Meteors, Darkness, Kids, Dads and Every Day Life

Twelve meteors! I saw twelve meteors in the Quadrantids shower at the start of the week!

I promised the 9 year old—Daize to regular readers; all the gang’s names are aliases—I’d wake her up if the meteor shower looked promising. I went outside on my own to check it out just before 4 AM. Sure enough, in just a few minutes, I saw four meteors. None of them were super impressive in and of themselves, but there were so many! I headed back in to wake up the kid.

 

While I was waking up Daize, her 5 year old—Tawnse in these pages—and 8 year old—Towser, as he’s sometimes known here—sibs woke up as well. I asked if they wanted to come watch  meteors. Tawnse was in. Towser decided he’d rather get a bit more sleep. A few minutes passed while jackets and snow boots were collected, then Daize, Tawnse, and I headed back outside. The kids sounded like miniature astronauts, their snow boots plodding down the sidewalk in the cold, clear, silence of the surrounding desert.

I'll give her this, Tawnse knows how to lie politely. After a little less than a minute in the cold air, she said, “I saw one, I’m headed in.” 

“Wait just a little bit,” I asked. “Let’s walk up the road a little to see if there’s a better place to spot them from.

Walking, I asked, “Are you still looking up?” 

Looking down at them, I saw Daize and Tawnse weren’t looking straight up anymore. They were looking towards the horizon, compromising with their surroundings to keep one eye on where they were headed in the dark and the other on the sky. I was just about to remind them to look further up at the big dipper when I heard one of them inhale, pulling in a big excited breath of air.

Daize: “I saw one!”

Tawnse: “Me too!”

“I made a wish!” Daize exclaimed.

We were then treated to another three or four meteors shooting over the horizon. I’d been looking in the wrong place, relatively speaking. If the kids hadn’t come out, I would have missed the more impressive show going on low in the night sky while I was intently peering at the big dipper, (the place the article I’d read the night before said to look for meteors.)

A few moments later, the kids both happily exclaimed, that now, they were going back to bed. The clomping of their snow boots echoed through the neighborhood as they ran the block back home. I stayed out a bit more, soaking in the experience of seeing the meteors, and getting to hang out with the kids.

The kids weren’t afraid of the dark or their surroundings in large part, I think, because they’ve been doing this sort of thing their whole lives. We camp together, we head out to the Farmers’ Market just about every weekend around five in the morning together to beat the crowds. We’re out and about at night quite a bit. I’m an early riser who tends to schedule a lot of activities before the sun comes up, and for the most part, what I do, the kids do.

I read a lot in parenting forums about parents who are bummed that their lives aren’t what they used to be. They don’t do the things they enjoyed before they had kids anymore. I also read a lot about the importance of routines, and sleep schedules, and structured time. It seems to me though—and I'm lucky enough to have had my experience back me up on this—that by just incorporating the kids into ever aspect of my life that I could, I dodged the bullet of a life lost to routine, structure, and norms. Since the kids were babies, I’ve been taking them with me to pretty much everything I do. 

That means, the three of us have:

• Camped together (a lot)
• Hit the bars together for grad school mixers and the like.
• Hung out at pubs in the afternoon sipping beers and glasses of milk while we devour Mac'NCheese and Shepherds Pie
• Trudged through the cold San Francisco mornings every weekend to board our 5:20 AM bus to the Farmers Market
• Gone to talks around town about art, books, and science.
• Read books, and worked in local libraries on school days; the kids’ giggles over their books getting us the occasional quizzical look from other patrons.
• Of course, we hit playgrounds. My life is integrated with theirs as well.
• Finessed/coerced—it took a few emails to the head of the swimming division of Parks & Rec to work things out because… gasp… children—our way into our local public swimming pool for 7 AM lap swims where we learned/practiced our strokes in the shallow end no one was using.
• And today, meteor spotting.

The whole thing has taken work to be honest. Just like every other aspect of life, getting to share my life more with the kids has meant trying things over and over and over. There’s the new experience phase, there’s the learning the rules of what will and won’t work in certain spaces or situations phase—shirt tails make great places to blow your nose camping, but not so much at book launches-- the infant/toddler crying and screaming while we’re out and about phase—kids, just like me, get tired and hungry, there’s no stopping it. 

But, patiently working though everything over and over and over has paid off. We go where we like for the most part. The kids participate in pretty  huge swaths of my life, just as I do in theirs. As they’re getting bigger, we’re even managing to split apart and meet back up during different parts of their days. They hit a class or playground, I hit work, we meet back up to go to a book event. It’s nice.

And, since I’m a dad, let me especially address dads here for just a moment in closing. About half the posts I see about ‘missing a former life are from dads. Conversely, almost all the articles I see in the parenting press about overwhelmed parents involve moms. It’s a lot of work, but the thing I'm describing here is so worth it. Figure out how to integrate your kids more into your ever day life. If you can. At all. 

Sure, you’ll have to innovate. You’ll have to work/deal with people who don’t think kids should be in a place. (As an aside, that’s typically far easier for dads because, dad privilege. Trust me, people will generally fawn over you just for being out with kids… Use your power for good.) You’ll have to patiently, and constructively work with the kids till they’re able to do what you can do. Sometimes you’ll have to go home early, sometimes things will go more slowly than you’d like, or you won’t get as far as you planned. The next day, or the next day after that, or perhaps a day further in the future, it’ll all work itself out, it’ll get better. I promise.

As all this develops though, you’ll get this incredible thing. You won’t be thinking about “What should I do with the kids while I try to do the thing I want.” You’ll be thinking, “Oh wow! I can just take the kids with me. I’ll tell them what we’re going to be up to since now, so they’ll be up for it when we head out!”

Have fun!

What’s your favorite thing to do with kids? I’d love to hear about it!