles), taking her from Niagara-on-the-lake in Southern Ontario to Toronto's Marilyn Bell park. (The park is named, by the way, for the first person to make that historic swim across Lake Ontario; Marilyn Bell completed her swim in 1954 at the advanced age of 16.)

And did I mention the swim took 27 hours? 27 hours of swimming. TWENTY-SEVEN. I can hardly stay awake for twelve in a row, but then again, I am a crusty old woman compared to this energetic creature, who reportedly was smiling, giving thumbs up, and playfully splashing the pacers throughout her epic swim.

In a CTV News video, Carr's beaming parents explained their reaction when she first brought up the idea: "No way. No chance." But, as kids tend to, she won them over, proving over months and months of training that she was serious about becoming the youngest person to ever make the long-distance swim. (For more on the swim and how she prepared for it, read the whole story at CTV.) Lucky for all of us that her parents were able to set aside their fear and let their baby dive into the wild waters: not only is Carr's swim inspirational as all get-out, but she did it to raise money for Camp Trillium, a camp for kids with cancer. As someone in the group cheering her arrival at Marilyn Bell park cried out, "Annaleise, you're a super hero!"

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