The other day, we played hooky.
I don't quite know from what we played hooky, except the insane pile of laundry that won't be washing itself. It just sounds fun and borderline rebellious to say it like that.
Brian said in the morning that he didn't need the car for work. I said, we'll TAKE it! It's good to have a car only once in awhile, so as to not think it a mundane thing to have a car. It's like sunshine. If we have sunshine every day, we have no clue that we should think it's an amazing thing. It was an amazing thing to have a car.
We drove to the grocery store, then drove to the beach. I didn't mention the plan until we arrived because if I decided last-minute that I didn't prefer to be scrubbing sand out of everything this evening, I had the option to head somewhere else. I can't attest for other mothers, but sometimes it's a control thing- It's good have options, you know?
I think it was supposed to rain that day, so there were about five people on the beach. It was strangely warm, and the sky was total perfection for taking pictures and I wished I had my real camera with me- it was incredibly picturesque. The sky was a deeper blue than normal, and the sand looked darker. I sat there with my bare feet in the sand, and my girls just ran in circles around me, laughing hysterically. They made castles and sand angels, and it was blissfully peaceful and right.
There are so many times as a mother that I play things safe. I tell myself that I won't do a beach day unless Brian is with me because, "how will I keep both of them from eating sand/ getting lost/ falling in the water, etc." on my own? So we play in our back patio, or closer to home, or in a gated playground... then one day I decide to go for it because I can, and it turns out to be more than manageable, more than fun, better in every way than my comfort zone. Sometimes the risks we take are things we are fully capable of doing, but we spend our days imagining that they're too difficult an undertaking. Definitely not up for living life without risk, with only the mundane because we know what's going to happen next. Where is the fun in that? Adventures are the way to go.
By all means, by the end of our adventure, we were covered head to toe in sand, Maggie was crying on the way to the car because she decided that the water was going to get her while she was 50 feet away in the middle of the beach, our sandwiches were crunchy with grains of sand in every bite, and we lost a beach ball (to Sophie's utmost devastation).... but we were SO HAPPY we went.
We came, we saw, we conquered... and we're better for it.
