Chronicles of Chaos

June 26, 2007 | Print

Mom Fun

We’re at the park and I run into a mom I don’t see too often. We talk about summer, work, kids, camps and then she asks me, “What are you doing for fun this summer?”

I start to repeat the kids in camp (wondering why she’s asking twice) when it either strikes me or she asks again, “What are you doing for fun this summer?”

Fun? Like a trip to Paris?

I do lots of things I like and want to do–writing, walking, hiking, reading, going to movies with Michael (quite the list of resume hobbies) and being with the kids is fun, almost always in unique ways which the caretaking component at times overwhelms.

I wonder about joy a lot, where is the joy, can I get more, do I have enough, is it really all about perspective, how do the kids wake up so happy and most mornings I feel like an elephant is sitting on my face, part of me wanting to be free and the other hiding underneath.

I’ve heard that life for parents taking care of young children isn’t about fun. It’s intensive, round the clock care–for other, much smaller people.

More gentle souls explain softly, “Well, after the baby’s born you won’t sleep much for a few years”, and their smile is knowing and content so I feel warm and fuzzy, not knowing (or knowing and overlooking) that fuzzy will be the dominent sensation of this period.

Yesterday the boys and I follow a gravel path to a creek. We stop at a clearing protected by cottonwood trees. Two mountain bikes lean against a nearby tree. An older couple, in their seventies I think, in full bike gear stare into the branches thick with leaves above us.

Binoculars hang from their necks. They listen, then look through their binoculars at invisible (to me) birds.

The boys start throwing pebbles into the water. Each splash delights them–Wyatt jumps up and down, Oliver lets out a high pitched gurgle.

Then I hear the older woman say, “OOOHHH!” in her own high pitched excitement.

Her husband hurries to her side, aims his binoculars in the same direction as hers, scans the branches, “I see it!” They both smile below their binoculars until, “There he goes!”

The boys throw more pebbles, larger this time, bigger splashes, more thrilled shouting and jumping.

A sunny summer afternoon surrounded by genuinely joyful people, it’s not Paris, but it’s good.

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