Parenthood just got real.
My kids are 16 years old now, which means I’ve spent the last year teaching them both how to drive. Essentially, I’ve stared death in the face on multiple occasions and come out the other side, still breathing, and perhaps a little wiser.
Facing your own mortality over and over while also celebrating the universally accepted milestone of acquiring a driver’s license forces a man to think, and I’ve spent a lot of time pondering the various stages of my kids’ childhood. If you ask my wife, her favorite stage was when they were tiny, from birth until about three years old. They were so cuddly and did adorable things like wear Batman costumes to the grocery store.
My memory of this baby/toddler stage is not so rosy. I liked the fact that they were much more compact as babies—it was easier to take them places—but they never slept, which means I never slept. Also, babies and toddlers are absolute trash at playing catch and riding bikes.
If I had to pick a single stage of their childhood as my favorite, it would have to be the “big kid” stage, when they were 9 or 10. The beauty of having “big kids” is that they can make their own snacks and do cool shit like ski black diamonds, but they don’t yet fully understand that they have rights as human beings, so they’re still very compliant.
Capability + compliance = the sweet spot.
At least that’s how my parenting math works out. But then they hit puberty, and life is basically anarchy for a while. I don’t want to talk about that stage of childhood/parenthood. There was a lot of screaming and tears. And that was just from their parents.
And now they’re 16. They’re driving. They’re getting their first jobs. They’re considering colleges as far away from home as possible. They think it’s ridiculous when I suggest they attend the liberal arts university at the bottom of our neighborhood, stay in their childhood bedrooms, and be my roommates forever.
Whatever, I’ll cross the college bridge when I have to, but right now I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that my kids can drive and essentially go wherever they want to go when they want (within reason).
They’re excited to spend this summer cruising the Southern Appalachians hitting waterfalls and going camping. Never mind the fact that I try to take them camping all the time. They don’t want to go on adventures with me. They want to go with their friends. Without adult supervision. They suddenly have a lot more freedom and responsibility, and freedom and responsibility in a teenager means they’re going to make a lot of mistakes. I speak from experience.
I remember going camping in high school for the first time without anybody’s parents. There were no established campgrounds where we lived, so we drove down a gravel road until we found a farm that seemed like it would be a good place to throw up a tent for the night. I believe this is called “trespassing” now, but we’re talking about the ‘90s, so the laws weren’t so well defined back then.
I also remember that none of us could figure out how to erect the massive, army-surplus-style tent that we borrowed from someone’s dad, so we just spread the thing out on the grass and slept on top of it. We woke up covered in dew the next morning. I don’t think we brought any food. I know we couldn’t start a fire.
Fast-forward a couple years and I’m in college making a whole new series of mistakes. I decided to go backpacking with a couple of friends over spring break. The plan was to hike and camp through Georgia’s Cohutta Wilderness Area for seven days. I brought a map but didn’t really know how to read it. I also packed roughly 13 pounds of trail mix, but didn’t bother to bring a sleeping pad. None of us did. It was April in North Georgia and there was snow on the ground. I remember this because we had to melt it to make drinking water because we chose a campsite high on a ridge, miles from the nearest water source.
We couldn’t get a fire started, so we went to bed early, shivering through our first night in the woods. And by “first night” I mean “only night,” because we decided at breakfast to get the hell out of there and head back to the dorms.
It would be impossible to list all the mistakes I made at the beginning of my illustrious adventure career. Some of the highlights include sinking a canoe in Arkansas, drinking rum for hydration because we forgot to pack water in Georgia, sinking a raft in Virginia, and accidentally surfing with sharks in North Carolina.
I wasn’t born into an adventurous family. My dad took us fishing occasionally on the Chattahoochee River near downtown Atlanta, and we went camping as a family exactly once a year with our church. That was the extent of adventure in my household, and this was before YouTube tutorials, so I had no clue what I was doing on my first backpacking trips or canoe trips or surf trips…but I was excited to be outside and doing it on my own. Mistakes and all.
Not only did I survive all these mistakes, but somehow, they made me crave more adventure. They made me more curious about the outdoors, and sparked a fire that keeps me going today, almost 30 years later.
Some of those misadventures are the most memorable of my life. Those mistakes helped make me who I am today. I must remember that as my kids set out on their own this summer to camp and hike and do stupid shit without me. My parents gave me the opportunity to find my own way through the outdoors and life in general. I owe it to my kids to give them the same opportunity. At the very least, they know how to start a fire and read a map, so maybe my work here is done anyway.
