F&F Tour Day 14: Good Family Time

Sometimes when you’re old and in your dotage, you forget how active kids can be.  I was reminded today that children have much more energy than the elderly.  It’s now been more than 14 hours since the first little one woke up this morning, and activity has been pretty much non-stop since then.

But I’m not complaining.  I can’t keep up with them, but I’m not complaining.  I actually went outside and mowed the lawn so I could rest a little.  The 12-year old was doing a school project with a classmate building an atom and I was afraid they were going to try to split it as well.  The seven-year old had a gymnastics class this morning, and the three-year old was frequently seen riding her tricycle through the house yelling something that apparently only other three-olds can decipher.

In the meantime, I got to do something I haven’t done in a decade:  hit golf balls with the 38-year old.  I never was much good and now I’m worse, thanks to arthritis and other infirmities of age.  But Hilary still has the nearly perfect swing she had as a teenager and was outdriving most of the men today at the driving range even though it was the first time she had swung a club in more than a year. I spent many years teaching her how to perfect her game, but fortunately she ignored me and listened to the professionals and coaches she worked with instead.

A trip with all three girls and Hilary to a Barnes and Noble store to shop for more books to add to their juvenile libraries that already overflow bookshelves and closets occupied some of the afternoon with the rest of it taken up pushing  the little one in the swingset and throwing a frisbee to an adolescent border collie who consistently failed to return it to my feet, making me get up every time to retrieve it so I could throw it again.

As I write now, an almost erie quiet has settled over the house as the two littles get their baths and the senior sibling slid out the door to go spend the night with a friend.  It’s quiet.  Too quiet.  Something’s probably brewing as the littles plot their next indoor misadventure.

Life for adults with children seems to be lived in 60-second seriocomic segments as one crisis is solved and another youthful enterprise begins to unfold.  But that’s life lived in an active family.  And that’s good.