Laurie DeYoung Reflects On Her Son's Sense Of Adventure

My middle child, Taylor, is someone who fully embraced his childhood. (unlike me who felt like I was already 42 at age 9) He loved kindergarten so much he never really understood why you had to move on the next year. He was the dare-devil in our family. Whenever we went on vacation we’d always look up the hospital closest to where we were staying just in case he smashed his finger with a rock, had a weird reaction to a bee sting or crashed his bike into something. At home you had to keep your eye on him too, once, he decided to tie a rope around his waist and jump off our porch which is many feet off the ground, I think he was testing his flying capabilities. He would talk his younger sister Paris into some risky behavior too, next time you bump into her, ask about the shaggin wagon episode from the mid-90’s. It’s what he named a vehicle he created when he was about six that had no brakes, to go down the hill we lived on. She was just two or three at the time and back then, thought she would marry him someday so she was game for anything he would suggest. She hates to be reminded of this fact. Taylor was great at the beach because he was never afraid to pick up any number of interesting sea life beings off the ocean floor or swimming around just above it. I can’t tell you how many pictures we have of him holding crabs or star fish in both hands. He was the only one of our three kids who moved back home for a short time after college. I think it just made him feel like he was still a kid. There is something about life being an adventure that he equates with childhood. I know there have been books written about the whole Peter Pan Syndrome so I’m sure he isn’t the first person who wanted to push adulthood off as long as possible. On vacation over the past Christmas/New Year holiday our family was all together in Florida for a few days, we try to round up the crew for one vacation together during the year and this was it. One day Taylor, now 31, who recently got married (end of October 2019), says, and I’m trying to remember this as close to reality as I can, “when you’re young it feels like every day is an adventure, then you get married and go to work, come home, feed the dogs and decide what you’re going to watch on tv, the adventure is over.” I laughed when he said it. There was no disrespect intended to his wife Emily who he and we all love, she understood the comment because she knows him well. I didn’t try to talk him out of his commentary but I wanted to. I wanted to tell him that there are still many adventures to come. You don’t have to travel the world to find them either (although you can do that too). Becoming a parent was probably the biggest adventure I ever went on and I’m still on it, it’s a job you never retire from that will teach you things you couldn’t learn any other way. Marriage is an adventure, put two ever-changing people together day after day and let the discoveries begin. Find something you love to do whether it’s your full time job or not and you’ll find adventure. Buy a house, talk to a stranger, tell a good friend some of your secrets, drive home a different way, take a class, try something new, care for someone you love who is sick, spend more time outside. Life is an adventure and that adventure doesn’t have to be tied to how old you are, it’s an attitude, a constant curiosity. There are days my husband will talk about doing something that will most likely never happen but before I can even start to roll my eyes, he’ll say, “that’s why they call them dreams.” Dreams are important for all of us to have. We can bump up against times when we think our adventures might be behind us but hopefully it won’t be long before something reminds us that even not knowing what tomorrow holds is an adventure by itself.