Dreams can come true

I’ve been hiking with Grey since he was born. Pretty literally. Here’s a picture of us together in the Fells about 6 days after he was born. (For the record, too soon. I overextended myself pretty significantly on that hike.)

I remember walking with him in the woods and imagining that day, someday, when his feet wouldn’t drag behind mine and I wouldn’t have to slow down. I knew that it was likely that in a twinkling, he’d go from being behind me to being ahead of me – fleet feet dancing lightly up trails that made me feel the gravity of my years. Many’s the hike I’ve dragged my children on when I told myself this impossible story – that some day they would be stronger, faster and more enduring than me.

Grey has had this phenomenal weekend. Saturday was supposed to be dedicated to cleaning out the attic. It’s amazing what sort of neat stuff you do when you’re procrastinating, isn’t it? Instead, we played a video game together as a family (Ultimate Chicken Horse – I was the hapless sheep and terrible at it). Then Adam and I found the *perfect* countertop, which happens to require us to find a brand new flooring tile because it works with the backsplash and beadboard beautifully, but doesn’t go at all with the flooring. This is something of a miracle, because neither Adam nor I have been able to stand a single one of each other’s selections until we got this one, and we both really like this one.

After we got back, we decided to go for a hike. Thane really didn’t want to go, but we dragged him anyway. Grey was happy to come, and wore the really neat wool nurse’s cloak that his great grandmother (or great aunt – something like that – Laureen can you tell the story in the comments?) wore when people wore woolen cloaks with brass buttons. He was awesome on the hike, and the only thing he complained about was his brother’s complaining.

The he came home and finished Raymond Chandler’s novel “The Lady in the Lake” which he clearly enjoyed very much. “Man,” he said, “All the characters seem to really dislike the private eye. Pretty much every single one of them has called him a bad name!” Adam replied, “Dick is the slang term for a Private Investigator. It doesn’t mean jerk.” “Oooooh that makes a lot more sense.” We finished the night up watching some Star Trek Deep Space 9.

Today, he cheerfully went to church and cheerfully participated in a lovely service. Then after we got home, he was struck by a brilliant idea. He wanted to go geocaching. And for once, his brilliant idea was brilliant. Honestly, I’ve wanted to do geocaching for years! It’s exactly the kind of thing I always hoped my kids would get into. Grey watched a Youtube video on the fundamentals of geocaching. He proposed a token to leave behind (a sticker of our family crest). He identified the best app, which he asked me to download. He found the nearby caches, and pointed out two that were in easy striking distance. And then he very politely asked me if I would go geocaching with him (since I’m the one with a smart phone). The weather was fairish today, and he’d also been talking about how much he really wanted to go ride a bike, so I suggested that we ride our bikes to the Fells (it’s less than a mile) and proceed on foot from there.

I’ve been wanting to bike to the Fells for YEARS. If this was my childhood, that’s what would’ve happened all the time. It’s so nearby, and so amazing that it’s within easy biking distance. And it is – less than 10 minutes each way. That’s nearly what it would take to drive it, and way faster than walking it.

Once in the Fells, I followed his lead in finding the caches. His joy and satisfaction and enthusiasm on finding his first ever cache just radiated from him. He was extremely diligent in logging the visit in the logbook, and putting the cache back just as he found it. The whole time he was just projecting happiness.

His appetite whetted, he begged for just one more. Now I had serious attic-cleaning duties to attend to. But when my child begs me to hike longer, um, it’s possible I don’t have as much willpower as it would take to be like “No, I need to go clean up the curtains I bought 10 years ago and never got around to hanging.” So we headed further into the Fells, finding ourselves on a trail I swear I’ve never seen before and as previously mentioned I’ve been hiking there for over a decade. The second cache we found ourselves at the base of an 80 foot cliff with the sinking realization that the cache was at the top of said cliff. I put my foot down on scaling the cliff (How old I have gotten! But I’ve seen first responders try to get into the Fells and I don’t want to do that again.) So we took the long way around.

And then it happened. He was twenty feet up the trail from me, with wings on his feet and light in his eyes, bouncing up rocky slopes like a gazelle. He called back over his shoulder “Can we pick up the pace? Like a light jog or something?” And I realized that my “someday” was in fact “today”. Today was the day when he was faster than me – when he would fly up trails and leave me to admire him from behind. Today was that day I’d dreamed about so many years.

We didn’t find the second cache, despite much hunting and searching at the top of the hill. It must be lost. But we did find a third cache. With the winds on Friday, one needs to be careful in the forests. Many trees are down today that were standing on Thursday. The third cache was in the shadow of the most astonishing widow-maker I’ve ever seen. There’s a dead tree resting on a dead tree, lodged in what I sincerely hope is a living tree. It gave me the chance to tell him about his great-great grandfather who died from the unhappy fall of such a widow-maker.

To cap off the weekend of being perfect, after dinner he went into the kitchen and made us a chocolate cake from scratch. It’s delicious – moist, light and airy. It’s some of the best chocolate cake I had. Then he posed for a picture, mimicing the exact picture from last year which I have on our calendar for this month. And then we watched some M*A*S*H episodes to honor the memory of David Ogden Spiers.

Parenting is hard work. So many nights checking homework, insisting on chores and fighting to make sure everyone does what needs to be done. So many days getting the call from the nurse that you kid needs to be picked up. There are a thousand and one hard things about being a parent. But then every so often you have an amazing weekend with your kid and you realize that wow. You really like your child. This was that moment for me.