We just came back from a great week in Lake Chelan.
Your Mom and I snuck up lake to Stehekin for a night and got to explore that wonderful time capsule of a town. No phone or internet. Decades-old expired tabs on the couple dozen vehicles we saw. There’s not much there but tourists, PCT backpackers and concessioners catering to both. We loved it and we’ll take you there soon to see the bakery, garden, orchard and waterfalls for yourself. Mom would like to go as soon as this fall.
Back in “busy” Chelan, we got plenty of boat and pool time in. I preferred the lake, which was crystal clear and warm enough for extended swim and float sessions. You had a tough time around the water for good stretches of the week that were mostly based in attitude and made for some challenging parenting moments. It stemmed from you and Matteo somehow managing to cut your heels on the condo stairs. Band-Aids seemed to make everything better until you decided the water would make it hurt again. Matteo did not share this view, proved the theory wrong and hence spent a lot more time splashing around. Alternatively, you expressed your concern and water hesitency with a whiny pitch tuned perfectly, uniquely to agitate your parents. Despite calm reminders that our job is to keep you safe, and occassionally infuriorating attempts to get you to stop whining and start swimming, you resisted. That is, until you saw something exciting, got into the water and forgot about your hesitency until hours later.
The scenario is a perfect example of what I’ve come to understand and accept at this stage of parenting: the joys and pains of a very young person getting a grasp of the expanding world around them. Sometimes that grasp is flawed to hilarious outcomes. For example, Grandma Vicki asked you what I do for work. You said I shop for a job — because you know I work at REI and whenever we actually go to the store, I shop. All that computer time at home 40+ hours didn’t bring you to a different conclusion. Your grasp of your heel “boo boo” and water contact led you elsewhere but eventually back into the water.
Your Mom would say I have the same meandering logic, so age won’t help you all that much. I think we’re OK the way we are. We always get to same result that our loved ones told us about hours or days earlier.
Love, Dad