All Mom and No Fun

Posted on January 25, 2016 by CNF • Posted in Blog, Featured Blog Posts • Tagged balance, children and childhood, everyday motherhood, family, fun, motherhood, mothering, parenting, Sharon Holbrook • Leave a comment

By Sharon Holbrook

I take parenting seriously, and I’m afraid that’s both my triumph and my failure.

The kids were at school when I grabbed the handful of papers lingering on the car floor. Oh, here was the family tree my second-grader did for Girl Scouts. I hadn’t seen it since she’d completed it, so I stopped to read the fun facts she’d jotted down about everyone in our family. “Adam likes to play Minecraft.” “Laura likes to draw.” “I like to read.” “Dad likes to dance with me.” And, the last one: “Mom likes to clean.” Oof.

I laughed to myself. I quipped about it in a Facebook status. I assumed she was just an 8-year-old in a hurry to scribble something down, because cleaning clearly isn’t my hallmark. (I actually don’t like to clean, and I’m afraid that’d probably be apparent if you popped in unannounced.) Yet, her little offhand remark continued to roll around in my thoughts. Was that really how I seemed to her? Could she think of nothing that I enjoyed? Had I forgotten how to have fun? Was I destined to become one of those grandmas that’s impossible to shop for? “She just has no hobbies,” my children and grandchildren will say as they shake their heads sorrowfully and buy me sensible slippers.

The thing is, I take parenting seriously, and I’m afraid that’s both my triumph and my failure. It’s my job to guide, to correct, to teach, to protect, to discipline. I do this job faithfully, but none of those things make me nor any other parent particularly fun.

A few weeks ago, at Christmas Eve Mass, we sat near a family with two lovely and spirited little girls in fancy dresses. The smaller girl, about three years old, wore a jaunty red bow in her long curls and matching party-perfect red tights and Mary Janes. She simply could not sit still, or even stay in her pew, almost certainly because she was amped up on the singular sparkle and promise of the night before Christmas. Each time she tapped her little feet into the aisle and bobbed and twirled, all of us nearby smiled indulgently, and even our jovial priest tried to stifle his amusement.

That mom, though. While everyone else saw a charming, adorable preschooler, Mom saw a responsibility, a transgression, a mandate to correct. Her face was tense and unamused. I saw myself, not at that moment in church, but perhaps in too many other moments of motherhood.

I’m sure my children have seen this face on me, and often. Pick up your coats, I scold again, because if I don’t they will certainly become everlasting slobs and nightmare college roommates. Take a shower-clear your dishes-use a tissue-where’s your fork?-wash your hands-pick up your socks. (Cleanliness does, in fact, seem to be a recurring part of my ongoing monologue. Points to the second-grader for noticing, I suppose.) Turn off the screen-do your homework-work it out with your sister-have you practiced piano? I’m forever monitoring, on high alert, trying to shape my three children into responsible people.

Sure, we do lots of mom-kid stuff together, outings and camping and road trips and bike rides and nature walks and much, much more. Never, though, do I stop being Mom. See how we have the walk signal? I say to the child who won’t be walking to school alone for years yet, Always watch for the turning cars. They have a green light too, and they might not see you. I cannot turn it off, the instinct to impart and, I suppose, to mother.

That’s not a bad thing, of course, but it strikes me that I’ve probably been saving too many of my favorite pleasures for moments when the kids aren’t around. I go out on restaurant dates with Daddy, or watch movies or shows with him after bedtime. I get together with friends and laugh. I treasure my solo time doing Pilates while they’re at school or reading books in bed before falling asleep. I blissfully lose myself in my writing work. Although I’m a happy person overall, the kids are not there so much for the most relaxed, easy-laughing side of me.

Maybe I’ve just drawn too hard a line between on-duty and off-duty. When I’m with the kids, it’s a bit like I’ve punched the clock and I’m at work, mothering. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun at work—don’t all the best jobs have their fun side, and what could be better than working with these three amazing, silly, exuberant little people? They feel my love, yes, but they should also feel my joy. Not every moment—let’s be realistic—but in our house we could all use a little more lightness and laughter, from me in particular. More yeses.

