Tag: adventure

Lantern Awareness

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“Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” – Roald Dahl

This weekend I did something that I had never done before with my kids. Seattle has been pretty late to the game of mass transit for a big city. But in the last 5 years, we’ve built a pretty good light rail system that goes north-south in the city. From my neighborhood I can go to downtown Seattle and the airport. Which are places I rarely go these days so I’ve never ridden it.

My kids and I had a free Saturday morning so we got on the light rail system and rode it without any destination. We ended up getting off by the baseball stadium but without any game going on, there wasn’t much open around there so we hopped back on and rode one stop north to the international district. Then we wandered until we found a cute little independent coffee shop in which to have a donut and go to the bathroom.

Walking back to the light rail, we came across a motorcycle policeman who was putting out traffic signs for the soccer game later in the day. He offered to let my kids sit on his motorcycle which Miss O was delighted to do, and she got to turn on the flashing lights and honk the horn (it’s really loud).

It was like we were tourists in our own town. It was so fun and it illustrated something that Dr. Alison Gopnik, a cognitive psychologist from UC Berkley talks about. Spotlight awareness vs lantern awareness. If you imagine spotlight awareness, it’s a focused beam on whatever we are aiming to do. It’s the type of attention grown-ups use most of the time.

And lantern awareness is like a light held high in the dark that illuminates everything in a radius. It’s the child’s way of looking at the world and what makes them so darn hard to get out of the door in the morning – because they are looking at everything that might be interesting and not just their shoes and socks.

Mr. D is at a perfect stage for lantern awareness. He constantly asks, “What’s that?” because he’s heard a noise that he can’t identify. And I can’t hear it at all because there are so many noises around that I’ve filtered out because they aren’t important to what I’m doing.

But spending the morning wandering with no agenda, I was able to experience a couple of hours of lantern awareness. And it struck me that this is why traveling can be so good for us. When we get dropped into a new environment and pay attention to everything around, it refreshes all our senses. Or walking in the woods, floating in a sensory tank, or just following around a two-year-old.

For me, doing something I hadn’t ever done before with two kids in tow felt like an adventure. I didn’t know how the ticketing system work and though I had a general knowledge of where the light rail system went, I didn’t know exactly. It’s amazing how refreshing some uncertainty felt.

My two-year-old was totally delighted to have us join him in his element. As soon as we got back to where we started he said, “Do it again?”

Photo of the week: Oct 23rd

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Last weekend my friend Eric and I took the kids on a long bike ride. My toddler was in a bike seat behind me and my 6-year-old was on a third wheel bike attached to Eric’s.

It was a gorgeous fall morning with moderate temperatures, colorful fall leaves, not too many clouds and we biked five miles to a marina on the waterfront where we met my brother and sister-in-law. And we got to ride bikes down the dock!

Along the route we saw so many interesting things in addition to the water, boats and beautiful leaves:

  • A draw bridge go up right as we were passing underneath so the movement and the sound of the mechanism echoed and clanged right over our heads.
  • A police car that disgorged a cop right in front us carrying what my daughter thought initially was a radar gun but turned out to be a cup of coffee.
  • A woman with pink hair getting ready for a breast cancer benefit race.
  • A little kid not much older than my toddler wearing a shark helmet, riding his own bike with his dad and trying so hard to race us.

So when my daughter said to my brother, “Guess what we saw on the way here?” I was surprised by her answer, “A dead bunny.”

We all see things differently… 🙂

Practicing Gratitude

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“The more grateful I am, the more beauty I see.” – Mary Davis

Yesterday I my daughter and her friend wanted to ride their bikes to school. So I loaded up my toddler on the back of my bike, threw my mask and wallet in a small backpack and shepherded them through the route we’d planned. After we dropped them off, I rode my toddler the rest of the way to his daycare.

After coming back home and finishing the essential work items I needed to get done, I drove to the store to do the weekend grocery shopping. I loaded my basket with all sorts of yummy fall weekend ingredients – for pumpkin bread, homemade chicken soup along with crisp, juicy apples and crunchy green grapes. I opted for the self-checkout line, scanned the bottle of wine I’d selected as my first item and then hunted in my purse for my wallet to show the attendant.

