I told my kids we were going on a walk in the woods this weekend.
In my mind I saw them lit perfectly by the golden hour, set free with smiles way up ahead on a gently winding trail.
I pictured them bent over, sweetly smiling at bugs crawling on blades of grass.
A long stick softly dragged behind.
One with the outdoors.
This would be who we were now.
One of my only resolutions this year was to get outside more.
Fresh air in our lungs.
Dirt path under our feet.
We live in one of the most beautiful areas of the country. There’s really no excuse for us.
I’ve had enough of cooped up days listening to my pre-teens argue over the somehow only charger they can find.
Once, so frustrated by hearing them argue about who should get to use it, I even banned the word “percent.”
This year I had determined we were going to be more like those earthy types.
More chia, more quinoa, less plastic, more wood,
and most of all –
more time spent outside enjoying the life we’d been given.
There is a photographer I love on Instagram who lives in Sweden.
Her subjects are only her own kids and pets. The images she posts like you’re peering right into heaven.
Her soft-focus lens has a way of making your eyeballs feel like they’re cradling something prized.
Naturally, this sort of imagery is what I was going for on this hike.
Perhaps my children, too, would come nose to nose with a jackrabbit while in a mustard field!
Maybe they, also, would take a nap with a wolf pup under a lone oak tree.
This hopeful dream was still in my mind as I parked the van in the lot by the trail;
But friends, that is where my dream promptly died.
The doors of the van had not yet opened for us to exit before my seven year old began whining that her legs hurt REAL bad,
and why couldn’t she have stayed home with Daddy, and what was even for dinner.
She hoped that it wasn’t that gross soup.
The suggestion that maybe the hike would make them actually feel better sent her into the floorboard wailing that I
“never believe her. Never ever believe!”
I breathed slowly through my nose.
I could feel my pre-teens wilting.
I heard a couple of sighs.
Not one to easily be swayed, I coursed them out, and as we began our journey I informed my band of misfits that I realized that the outdoors did not have its own WiFi code, and I knew that was jarring to them,
but it was time for a device detox,
and this would be part of it.
“But you said this year was going to be GOOD,” Paige wailed.
“How is dis good for ME?!”
She sobbed for at least 400 steps.
In an attempt to distract her, I pointed out some tree trunks ridden with woodpecker holes, at which my 11 year old screamed, “No, no, no” and took off running far up ahead.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked her older sister, Chloe.
“Tessa’s terrified of lots of holes,” she answered like this was common knowledge.
“I once showed her a picture of a bunch of them and it actually made her cry.”
“How did I not know this abou…” I started, until she interrupted with
“I really should have gone pee.”
By this point we had made it maybe 1/8 of a mile.
We could still see the parking lot.
Paige was still crying.
She asked if she could see my phone.
Tessa was somewhere hiding in a bush from HOLES, and Chloe stopped to take 8 identical selfies.
I just kept walking.
I asked to take a photo of them on a bridge several torturous minutes later.
Paige told me she did NOT plan to smile.
I told her if she did not smile she would lose her devices for the whole rest of the day.
She smiled, but real aggressively.
We traveled on until the trail turned to 5” thick mud, and Chloe complained that it would wreck her shoes. The shoes she had worn against all advice.
“You guys,” I said, stopping and turning around.
(Their eyes made it clear they knew the level I’d reached)
“I am trying to bring you here to help you discover your own lives!
I want you to really live in this world!
Not someone else’s world on YouTube!
Not just within your Minecraft house!
Look around you! Look at the beauty!
Look where we live!
Breathe in the air.
See the trees.
Think about what you see!
Stop focusing on negativity and LOOK UP sometimes!
Learn to enjoy the real-life world around you.
You should love it!
I’M TRYING TO MAKE YOU LOVE IT IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO!”
Another mom walked past with her teenage sons.
Our eye contact was a private salute.
Feeling defeated, I huffed off deeper into the mud.
“Is Mama becoming a hippie?” I heard Tessa giggle to Chloe behind me after a few moments of silence.
“I think that might be what’s happening here. Are we supposed to be one with the earth?”
And,
as if the entire universe was making fun of my new aspirations,
that was the exact moment we came to a small clearing of another parking lot and we happened upon the tie-dye painted van we recognized as belonging to a local Airbnb owner “Miss Daisy.”
Although we’d never seen her personally before,
Miss Daisy had gained quite a reputation in our family from the number of times we had driven by her run-down house with the poster painted sign in her driveway advertising
“Miss Daisy’s Magical Gift Shop.”
We has joked about what exactly we think she sells.
We once happened upon her spaces for rent on Airbnb:
A teepee, a broken down bus, a guest room in the main house with a hoarded yard- all painted with a bright rainbow flair.
And this was the moment,
with me tromping, frustrated, through mud, fussing at my kids to ENJOY THE EARTH,
them teasing me about becoming a hippie,
when we saw Miss Daisy for the very first time.
That woman emerged from the woods in all tie-dye. She had a headband around her forehead, and John Lennon glasses on.
She looked so stereo-typically “hippie” it was like she had bought her outfit from Spirit Halloween.
Walking beside her on a leash was the most enormous Wolfhound I’d ever seen with a scar shaped just like a lightning bolt on its leg
.
“There’s a friend for you Mama,” I heard the girls giggle some more,
then a snort-giggle and
“I bet Miss Daisy likes hikes.”
I tried to be more mad in that moment,
but I just could not anymore.
The whole scene now too comical.
It was like I saw us all in that clearing from above.
The hippie, the wolf I dreamed of,
my anti-hikers, and me –
ankle deep in mud barking at my kids to ENJOY YOUR ACTUAL LIFE, NOT JUST THE ONE ON A SCREEN.
And that was when I gulped down my own words.
Wasn’t that exactly what i had been doing?
Wasn’t I hoping to make MY life into that Instagrammer’s I’d seen on a screen?…
And wasn’t this muddy, loud, addicted to screens, scared to get their shoes dirty crew MY actual life?
Was I enjoying it?
I think often the words we say as parents are meant mostly for our own selves to hear.
We all stood silently for a minute.
I’m sure the girls wondered what would happen next.
Miss Daisy and her gigantadog got into their van and drove sputtering away, and I turned around and said,
“OK. I think we’ve gone far enough today.
Want to go back and play at the park?”
Three faces looked back at me like that must be a trick question, but we turned around there and started to walk back towards the car.
“I just want us to live life together,” I said after a minute, now more at the heart of the urgency I had felt.
“I don’t want a life of us all in separate rooms looking through screens at other people’s lives.
I want us together in our own.
I only have a few more years with you guys at home with me.”
Tears rose as I finished,
“I’m just trying not to waste time.”
And they heard me.
They apologized for the way that they’d acted, and we linked arms in that mud, sighed,
and went to the park.
I watched them play from a bench that afternoon and I thought about all of the kinds of walks that we go on as parents.
How they almost never go the way that we planned.
Maybe our kids don’t like the things we wish they’d like.
Maybe they act differently from how we expect.
Maybe they showed up opposite from how we hoped.
We just wanted a nice peaceful meander,
but somehow they turned it into more of a death march.
But this is our life.
Are we really in it?
Are we looking around at where we live?
Are we focused on the mud,
or are we able to see the beauty that is right there all around us?
How often my kids have taught me…
May we all look up on this walk.
This article was written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