Yes, you can jump at the trampoline place and, yes, I will take my shoes off too and jump as high as I can with you. Yes, I will read you another book. Yes, how fun, let’s go out to lunch. Yes, I will try to listen, as carefully as my foot-dragging brain will let me, when you explain the latest Minecraft or Xbox thing. Yes, I will watch “Master Chef Junior” and “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?” with you, instead of “just finishing up” in the kitchen. (There’s that cleaning again.) Yes, let’s squeeze in a board game before bedtime. Yes, I will help you play a little joke on Daddy, and yes, I will help you search Google for silly llama pictures to execute this joke. (That last yes is proof positive, I suppose, that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.)

Years ago, when I was a swoony newlywed still trying to enjoy my new husband’s favorite hobby, I took up golf. Years ago, I also quit golfing because it turned out I spent too much time on the course swearing and thinking of the many, many ways I’d rather be spending five free hours. One bit of surprising wisdom, though, has stuck with me through the years. “You’re gripping too tightly,” the instructor told me, as I stood in the tee box with all my muscles tightly tensed, preparing to swing the club and blast the ball towards the green. “Relax your hold a bit, just swing smoothly, and the ball will go farther.” And so it was, incongruously, quite true.

I’m still serious about the responsibility of parenting, and I’m securely holding on to that part of me. At the same time, though, you could say I’m relaxing my grip a little as I swing. With any luck, we’ll sail a little higher and farther. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Sharon Holbrook is a contributing blogger for Brain, Child. Her work also appears in The New York Times Motherlode blog, Washington Post, and other publications, as well as in the forthcoming HerStories anthology, So Glad They Told Me. You can find her at sharonholbrook.com and on Twitter @sharon_holbrook. Sharon lives with her family in Cleveland, Ohio.

When Parents Can Have Some Fun of Their Own

Posted on December 11, 2015 by CNF • Posted in Blog, Featured Blog Posts • Tagged Campbell C. Hoffman, children and childhood, family, fun, motherhood, parenting • Leave a comment

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

Dancing Queen

Posted on March 24, 2014 by CNF • Posted in Articles Page, Highlights • Tagged daisy florin, dancing, friends, fun, marriage, moms, mothering, summer, vacation • 3 Comments

By Daisy Alpert Florin

Last summer, my family and I spent a week in Vermont at the kind of family resort that promises fun for all ages. It delivered: while our three kids participated in wholesome summertime activities with their peers, my husband, Ken, and I had time to reconnect during long bike rides, canoe trips and swims in the lake. Each night, the resort offered after-hours activities as well, most of which did not appeal to me. Bonfire and sing-along? Too hokey. Trivia night? Too geriatric. But Thursday night’s offering seemed perfect: Dance night with DJ.

I love to dance. Years of childhood ballet have not translated into a lifetime of grace, but give me a few drinks, blast some pop music and I’m unstoppable. At 40, the opportunities for dancing are few and far between. Before last summer, the last time I had been dancing was four years earlier at a friend’s wedding. I danced non-stop, sweating through my dress, pausing only when the DJ took a break for the father-of-the-bride’s toast. So any chance to dance, I’ve come to learn, should not be passed up.

Ken and I reserved a babysitter, put our kids to bed and headed up to the inn. The breakfast room had been transformed into a dance floor, complete with disco ball, strobe light and a mountain of sound equipment. When we entered the room, a few guests were taking salsa lessons. I sipped my maple mojito through a skinny straw and watched the sad scene unfold.

“What’s up with the salsa lesson?” I asked Ken. “I thought we were here to dance.”

“Calm down. There’s the DJ,” he said. “Let’s just wait.” He patted my hand, trying to keep my tantrum at bay.

Dancing, or the promise of dancing, can bring out my nasty side. At my five-year college reunion, fueled by several foamy beers and the crush of alumnae dancing around me, I had yelled at the college students sneaking some grooves on the tiny square of dance floor set up on the grass for the class of 1995.

“This is our dance floor, yo!” I’d hissed at them. “Get the hell off!” I couldn’t stand the thought of them dancing every weekend the way I used to, traipsing from frat house to frat house in search of the best crowd and the best tunes, while we returned to entry-level jobs in the city, our weekends spent in overpriced bars with nary a DJ in sight.

