Summer Days, Cockroaches, and Tomato Fights

Last week we hosted Grandparent Camp at our house, entertaining our three Tucson grandchildren for four days while their parents celebrated an anniversary.

We went to an indoor aquarium where they petted sting rays and touched sea life in a tide pool. We played indoor miniature golf with the lights off and glow-in-the-dark animals centered on a safari theme. We had stacks of pancakes with fresh strawberries and homemade whip cream. We did crafts involving melting beads, colored pencils and shrinking plastic.

Once the sun set, we spent countless hours on a slip-and-slide in the front yard and on the swings in the back.

And yes, there were daily quiet times, story books, personal play, and at least nine hours of sleep each night, but basically, we ran a crowded calendar because Grandparent Camp happens once a year.

When I dropped them off with their mom four days later, I was curious what they would choose to tell her first.  (Hint: It was not any of the above named events.)

My grandchildren did not want to talk about any of the organized, well-planned or even costly activities. Nope. They wanted to fill their mom in on every detail of stomping cockroaches in the front yard around an irrigation drip, including how one got stuck between the toes of the youngest and how the ants swarmed all the roach guts on the sidewalk.

Prime time entertainment.

For free.

I couldn't help but think of having tomato fights with my siblings in our childhood garden as we heaved the rotten ones into the neighboring field. I'm not talking about small, hard grocery story tomatoes either, but hefty red orbs that had filled an entire hand like a softball. They had landed with a satisfying sploosh on a brother or sister's t-shirt.

Afterwards, we had run through the sprinkler on long humid nights, the water cascading down our skin.

Don't we all long for the simplicity of childhood? Webster defines simplicity as "the state of being uncomplicated."

Uncomplicated means "not bothered with something outside itself."

Ahhhhhh. Let that drip down into your bones.

Simplicity: to discover joy in something right here, right now, without searching elsewhere to find it.

I could do with a little more uncomplicated. You?

May it be your reality today.