Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week I want to talk about magic. Specifically the magical powers that our children have.
I found myself contemplating this magic while taking in a particularly enjoyable Florida evening. We have finally reached the point where summer temperatures have started to yield intheir oppression and give way to milder mornings and evenings.
The soft droning of the blower fan was soothing in it’s monotony. There were no clouds in the evening sky, at least not in my vantage point. The horizon was beginning it’s diurnal shift from blue to black, showcasing the majestic purples, pinks, and oranges along the way.
I was enjoying this unusual moment of tranquility on a school night home with my boys, because of their magic. They had made me “heavy” inside our bounce house while they ran away.
El Duderino got the idea from an episode of Bluey. Bluey is a family of Australian dogs that have cheeky adventures. It is available on the Disney channel.
The writers do a great job of working in adult humor and a family environment that children are drawn to. My only complaint is the unrealistic commitment to bits that Bluey and Bingo’s Mum And Dad have. It sets an almost unattainable bar for us real life human parents to strive for.
In the episode El Duderino is particularly fond of, Bluey and Bingo come into a magic feather with the power to make things “heavy” or “unheavy”. Childish shenanigans ensue as the kids make everything their parents are trying to do or use heavy, and the parents are all to happy to play along.
Morning breakfast cereal, heavy. Car keys, heavy. Neck tie, heavy. It is seven and a half minutes (out of a nine minute show) of Mum and Dad dragging themselves and their items across the floor until the magic feather is retrieved from the kids.
So when El Duderino and Speedy got tired of me tickling them in the bounce house, they made me “heavy” and ran away. It was there laying on the bounce house floor, taking in the majesty of the sky changing colors in the waning minutes of the evening, and the serenity of that peaceful moment, that I thought about their real magic powers of heavy and unheavy.
Their laughter, their smiles, their unprompted embraces. Their growth and learning, even if it sometimes feels like a snails pace. These are the things that magic is made of. More than any magic feather, these lift all the weight of the day I may be carrying more than any “unheavy” spell ever could.
At the same time their struggles, their cries, their whining, and general inability or willful decision not to listen, add a weight that can seem unbearable. Like a neck tie made heavy when you are trying to get out the door. Dragging you to the floor with a determination that is insurmountable.
To them it is just a game. But to my wife and I, to all parents, their magic is very real. It can be “heavy”, and it can be “unheavy”. It can bounce back and forth between the two as quickly as my boys imagination does when we play. From their depths of despair that I feel powerless to help them in, to the peaks of parental pleasure when everyone is playing together happily, there is a magic in children that is hard to quantify.
That magic, the emotions that it elicits within us, could also be described as heavy. Probably by a cast member from Dazed and Confused, but heavy nonetheless. And certainly a part of the path to serenity.
Thanks for joining me. Stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.