The Blanket Fort
“Days will be long, but the years will fly right by…”
This line from the Old Dominion song, Make it Sweet, couldn’t be more true when you think about being a parent. When my children were small, sometimes it seemed as if the day was 64 hours long.
I had my children young and close together. Within a week of my twenty fifth birthday, I was the proud mother of a three-and-a-half-year-old girl, a nineteen-month-old girl and a newborn baby boy. Since being of legal drinking age, I had spent more time pregnant than not. During those early years, I was perpetually torn between praying they would all nap at the same time so I could have a few minutes of peace and missing them as soon as they were out of my sight. I was exhausted, the house was a constant toy box explosion and the laundry seemed never-ending. Oh, and for some added fun, I threw a full-time job into the mix. At the time, the thought of them being grownups seemed so far away.
Now, my “baby” boy is six-two and outweighs me by about fifty pounds. My middle daughter, Haleigh, will be eighteen next month and Hunter will be twenty in July. It’s almost impossible to believe she is barely a year younger than I was when I became pregnant with her. The years have certainly flown right by.
Not only does the passing of time rapidly force our babies into adulthood, the state of the world matures them much too quickly. I’m sure everyone reading this knows one or two teenage mothers, maybe a few kids with drug problems and even some adolescents putting so much pressure on themselves to have perfect grades or get into the best college they live in a constant state of anxiety. It’s rare to see teenagers and young adults step back and just enjoy life, to just enjoy being.
My kids are definitely more carefree and lighthearted than most of their peers, which is why I wasn’t surprised one bit by a phone call from Hunter the other day. As soon as I answered, she said, “Mom! I am about to do something epic!” Knowing Hunter, I immediately smiled. Epic could mean anything from drinking her favorite milkshake to planning a road trip with her friends.
In this case, it meant building a blanket fort in the living room. To give you some context, we are in the middle of renovating my master bathroom and the half bath/laundry room. There are currently two toilets, a sixty-inch vanity, miscellaneous construction supplies and half a million boxes of tile stacked in the living room. You can’t see the television and the house is a mess. (***Photo below – Don’t judge me***)
Instead of being annoyed by the inconvenience, Hunter looked at the pile of boxes and saw the foundation for an epic blanket fort. So, she recruited Haleigh to help and my seventeen and nineteen-year-old daughters spent the evening building a blanket fort. Nick, asleep in the recliner during the fun, was an unwitting participant. His somnolent form was used as a corner post for the “common area” of the blanket complex. The completed structure boasted a west wing, aka Levi’s bedroom (the dog crate), a common area (for entertaining, I guess), a private nook for watching tv on her phone and a bedroom (the couch).
When I left work that night, there was a text from Hunter waiting on my phone. It read:
When you guys come in, use the side door please. I’ll be sleeping in my blanket fort tonight.
Yes. When I walked in the door at one a.m., my nearly twenty-year-old daughter was in fact asleep in her blanket fort.
By the time she left for her morning college classes, the fort had been deconstructed and the blankets returned to their rightful places.
We spend a lot of time teaching our children, but we spend even more time learning from them. This week, my almost adult children taught me that no matter how hectic life is, no matter how inconvenient progress can be and no matter how messy the house is, there is always an opportunity to enjoy the simple things in life. They reminded me to have fun, even at the most inopportune times.
After all, isn’t that what life is all about?
As Hemmingway said, “When you stop doing things for fun, you might as well be dead.”
