chlorine eyes

I was looking at my daughter tonight at the dinner table. Her eyes were red and she was collapsing onto the table. The fun of summer had done her in. It got me thinking. When was the last time you saw a bunch of bonafide adults, i.e. bill paying, responsibility bearing adults just laid out from too much fun? Kids know how to do it. We used to be kids so....connect the dots. We have got to go back through the cobwebs of our memories (some of us have more than others) and remember how we used to live it up. We didn't need anything but a pool and a few friends to have the time of our lives. So much fun we could barely drag ourselves into bed.
I remember my first summer when the kid in me was totally obliterated. It was August and I realized that I didn't have any kind of tan whatsoever. Nothing. Chalky is not the color of fun. I had just been doing adult stuff like...working. A lot. It was sad.
Mom's have get a second wind at experiencing kids summer when they have munchkins looking at them early in the morning before their coffee has even coaxed them to life and they hear those blessed words, "I'm bored...what are we doing today?". So we slather everyone down in SPF 50 and head to the pool. Boredom be gone. Then we remember. We don't sit on loungers all day just trying to get a tan...we earn it. We are tying to keep kids from killing themselves in all manner of fashions usually on opposite sides of the pool from each other. Its amazing how you can get that total body tan by just not sitting down...ever. And in the middle of being an unpaid lifeguard we start to have fun. We squirt someone the face with a water gun or maybe even do a cannonball..maybe not. There would have to be no one in the pool for me to do that! The ensuing wave is almost as bad as standing on a "Guess my weight" game. How could they ever call that a game, by the way.
So, somehow we need to figure out as adults how to have so much fun that we fairly collapse at the end of our fun through bleary, red chlorine eyes and ask, "What are we gonna do tomorrow?" And even if you do have a mountain of work to do get some fun in there somewhere.

The yearn

I've always had it. It explodes sometimes. Other times it is just bubbling up from somewhere in side of me. I always recognize it in others. I see when its not there too. Some people have it. Some people don't. It is a blessing and a curse. It is a yearning for something. I always feel in some way like I am on the verge of being epic in some way. But what? Maybe that's why I go big or go home. In reality...I go big and then I go home. I lose interest in my next big thing even though it was all I could think 2 days or 2 months ago.
It could have started with childhood. I hated being left out of anything. I remember when my parents would rent a VHS player and movie. Yes, that's what I said. In the eighties you had to rent the player and the tape. And they used to have those little smiley face stickers, "Be kind, Rewind". Back to the point, they would rent their movies and my brother and I would go to bed. I would sneak through the hall and try to watch without being detected. I didn't want to miss out. Perhaps part of my yearning is the feeling that if I stay with whatever it is I am doing I will miss out on what's next. So, to hell with whatever I am dong now. It's yesterday's news. What is around the corner?
So the yearn isn't answered. It just grows because it hasn't been satiated. The yearn wants to do everything. At times I let the yearn screw up really good things in my life because I just want whats next.
I have to learn to release and yet tame the yearn. Release what comes with it. The creativity. The passion. The euphoria of the new. But tame the wanderlust that forgets the blessings of the past and doesn't allow for growth in the here and now.
Right now I feel like a shark. Stop moving and die. I think I may have something to learn from something like say, Coral? It just keeps growing and becoming more amazing. It is not frantically moving from side to side, always faster still. It just is.