Activities

Roan has recently made the transition to swimming without me. Just in time too, because the sight of my Fred in a bathing suit has become pretty alarming.

Our playground days are winding down... soon it will be too cold and snowy.

One day we tried something new - a place called Bounce U, which has two huge rooms full of bounce houses. It was incredible. They have smaller houses for little kids, and really enormous ones for big kids. At first, Roan was content with the small time. And when I saw the long and steep slides, and the fact that on one, you had to climb up an inflatable rock wall, I was sure my son wouldn't be interested.

Wrong.

An attendant helped him climb the rock wall, which is nearly vertical, and even *inverted* in one place, and then he went down the slide by himself. See the skid marks that start right below his legs? Those are there because that's where your body first makes contact with the slide. Before that you are free falling.

Inevitably, Roan dragged me up the rock wall and made me go on the slide with him. And I was afraid. In my adult life, I don't have much opportunity to experience primal fear, but I felt it that day at Bounce U, perched on the edge of that slide, ready to launch myself into the air. That spike of adrenaline - the sudden knowledge that death is real, and possibly imminent. Roan sat in front of me, his eyes sparkling with excitement. I was so glad he was going with me - I gripped him tight. I didn't want to go alone.

Here we are on a slightly more mellow version of the slide, where you climb up using footholds and a rope.