This morning I bashed my head on Frank's bunk after giving him a kiss on the forehead to say good morning. My immediate response was ‘fuck’, quickly killing our sweet mother / son moment but it really hurt. It’s easy to forget how painful hurting yourself is when you become an adult who doesn’t graze their knees or fall out of a tree every second day like kids do. Adults accidentally hurting themselves is so rare that I vividly remember my primary school teacher tripping and falling on her way into our class room one morning. It was so shocking that it became a core memory of the first time I saw an adult tumble like a kid.
Adults are so much more careful than kids. We don’t want to fall. Kids on the other hand really don’t take the consequences into consideration when they're exploring the world. We’ve just spent the last week in Apollo Bay where we averaged 10-20mm of rain each day and didn’t get over a high of 15 degrees. It was freezing and wet the whole time. This didn’t stop the kids from spending at least 45 minutes in the ocean every day. I could barely stand on the beach to watch them, it was so cold but kids really didn’t care.
They wanted to swim more than they wanted to feel their fingers and toes. They didn’t care about being cold, wet and covered in sand as they peeled off their bathers and tugged on damp trackies. It didn’t bother them a bit. This seemingly careless approach to their own life is annoying as a parent because I’m still just trying to keep them alive and healthy. Swimming when it's 9 degrees outside goes against the most basic of survival skills however their commitment to having fun is impressive.
At ages 8 and 9 both kids approach life with gusto. It doesn’t really matter whether it's jumping into the freezing ocean or playing with a new app they have never seen before they do it so freely it’s inspiring. For example, Alice knows way more about my phone and what it's capable of than I do. I use it for what I need but she has discovered all sorts of things like making her own emoji’s out of photos and turning her head into a talking cartoon when she’s on facetime. I’m sure I could’ve figured these things out if I spent some time looking around but the point is, I didn’t.
There is never enough time to do all the fun things when you’re an adult. Exploration and discovery feels like a luxury. Ironically we don’t have enough time because we spend so much of it worrying about the consequences that the kids are completely ignoring. While I’m standing on the beach trying to figure out the best way to get the kids dried, dressed and bundle up back into the car, they’re figuring out how to do flips into the oncoming waves.
I appreciate this responsibility as part of being an adult and a parent but I often envy the kids freedom. This was evident at dinner on Wednesday when the kids were being such silly buggers that I yelled at them to be quiet and just eat their dinner. I know this sounds like a common and reasonable request and was probably echoed across thousands of family dinner tables on that particular evening but it kind of made me sad. It made me miss being a ridiculous silly bugger.
I have countless fond memories of laughing so hard with my sister when we were growing up. Even now when we get together we spend a fair amount of it in tears, laughing at something seemingly benign. On Wednesday night at dinner, Frank and Alice were in tears of laughter about some silly song they had made up. I can’t remember it but it was probably about pooh and butts. Matt and I were trying to have a regular conversation and couldn't hear ourselves think as the kids were turning bright red in the face and laughing so hard that they were almost silent. It’s the kind of laugh that is really hard to recover from quickly - it happens a lot in classrooms when you get the uncontrollable giggles and you can’t stop even though your getting told off.
It sucks having to be the one to make sure that everyone finishes their meal. I know I can get involved if I wanted to (and often we do) but I’m also thinking ten steps ahead about cleaning up, making sure they have a shower early enough to watch something before hopefully being in bed sometime before 9pm so Matt and I can hang out for a bit. ‘Being responsible’ keeps creeping in, even when I really want to enjoy the moment.
It's obviously a balance. Being responsible for the lives and wellbeing of others and being a silly bugger. As I start my 43rd year, I’ve decided that I need to manage my responsibilities less rigidly. In doing so, I maybe more likely to trip but I’ll also have more time to enjoy the silliness that makes life so joyful.
