Cheerful Abundance

When a student of mine told me, in confidence, that she never wanted to graduate, because she didn’t want to be a ‘grown-up’, I laughed. And then I told her the truth – grown-ups get away with so much. And its true. Sure you pay ridiculous property taxes, and a couple of times a year a weird goat-hair springs forth out of your chin or eyebrow line, but overall, being a grown-up is the best time to have a little subversive fun in life, because as long as you are mostly doing the right thing where people can see you, you can do anything you want the rest of the time.

I am a grown-up, and I am married to another grown-up, by which I mean that we aren’t aging hipsters, wandering around Coachella and bemoaning the lack of bathrooms, or pretending that our careers are just temporary gigs until our art collective takes off, or inadvertently causing strangers to nudge each other after seeing us and whisper things like, “mutton, dressed like lamb.” But what people don’t realize is, being an upstanding good citizen, a soccer mom, the dad that does school drop off, is the best cover ever for doing the kind of stuff you could never get away with as a kid. Like playing hooky.

This is not confession time. Most of our shenanigans I will take to the grave with me. But I will share this one: every once in a while, my husband and I love to play hooky from work together and then go on random adventures. Sometimes, it is a one day road trip, other times, hypothetically, let’s say, yesterday, we gave in to the seductive media stylings of Red Lobster’s advertising, with their slow motion butter splashing, and giant puffed out lobster tails.

I am not sure how it started, probably an ad running on the Today show, which is the background music of our morning routine, but suddenly, spending the day addressing our equally full work schedules and to-do lists seemed like a bad idea, and becoming the kind of people who go to lunch at Red Lobster and order ridiculously huge seafood platters and drinks in unnatural colours seemed like the best idea, ever. And it was. I am not sure I have ever eaten lobster tail for lunch, but I am glad I did. And after our leisurely, week-day lunch, we wandered over to our local Lowes to take a stroll through their garden furniture, sit on a bunch of it, and have the kind of relaxed shopping that only happens during the work day, with no children in tow.

It is such a luxury, to have a little time to ourselves, to talk about how we want to redo the backyard, and planning our upcoming garage build, and start picking out patio furniture. It might not sound exciting to other people, but every minute of our days are so filled with kids, and work, and school, and stuff, that just sneaking away from it all and eating what turned out to be a pretty decent meal (Red Lobster! Who knew?), and doing a little shopping, was so fun. Today, we are back to our boring, responsible, brown-bag carrying selves, but that little break in the regular routine was enough to propel me through the rest of the month and to feel a little less annoyed by the basic busywork of suburban life.