The Pear Tree

My mum used to called it gallivanting. I call it adventuring. Basically, it’s shirking your duties for an afternoon or (better still) a day and heading out to see a different corner of the world. It doesn’t have to be a distant corner, just something new or different from your regular routine.

I used to hate it when my mum went gallivanting. Generally, it meant I’d be walking home from school, but only after waiting an hour for her out front, tension mounting by the minute, before concluding that she had stood me up.

Dinner would be late and probably makeshift, and we (my brother, sister and I) would more often than not be met with a wardrobe’s worth of second-hand clothes – my mother’s weakness – at which we’d usually sniff ungratefully.

While I admit I wasn’t particularly sympathetic to these days away when I was young, I totally get it now. Sometimes, they’re the safety harness that keeps us mums on the very narrow and precarious balance beam of sanity.

Last week it occurred to me that it had been far too long since I had indulged in such a day.

“Okay kids,” I announced, after the teeth were brushed and the beds were made and everyone was fed and clothed. “Get in the car. We’re going adventuring!”

I thumbed my nose at the pile of laundry waiting to be sorted and washed, stuck my tongue out at the breakfast dishes and rolled my eyes at the very idea of writing anything.

I called my mum up, and it didn’t take any convincing at all for her to postpone mowing her lawn or working on her garden on her only day off that week.

Into the car we all piled, out of Kelowna we drove and towards the South Okanagan. There was no definitive plan; no specific agenda except to get away from it all and have a bit of fun at the same time.

Our first stop was at a little beachside playground in Lower Summerland. Built by the Kinsmen in 1968, it was one I had been to once or twice when I was small. It hadn’t changed much – even the unusual long, metal horse I remember riding on was still there.

After a play and a chance to throw some rocks in the water, we headed up into town for lunch.

Then, to Penticton and The Bookshop on Main Street. There, my small kids poured over book after book, walked through the maze of shelves and made friends with a couple of resident dogs.

After whiling away much of the afternoon feasting our eyes on a panoply of words and pictures and filling our noses with the smell of old paper and ink, it was time to go – much to the kidlet’s chagrin.

“Please, can’t we just stay in the bookstore a little bit longer,” my four-year-old begged. But all good things, as they say, must come to an end.

We headed back to Kelowna with a new/old book for each of us, and a feeling that we had accomplished something important, even though we accomplished very little aside from dodging our regular responsibilities.

I don’t condone escapism or shirking duties on a regular basis, but I do believe there is a time for forgetting about regularly scheduled programming and leaving the beaten path.

I think that Ferris Bueller was onto something when he said, “life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Does that mean I’ll be okay with my kids skipping school to go “adventuring” or “gallivanting?” Yes – as long as it’s only once a year, and as long as they make as
interesting a day as Ferris Bueller and friends did.

As for my mum’s past gallivanting days, I may have been more supportive if I had been invited along – at least some of the time. Although I can see how time away from three kids is also important.

In the future I may need a solo adventure or two, myself. And I know just the person to watch the kids when I do. I won’t even feel bad if I’m a little bit late picking them up while they’re in her care. After all, I think she owes me.

What do you call your run-away days?

- Words and photos by Lori-Anne Poirier

The Mother Load is a weekly column that runs in the Penticton Herald’s Southern Exposure, www.calgarybeacon.com and The Pear Tree.

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