I didn’t have my wallet. It was still in the bike riding backpack.

As I drove the 7 minutes home to get it while my groceries waited patiently with the attendant, I was grateful that I had enough time to do the extra trip back and forth in a quiet car that felt like a driving meditation.

As I drove the 7 minutes back to the store, I was grateful that the wine was the first thing I’d scanned.

And when I arrived back at the store, I was grateful that the basket of items that I’d carefully selected was still waiting for me.

It’s true what they say, practicing gratitude makes it easier to find, even when you’ve forgotten the other things you need.

Vacation

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“Another name for God is surprise,” – Brother David Steindl-Rast

Twenty years ago my friend Jill and I were looking for something to do for a vacation and considered going to a spa in Arizona but as lovely as the hiking, yoga and pilates schedule and menu sounded, we never could pull the trigger. We thought we’d get bored. Instead signed up for a trip to climb two Mexican volanoes, Mt. Ixtacchuatl (17,200 feet) and Pico de Orizaba (18,500 feet). While I already summitted Mt. Rainier (14,400 feet) once (as had Jill) on my second attempt, that was in my backyard since it was 60 miles southeast of Seattle where I live. This trip was the start of what I came to think of as vacations in my early adulthood. I’d sign up for a trip, usually with a friend or two to climb something as time and budget allowed. It was how I saw Russia, Nepal and Peru when I was single – usually dirty, tired and out of breath but so delighted for the change of perspective and chance to adventure.

Now I’m redefining what vacation means as a mom with two young kids. Our range is a lot closer to home and my budget is a lot tighter so we’ve tried a few things pretty close to home. The first trip we tried was six hours by car – that was too far as I can feel all you experienced parents inclining your heads in agreement. The second trip was eight hours by boat but a big boat that we could move around on. Better because the boat was an adventure in and of itself but we came home a little stunned from all the pounding through water. This weekend we went with a friend to a AirBnB cabin on Whidbey Island about an hour and half trip from our house. Better yet!

But regardless of how we have gotten to our destinations, I’m fascinated by how the kids take it in. They get to the new environment, and then regardless of what is outside, explore every nook and cranny of the temporary quarters.  In the first place we rented, they seemed to have a plethora of toilet cleaning brushes and my toddler discovered each one and wanted to carry each one around until I confiscated them. Nothing is familiar so it seems the kids spend a lot of energy mapping out their new world as I follow along making sure it’s safe.

Then come the new activities – beach combing, swimming in the pool, finding new playgrounds. Everything, even if it’s an activity that we’ve done at home, seems more adventurous. If it’s a beach like it was this weekend, it seems to come with cataloging it as a new entry of what a beach looks like – more sandy, less rocky, more sea life, less driftwood. My five-year-old daughter ran through every tide pool with her arms outstretched yesterday in a glorious expression of taking it in.

So eating and sleeping become huge issues. They seem to consume massive amounts of food to support all the novelty. Going out to eat is not only new because they are places we haven’t gone before but also because we haven’t done it much during COVID. There is a dichotomy of wanting to have the staples I’ve brought from home as one form of familiarity and willingness to try something new since everything else is new. Sleep, I’ve learned is much harder if we all try to do it in one room. WAY too exciting when it’s WAY too necessary.

I come to the end of each time away absolutely exhausted. This is where I have had to redefine what vacation means to me. It certainly isn’t less work. It’s definitely less predictable. But now I see that’s part of the joy – to find the Universal where we go. Somehow God makes it so that by switching everything up, we are renewed in our life together.

I’ve realized that I never liked vacation where I just sat around and thank goodness, because that doesn’t seems to be part of this new era. And I’ve found in another way, it’s like my mountain climbing vacations – I’m usually dirty, tired and out of breath but also delighted for the change of perspective and chance to adventure, this time seeing the world… through the eyes of my children.