“I’m done,” said Bryce, our youngest child. “I’m not going any farther.”
“C’mon, Bryce,” I said. “We’re so close to the top now. You can do it.”
“No, I can’t.”
I knew that look. We’d seen it before on both our kids’ faces time and time again.
“Why do you guys like hiking so much,” our oldest Beatrice said to both me and her mother, Amy. It wasn't a question; she was annoyed.
“Because we like to be active and exercise and see the pretty views when we travel,” Amy said. “Take a drink and a rest right now and then we’ll go up.”
“I’m not going,” Bryce insisted. “My head hurts.”
“You both hike 10 miles when we go to Disneyland, and this isn’t even two miles,” I said.
Beatrice shrugged. “Yeah, but we get rewarded along the way – there are rides and treats to eat and we take a lot of breaks.”
“But this is nature’s ride, Bea. And the payoff is going be the view.”
“That's right, nature's ride,” Amy said.
“I don't want to do it,” Bryce said.
Amy looked at our children, then at me. “Kevin, go ahead and go and I’ll wait with Bryce.”
I sighed. “Bea, do you still want to go up with me? Then you can come back down so Mom can come up with me.”
Beatrice thought about it for a moment, then shrugged again. “Sure, I’ll go up.”
The two of us finished hiking the stairs and made to the top. Bea took a few pictures.
“I don’t feel so good,” she said. “My stomach hurts.”
“Sorry, sweetie. Go ahead and go back down and tell your mom to come up.”
“Okay.”
I waited for Amy and soaked in the view. The Pacific Ocean. Waikiki Beach. Honolulu. The Diamond Head dormant volcanic crater behind us. Gorgeous. I was hot and sweaty but the hike was totally worth all this.
This was our latest family vacation, the first one outside of our trailer camper since covid, and although we’re a close family, we don’t always see eye to eye about things we want to do, places we want to eat, things we want to see. Especially now that we have a tween and a teen in our midst, seemingly always having a headache, or a stomachache, or they’re tired, or they’re hangry (hungry and grumpy), and they just want to stay in the room on their devices. Getting them to go on hikes with us is no easy task, and we sometimes entice with getting treats or going shopping afterwards.
But even parental bribery doesn’t always work. Close-quartered family dynamics on vacation can be like a box of fireworks lighting up; the kids' grumpiness can set off our Mom-and-Dad grumpiness and emotions flare and burst. I'm especially guilty of that. Fortunately, those times are short-lived and we’re back to enjoying (mostly) our vacation activities. Plus, there’s plenty of needed downtime and recharge time for all of us.
No matter the occasional family angst, we're very grateful we were able to take this latest trip together. Amy and I stood at the top of Diamond Head, with the girls just below us, and agreed that this was the payoff of nature's ride (as opposed to a Disneyland ride), and the answer to Bea's question of why we like being active on vacation and hiking so much. In fact, much of how we live is experiencing nature's ride in a variety of ways, and none of it is an absolute of good or bad, it just is, and we continually work on not taking everything so seriously. Especially after the sucky end of year that Bryce had (and then how she made the best of it).
That one is always tough for me, not taking everything so seriously, because my ego is always applying value judgements to what happens in life. But as I learned during a vacation meditation, “Seriousness is just the ego feeling sorry for itself," and all these experiences we have as a family and individually build on each like the corral reefs we saw far below us; it's the growth of being. Nature's ride just is.
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