Embracing ordinary experiences

Scrolling through Facebook recently, I spotted an article "10 Trips to Take Before Your Kid Turns 10."  I usually avoid stuff like this, but I thought it might be good writing material.  The author took her nine year old daughter to a storybook-themed park.  Her daughter wasn't impressed and said it would have been fun when she was younger.  The author lamented that "she missed the boat" and advised: "Don't do the same. Visit as many of these places as you can while they're still captivating for your child."  Seriously?  No pressure.  Also, the daughter sounds a bit jaded.  Nine is a bit young to be cynical about a storybook-themed park.  Of the ten places in the article, my family and I (all above the fateful age of 10!) have been to only one.  And we are okay.  I saw a similar article, but this time there are forty places you must take your kids - "40 Places To See With Your Kids Before They Are All Grown Up."  This list includes such affordable and easily accessible destinations as the Galapagos Island and Buckingham Palace!  Of the forty places on the list, I myself - clearly "all grown up" at forty-six years - have only been to five of them and all of them as a grown-up.

I love traveling, and I have traveled quite extensively and adventurously at times.  I hope my children will live or study abroad and travel to places that interest them, just as I did.  And when circumstances and finances allow, we enjoy taking our children on trips as well.  They have had some very special family trips, like being able to visit their grandparents in Poland and returning to the same lake cottage every summer for several years with their cousins.  I'd love to take my family to the Galapagos Island, if we win the lottery.  But I'm also fine if none of us ever go there. 

I don't know many - if any - families that could afford to travel as extensively as these lists suggest.  I understand that perhaps the articles are meant to serve more as ideas.  But the thing that annoys me more about these types of lists and other such "standards" for modern parenthood is the insidious and frequent message that we are obligated to create some kind of magical childhood for our children full of spectacular or extravagant experiences.  I'm pretty sure articles like this didn't exist when my own parents had a houseful of young children.  And there obviously was no internet, where such articles can be shared a million times. 

Instead of focusing on or longing for a few (or 10 or 40) supposedly extraordinary experiences, how about we take some advice from William Martin?  This quote from The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents has been popping up around the interwebs:

“Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.  Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness.  Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears.  Show them how to cry when pets and people die.  Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand.  And make the ordinary come alive for them.  The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

*****

Someone recently asked me what was the highlight of my summer.  We didn't go on any family vacations this past summer, so I didn't have that as a "go to" response.  What I thought of immediately were two things:  participating in the Riverwest24 bike ride with neighbors, friends and family and volunteering at the Riverwest Food Pantry with my kids.  Both of these experiences occurred right in my own community.  Both of them were such great experiences because of the people with whom I experienced them - family, friends, neighbors, volunteers and clients at the food pantry - and because of the sense of community and working together for a common goal or a common good.  Yes, experiences are more important than things.  But sometimes the most enjoyable, fulfilling and uplifting experiences can be the most simple and close to home.