Take it Outside

“Take it outside!” I can hear my Dad yelling these words to my sisters and I as we scream and sing and cavort around the living room. Kicked back in his deep blue lazyboy, he is trying to watch a football game on a crisp Sunday in fall. But he can’t hear the announcer over all the ruckus.

Twenty-five years later and it’s me yelling “Take it outside!” These three loves I call my offspring are at it again, playing Schrackers in the living room. A game designed by them to fray some parental nerves, it involves a lot of running, bumping into each other stomach to stomach, and screaming the word SCHRACKER.

So they take it outside. But then comes the parental guilt. It was fine for my Dad to watch his football game, wasn’t it? I don’t remember feeling abandoned or unloved because he wanted me to play outside. But I am left wondering if I should be outside with my own kids, throwing the football like all the good Mommies. Or maybe the kids should stay inside with me, and we could read The Boxcar Children and make chocolate chip cookies together.

In this world of over-achieving parents and over-scheduled kids, I end up feeling like the evil step-mother. In fact, my daughter and her cousin just spent the last twenty-four hours playing orphan. Trying to tell me something, or have they just had too many viewings of the movie Annie?

But that is a role I am willing to play if it will get my children outside. Creativity happens when I give them that gift. Of course, sometimes I have to lock the door to keep them there! But the other night, for instance, there was an entire talent show on the front porch replete with handbills and audience participation. There was even the comic relief of little brother who kept taping up signs that said things like “No Girls Allowed” and “No Performing.”

They make me laugh, these kids. The wonder of them: the way they use their language and their minds. The way they see the world in black and white and so incredibly skewed in their directions. But I love the pirate heists and Indian wars and orphan dramas in my back yard.

And I am thankful for my OWN parents who suggested that I take it outside. Creativity happens in pockets of time that are not inundated with dance class and soccer practice and art camp. That is a gift I give my children. And let’s face it, a gift to me. While they sail the high seas in the backyard hose, I can swab the decks inside.

And that makes for some very happy pirates at the end of the day.