"To live will be an awfully big adventure"

“Do you want to go on an adventure?” I asked the girls over breakfast.  I was yearning to go outside and enjoy some Bay Area “winter” weather – 70 degrees and perfect.  I was dreaming of Golden Gate Park, the ocean, or Tilden.  Anywhere outside. 

“What’s an adventure?” S asked.  E and S are smart kids, but their vocabulary needs work.  It doesn’t help that Kate and I both have a large vocabulary that is used often.  While beneficial to the girls, it means that we slow down our conversations, trying to explain simple words that are big concepts (such as exist, direct, adventure).  I am particularly untalented in this area.

“It means … uh… Ima?” I responded.  I am really terrible at this thesaurus game. 

“It means doing something new and exciting,” Kate replied.  Thank G-d for Kate and her brain’s built-in kid-friendly thesaurus.  I think my brain only got the Scrabble edition. 

The kids weren’t swayed by the adventure idea until I mentioned a park.  “Does the park have swings?” they asked.  When you’re young, any new playground is an adventure.  Nature is just something your parents make you play in.  

An hour later we drove up to Cordenices Park.  The tall cement slide built into the oak-covered hill immediately grabbed their attention, and they didn’t touch the swings for the next two hours we were there.  Their excited feet rapidly ascended the stone steps as hands tightly grasped the cardboard they would soon sit on to make them go faster down the slide.  E went down first, joyfully yelling as the cement turned one way and then the other, until her body slowly stopped as the cement flattened out.  S quickly followed, just as gleeful as her sister, and soon the two were back up the stairs so they could slide down again.

For an hour they went up and down, up and down.  After a quick snack to refuel, we went on a nature walk around the area.  We crossed bridges, touched water, and hopped from rock to rock across a stream.  We climbed poles and hillsides, laughing and learning, trusting that our next footfall would be secure, our next moment a joyful one.

The time went by quickly, and soon it was after one – way past lunchtime.  I told the kids it was time to go, and they whined.  And that was it.  There was no crying, there was no stomping, and there was no pouting and staying behind.  They whined that they wanted to stay here, they didn’t want lunch, and then asked if they could go down the slide again. 

Last week, it would not have been that easy.  Last week, we could have planned only one adventure, not five.  We would have made it to the park, and then gone home, with at least one child crying for no reason other than her heart was heavy.  But today, we started at the park, went out to lunch, walked to Games of Berkeley, went out to dessert, played at U.C. Berkeley, and THEN came home, where we laughed and joked, learned to ride bikes, had dinner, played a game, read books, had baths, and went to bed. 

There’s a sense of finality, of family.  This is our family unit, four people who didn’t know each other four months ago, but now we’re together forever, through thick and thin.

The girls have called us Kate and Margee since they met us.  When we told them that we wanted them to move in, we said we wanted to be their mommies, reintroducing ourselves as “Ima Kate” and “Mama Margee.”  The reintroduction proved important in terms of what roles we played, but the names “Margee” and “Kate” had already stuck.

“Congratulations, Mama!” our friends would say after meeting the girls.  Such a thing always made me sad, reminding me that I was “Margee” – not mama – to the girls.  It reminded me of their pain and reverberated my fear that when they called out for “Mommy” it wasn’t me they were asking for. 

This Shabbat it was only the four of us.  After our plates were clean, I suddenly told the girls I had a question for them.  Normally confident and well-spoken, my inability to make eye contact and stammering words must have been a strong cue that this meant a lot to me.  I stumbled through the question I didn’t know I was going to ask: Would you call me Mama and call Kate Ima?  

The girls said yes, and – true to their word – have tried very hard to call us by our mommy names.  Every time they call me “mama” my heart trumpets in happiness, and I think the girls can hear its blasts. 

The girls loved the park and can’t wait to go back.  They love their new bikes, and can’t wait to ride them again.  They loved the new game, and can’t wait to play it.  They loved their adventure today, and I’m sure they’ll love their adventure tomorrow, too.  Every day is an adventure now, as we get to do new and exciting things, as a new and extremely silly and loving family. 

As Peter Pan says, “To live will be an awfully big adventure.”  It sure is, Peter.  It sure is.