I take myself  too seriously. It is part of who I am, this Type A personality lingering as my shadow, never leaving my side.  I can blame it on adulthood, this innate sense of responsibility. In my role as wife and mother I am responsible for two others who have come to depend on me (at least I would like to think). I can’t remember the last time I acted like a kid, uninhibited and silly.  I think we crave it, feelings of freedom and not a care in the world.  Even though I have a young daughter at home, it is hard  for me to connect back to my inner kid.

                  Sometimes I am forced to be a kid again because my daughter insists on it.  It starts with something very basic, like coloring a picture of a princess in coloring book. We lay out her crayons on the floor and with our legs crossed, we start coloring. She will scribble and I will color in the lines.  It feels a little unnatural participating because I’ve been prompted by my daughter to engage in coloring. When I am with her, she is giggling, coloring the face pink or purple, not realizing that these face colors don’t exist in reality.

                   As we color, I hear a familiar sound down my street, the sound of the ice cream truck.  My Mom is outside, and my daughter and I join her. We all watch as the truck, with its stickers of various tempting ice creams, from snowcones to fudgsicles adorn its side. To my surprise, it isn’t my daughter who wants ice cream, but it is my mom who says, “Let’s stop her and get some ice cream.”  My Mom, with her cane, limps over to the truck, looks at all the choices, and while hearing the music, watching her, I realize that all adults can revert back to their inner kid.  I race inside grabbing some money from my purse, pay the lady, and before you know it, my mom and I, are both licking are snowcones, our mouths and lips with smudges of pink and purple color, like little kids on a bright sunny day.  It is my daughter who abstains from our ice cream fest, giggling as she watches us.

               You can be a kid again. It happens sometimes in the most unexpected ways.