When events with kids are not fun

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It was not for the thrill of seeing how long it would take for my skin to crack open and peel. It was not even because we love badly performed minor league baseball. No. We sat in the blazing shadeless inferno that we call the Iowa Cubs stadium because as parents, that is what we do. We do the thing.

My daughter won tickets through the summer reading program for this weekend. Twelve tickets to anything is not something we really feel like we can pass up at this point in life, so we headed to Des Moines hoping for a little cloud cover. There was not a cloud in sight, 90 in the sun, no shade, $4 per Gatorade. That kind of opposition was hard enough, but being in the cheap seats, we also has the disadvantage of being where no one cares about watching the game. Up stood the row in front of us. Up went the ladies across and down. Up went the family beside us. Home plate was down there somewhere but you could only get a clear shot in increments. By the third inning I knew we were done for. I wanted this to be great and I felt really badly that another thing we did with the kids seemed like a failure, but riding home I remembered that this is just a small part of the story of their lives. There will be many more opportunities, this was just one.

What was your last thing. I am sure you can recall it right now. Maybe it was the recital that was really bad, with awkward bad coffee after. Or it was going to the 18th feature film where people are blue or animals talk. If you have kids you know that there are a lot of days to fill. You can’t just stare at each other for all of them. So we break out and have an adventure. We fry in the sun. We get eaten by mosquitos. We curse and hit the trailer hitch with a hammer; that could just be us, all for our children.

Then there are moments that we have our solcistice events, peaks in the life line of parenthood. A day at the lake when everyone laughs and sleeps on the ride home. A long hike where everyone finds a pinecone and learns to skip stones really well. Like, even you are impressed, well. But for every one of those glory days there are days where you go to the zoo and all of the lions are sleeping, the penguin tank is being cleaned and the tuna sandwiches are a soggy mess.

We don’t do these thing to be great, we hope they are but that is not the end goal. The end goal are these little people, we do all of this because it takes a ton of memories to build a person. We do all the things because we are parents that love our kids. We go to the events and zoos and sci-fi book parties because every year that little warm hand is filling up more and more space in our own. When I let go I want their heart to be as full as my hand.

Do the thing, that last summer blow out trip, hike, or visit and don’t feel bad if it doesn’t really live up to expectation right now. What we are saying with our time is “I value you”, “I want to be with you.” The thing doesn’t matter as much as the company. If it should to be 90 degrees in the shade and you leave the game at the top of the third, you might want to stop off and get an ice cream, we found it very refreshing.