The salsa lesson ended and the dance floor cleared out. The DJ started spinning some tunes, mostly unoffensive, generic stuff: “I Will Survive,” “Holiday,” “Dancing Queen.” All in all, pretty uninspiring. The crowd apparently agreed with me: fifteen minutes in, the dance floor was pretty much empty.

“This is lame,” I said to Ken, eyeing the middle-aged crowd around us.

“Do you want to go?” he asked.

Before I could answer, the doors opened and a crowd of staff members entered the room. This could get interesting, I thought and ordered another drink.

The young men and women, released from their day jobs as camp counselors, waitresses and Zumba instructors, sauntered in in groups of four and five. Having shed the cocoon of their uniforms, they emerged like butterflies in low-slung jeans and baby doll dresses. All week long, I had been obsessed with the group of young people who kept the resort running. I invented fictions about them–love triangles, bitter breakups, kinky sexting. Each morning, as I biked from our cabin to the resort’s main buildings, I passed by the staff’s residence. It was a shabby Victorian-style house covered in layers of colorful paint and strung with Christmas lights. I could only imagine the amount of screwing that took place inside.

The staff greeted each other, some affectionately, others nonchalantly. I recognized the waitress who served us breakfast each morning standing on the periphery of a loud group of girls. She was wearing a brightly patterned dress, high-waisted and billowy around the hip. Looking around at the other girls, I noticed they were all wearing different versions of the same dress regardless of how it suited their figures. They were too young to know how to dress for their bodies, but young enough for it not to matter.

Watching them, I couldn’t help wondering how I had entered this other group, parents–or “guests” as we were known–when deep down I felt like I should be hanging out with the the staff. Why had I never had a job like this instead of wasting my college summers working at internships in fields I’d never entered? They got to go dancing.

As Ken and I sipped our drinks and grooved half-heartedly to ABBA and Van Morrison, the staff played out their own dramas, oblivious to us. My eyes tried to meet theirs across the dark room. Can’t you see? I tried to telegraph. I’m really one of you.

After a few more songs, I walked over to the DJ.

“Are you going to play anything more current? Like Katy Perry or Rihanna?” I asked the boy-girl pair parked behind the turntable.

“Yeah,” the girl answered flatly. “We usually play the older stuff first for the older crowd and then we’ll start with something more modern.”

My eyes met hers straight on. “Well, let’s hit it NOW, O.K.?” I think I kind of yelled.

Seconds later, Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us” exploded through the speakers. I ran out onto the dance floor, pumping my hands toward the roof as the chorus rang out. I twisted and grooved through the twangy horns section and stamped my feet during the final na-na-nas. The music continued, the songs of summer streaming out one after the other. I knew them all from listening to the radio in my minivan. I closed my eyes and felt the music pulse through my body. I shouted along with lyrics that had nothing to do with my life anymore, stories of love and breakups played out in school yards and on city streets.

After awhile, I gave Ken the O.K. to head over to the bar, and I moved around, unfettered, looking for a new group to join. I found our waitress dancing with a group of her friends. Their circle opened slightly and I poked my way in.

Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” the biggest hit of the summer, came on and the crowd screamed. It was a song my kids and I had hooted along to during our morning ride to day camp. Now I mouthed the lyrics seductively in the dark: I know you want it… I know you want it. The girls and I swiveled our hips and shimmied our shoulders, shouting when Robin anointed us all “the hottest bitch in this place.”

Wanting to end the night on a high, I slipped off the dance floor as soon as the song ended. But before I left, I grabbed the waitress’s arm and pulled her toward me.

“Listen to me,” I said, my lips close to her ear. “Go dancing every night you can, OK? And just, like, own it. Do you get me?”

And then I was gone, pulling Ken away from the bar and out into the summer night.

“Did you have fun?” he asked as we walked along the dark path back to our cabin.

“It was good,” I said, yawning. Nestling closer to him, I remembered that all I’d ever wanted during the crazy nights of my youth was a man to walk home with afterwards. All the primping and preening, the sexy moves on the dance floor, all of it had been in pursuit of the life I had now. The moon rose high in the nearly black sky, crystalline stars stretching on as far as I could see.

Daisy Alpert Florin is a freelance writer. She lives and works in Connecticut.

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