Ups and Downs

     Children are sticky, demanding, and inconvenient.
They can also be a ticket to freedom. Your next-door neighbors will probably start checking Zillow for safer pastures if they see you out in the backyard making snow angels in the freshly fallen snow. Put a four-year old next to you and it becomes a heart-warming scene.

          You might already be noticing oncoming grey hair, but with a kid in tow, you can dig in a sandbox, play on a swing set, and chase the waves on a beach and no one looks twice. You even get bonus points.

          On the other hand, I’ve also endured heat, rain, and cold during interminable soccer games, and shivered overnight in my sleeping bag in the middle of nowhere as I listened for threatening noises while in charge of a herd of Girl Scouts.  

          I was reminded of this mixed blessing when the grandboys came to visit recently. Yes, I know all anyone from up north really wants to do here in March is go to the beach, and we did plenty of that, but there’s a limit to how much this Anglo-Saxon skin can take.  

          So we took them zip-lining.

          First we were strapped into harnesses that would have burdened a Clydesdale. Then came a video, an on-the-ground intro to how to use our harness, and then a babysteps course elevated only four feet off the ground. As I tried to steady my size 10 feet on the tiny wire below while clinging to a sliding rope, I wondered (not for the first time in my life) “what was I thinking?”

          Miraculously, I made it through the three stages, finishing up with a short zip line – even if I did travel backwards the whole way. My daughter was ahead of me and fished me up to join her on the tiny platform like an (almost) septuagenarian Wallenda.

          Yes, what doesn’t kill you does make you stronger (as I often told myself while getting my Masters, working full-time, and raising two kids) and anyway, with my 87-strap harness that had more clips and buckles than a dominatrix’s dream, it would have been impossible to fall.

The course was actually interesting, kind of a physical problem-solving exercise, but after making it through the second course I was content to stay on the ground and watch the rest of the family work through courses 3,4, and 5. (Our nine-year-old did just fine, by the way).