When Parents Can Have Some Fun of Their Own
By Campbell C. Hoffman
Can grown-ups have fun? Can we play? Can I experience something akin to what my kids feel when they are bouncing on the trampoline?
If you want to see the face of fun, to know what it sounds like and looks like, just watch kids jumping on a trampoline. Santa Claus brought one for our family last year, and the kids still haven’t gotten bored with it. Their ragdoll bodies flop and fall, they squeal and scream. When I worry for just a second—is it a belly laugh or a broken bone—the laughter becomes contagious, smiles abound, and I know that my kids are having fun. Real, playful, uninhibited fun.
As I wipe my hands with a dishtowel and throw it over my shoulder, I pause for a moment to watch them before I have to put an end to it, for now. I try to remember the last time I laughed like that, easy and carefree. I come up short. I begin to wonder if maybe my only way to know fun is to witness it in my kids. But does it even count, then, if it’s not actually mine? Maybe my days of fun were officially over, now that I’m a parent.
“Ok, guys, time to come in to wash up for dinner,” I tell them, marching toward the trampoline.
I help them with the zipper of the net, offer a stable hand as they climb out and march towards the house, grumbling about dinner, but still smiling with residual joy from their play.
I’m not even sure I know how to have fun anymore. At best, having fun seems outside of my grasp. At worst, it looks like more work. The circles of dishes, dinner, laundry, and lunch can be tedious and never ending. When it is punctuated it is either with the opposite of fun in worry and drama, or small meaningful moments that, though glorious, are not ripe with play and fun. It seems that the grown-up way of handling this lack of fun is to suppress the desire even to have any at all. If I can fool myself into thinking that I don’t want to have fun anyway, then I can’t be grumpy or resentful of all the things that displace fun in my life, can I?
There are countless things that hold me back from having fun, things like being too self-conscious, or the fear of being foolish or selfish, or worse, unproductive. Not to mention, so much of my job as a mother is risk assessment, which can be the nemesis to fun. So I wonder: can grown-ups have fun? Can we play? Can I experience something akin to what my kids feel when they are bouncing on the trampoline?
As parents, we are often on the sidelines of fun. We are the wallflowers at birthday parties, pausing in conversation to wave to a child who has reached the top of the slide. We are the ones that tuck sweaty hair behind ears and offer a drink of water. We are the ones who listen to the stories afterward, collecting these treasures and holding onto them for the kids, like souvenirs in a pocket for later, even noting their beauty and goodness. We stand in our places, safe and on guard, on this side of the line of fun. The un-fun side.
Last week, my son, Griffin, age 3 and the youngest at his cousin’s birthday party by a handful of years, was unsure about climbing the tall blow up slide at the bounce-house. He sought me out, wanting help, or company maybe. I looked at the other parents and felt sheepish about joining him—like I was breaking some unspoken rule: parents wave from the sidelines and leave the laughter and play to the kids. But my son wanted me (and truthfully, I was glad for the break of small talk with mothers I didn’t know). I smiled wanly, tucked my shoes into a cubby, and then, with his outstretched hand in mine, walked toward the bounce slide.
For the next 20 minutes I followed Griffin, climbing, scrambling, toppling, sliding, sometimes with him on my lap. It was real fun, physical fun, a deep tickle in my belly, a smile and even laughter that I couldn’t hold back. It was not just an intellectual understanding of blessings or goodness, not witnessing the fun of someone else, namely my children, but fun of my very own. By the time we were called in for pizza and cake, I was the one with the sweaty ponytail and a smile I couldn’t contain. I even compared brush burns with a few of the kids as we were ushered into the party room. I had crossed over, following the kids’ lead, from stoic parental responsibility into pure childlike fun.
My default posture of motherhood has been as the onlooker, arms crossed holding water bottles and jackets, at the ready to rescue and serve, but after the freedom of fun that I experienced at the birthday party, I realized that fun was within my grasp. I didn’t always know how to get there, but I was pretty certain my kids could show me the way. I started saying yes to that childlike sense of play. Yes, I’d love to jump on the trampoline. Yes, turn up the music and let’s have a pajama dance party. Yes, I’ll go down the water slide, too. Timidly at first, finding it work to choose yes, but the more yes I said, the louder and stronger I said it. I was saying yes to fun.
This past spring I coached my oldest son’s soccer team. It was a slow yes, a reticent yes, to agree to this responsibility, and that’s exactly how I saw it: a task, a job. There is joy and beauty in watching our kids grow in strength and accomplishment; heart-swelling pride in seeing them try something new or work hard at something practiced. But as the weeks of the seasons ticked by, I began to feel myself having fun, playful fun, fun of my own, running alongside these first graders back and forth on the soccer field.
Our last practice of the season was a parents vs. team scrimmage. A handful of the parents showed up, and what happened was glorious: we had real playful fun together. Parents laughed as we tried to play this game, whiffing a ball, missing a goal, occasionally making a nice pass. The kids saw us, unpolished, unfettered, unproductive even, smiling joyously having fun of our very own.
Campbell C. Hoffman lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with her husband and three children. Her work has appeared at Brain, Child Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, and Mamalode. She can be found on Twitter @tumbledweeds.
Photo: gettyimages.com
