Play Outside

When I was a kid my mom did not let us play in the house. Well, she did but only if there was a blizzard or you had the chicken pox or you had just broken a femur. We played outside. ALL. DAY. LONG. Our neighbor's mothers did not let them play in the house either so I suppose it all worked out for everyone. All the loud, messy kids outside and all the neat, quiet mothers inside doing whatever it was that kept mothers busy all day long in the 70's. I think it was ironing since permanent press had not yet been invented and my mom spent a lot of time with the iron. Boy, have times changed. Last summer I gave my little girls a play ironing board and they used it as a surfboard. Okay, girls, I don't iron much, don't rub it in.
Although I am ecstatic about the permanent press situation, I am less than thrilled with the current state of where kids play. This is on my mind because I just spent two weeks at home with my little darlings while school was out for break. A two week break in the middle of winter? Have some mercy on us poor moms at home. I am a mother of the 70's at heart, I guess, because I don't want my kids inside either. I want them to go outside and play. ALL. DAY. LONG.
Sadly, the reason this bothers me so much is because children do not play outside anymore. They play inside. But, this is where the mothers are and hence, a problem. Now, I know we had more incentive to go outside when I was a kid. For starters, we only had three TV stations in my hometown. Three! And nothing and I mean nothing, was on during the day unless you were a mom and needed to see what happened to Luke and Laura. Secondly, the only video game we had was Atari. You can only play ping pong so long and then you were out the door for some real action. Third, and most important, your friends were outside.
The playdate had not been invented yet so our friends didn't come to our house. We rode our bikes and met at the river, the tree house, or the Circle K. My mom didn't want her own kids in the house messing it up, so why would she invite in the neighbor kids, too. Apparently all the other mothers felt the same way because I lived across the street from the same kids for 10 years and never once saw the inside of their house.
Summers were the best of times for us. Our yards were about an acre each and we played across 5 of them. There were no fences and every yard had a garden that today would be called a sustainable farm; a cornucopia of berries and fruit trees. We would lie in the fragrant summer grass looking up at the billowing clouds and eat fruit. ALL. DAY. LONG. Sweet strawberries, rhubarb so tart your lips would pucker, plump raspberries and little, red crabapples.
Then, we would run through the sage brush where grasshoppers would cling to your legs as you went by. We built forts, rode bikes, played Capture the Flag, and when it got dark, we played Kick the Can. Of course, this is when all that fruit you ate earlier in the day would really come back to haunt you! One dark night as I was running for the can...the can you kick, not the bathroom... I stepped right on a snake. Yes, those were memorable times.
After the game ended we would lie in the grass and look up at the stars and tell stories. Now where I grew up in the mountains of Colorado there were a billion stars. The Milky Way stretched all the way across the sky and the stars were brilliant, sharp and clear. I suppose they are still there but I haven't seen stars like that since I left Colorado. A couple of months ago I was reading an article in Sunset Magazine and the writer was saying that she had never seen the Milky Way. Ah, to me, that is true poverty.
My kids have somehow become indoor kids since we moved here. I beg and plead with them to go outside and play. But, they complain that there is no one outside to play with...never mind that they have 8 siblings to choose from...but aside from those related to you, no one to play with. I wish I could give them the wonder that was my childhood. The time to play without having to always be somewhere, the wide open space with freedom to explore, even the boredom that allowed us to imagine and create our own fun. Times were simpler back then and that is one resolution of mine this year. To become a simpler family that has time for games, stories and stillness. To raise children who also have the time to lie back in the grass eating berries and daydreaming. That is my resolution, to get my kids out of the house and back into the wonder of their own backyard.