I’ve never thought of myself as a “work hard/play hard” kind of girl.  I do work pretty hard, my first jobs being babysitting and clarinet lessons in junior high and the ever present McDonalds in high school and college. Yes, parents actually paid me to give beginning lessons to their kids when I was a kid.  But as usual, I digress.  Since then, I have not taken time off from working except to go back to school to get my degree (which is still work) and to have my boys – more work.  Working is what you’re supposed to do.

The playing hard part is not me.  I prefer to play quietly.  I’m not the ziplining, camping, mountain climbing sort of girl.  I like to sit on the beach or visit museums or shop.  But something Doug said during this our recent vacation has made me think.  As we were eating a lovely dinner outside on the front porch of a quaint, quiet, haunted 300 year old inn, he looked at me and said, THIS is why you work so hard.  I don’t know that I’ve purposefully worked this hard to provide myself and my family opportunities to get away, but in the last several years, I’ve taken advantage of the fact that things have become a bit more comfortable and we’re past the living paycheck to paycheck with three children kind of thing.  

My dad worked hard as well, but it was a different time, and he never seemed able to have or make the same opportunities.  He had some regrets that he shared with me later in his life, wishing he had explored or tried new things when he was younger.  I remember thinking, I don’t want to feel that way when I get to the point that I CAN’T do things anymore.  So I work hard, say yes way too much but get to do and see a lot of really cool things my dad never did.  

I made it a point to not spend as much time taking pictures and looking at things through a screen and just take time to experiencing whatever was happening.  I saw beautiful rivers, lakes and streams as we drove through the mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire.  We stood against the rail of a boat and saw whales open mouth feed in the North Atlantic.  We walked through and learned about where our country was born and the people who had a hand in that.  I walked through the actual house where my favorite author penned Little Women and saw the desk where she sat to write it.  We watched class blowers, peeked through an open side door to see a local performance of Turandot in Concord Mass, ate meals with the locals as they greeted each other and ate ice cream made at a dairy farm in New Hampshire, with a lobster roll in Maine for Doug.  We saw a memorial for those who died in Salem during the witch trials and walked the Freedom Trail in Boston. 

We grow up reading about these people and places and things and maybe see and learn about them on TV, but it’s another thing entirely to see and experience them in person.  And I guess for me, that’s playing hard.  And if it means I need to work hard for a while longer, than I suppose I will because there’s a lot more to see and experience in this world.  Someone needs to remind me I said this about March of 2023.  Perhaps by then I’ll have decided on a new adventure next summer where I can play hard again.