They are already on an island, where town is tiny and going somewhere else requires a full day, half a tank of $5-per-gallon gas, and a driver’s license.
If they’ve lived here long enough, they’ve done the hikes and the beach walks.
As we awaken to yet another rainy day during Spring Break, my attitude toward the weather here and the patience required to get to summer’s sunshine is tested again.
During these past two years, when things were already exponentially more isolated and quiet, it didn’t help that our kids awakened to rain almost every weekend, school holiday, and break. Our older son is on a mission trip abroad right now, and I’m so happy for him. He is over this place. Aside from hanging out with friends, he feels like there is nothing to do here.
Kids (and some adults) in these generations already feel a pull toward screens all the time, so it doesn’t help at all that the weather is completely uninviting. A kid, especially a teenager who feels they have thoroughly covered the activities of this island, would have to have a lot of gumption to do outside activities in the rain all the time, unless they had friends who were equally rain-inclined. That’s not common. The only exception is school sports.
I know. I’m pretty much a kid at heart. I love being active, rain or shine, and I’ll tell ya, it’s just not the same when it’s perpetually gray and rainy. I rarely see others out alongside me. I don’t feel the same level of enthusiasm while walking, jogging, or paddling solo, passing only the same five people out doing it too every day. I do it anyway, but gosh, it’s a lot of introspective time. Thankfully I love introspection, and I generally overlook the fact that I’ve done the same four-mile walks for years. I find myself longing for school sports!
The last thing I did before going to sleep last night was look up the adult athletic activities offered by Orcas Park & Rec, marking Tuesday and Wednesday nights on my calendar for drop-in basketball and volleyball, making a note to myself to consider getting a 10-punch dance class pass, and putting a reminder on my phone next week to go to Zumba.
Gosh, I’m thankful that our son is away somewhere, enjoying time with other people his age, working out in the sunlight, and feeling like he’s finally doing something different from being inside our four walls while it rains again today.
Our 11-year-old was sick for awhile, and we talked about how once he’s better, we’d go play tennis, throw the frisbee, pitch the baseball to each other, and walk into town for ice cream during the remaining days of Spring Break. He’s better, and do you know what we’ve done? Watch some movies because it’s raining. We watched Encanto last night, and man, did all of that music and dynamism make me wish there was a dance party to go to!
It is not hyperbole when I say it rained almost every weekend for one of the years during the pandemic. I know, I tracked it. I laughed, patiently with a microhint of cynicism, every Saturday morning that we awakened to it. I don’t know about you, but my weekends as a kid were spent playing in alleys and backyards. Once I was older, I did more adventurous things on the weekends. I didn’t grow up in the Northwest, and I can’t ever remember being pushed inside more than one weekend. Let alone a whole year. When it’s nice outside, it’s actually hard to stay inside. I lived most of my free days outside all day long being active in one way or another until we moved here. Boy, has life changed.
Good things have come from being pushed inside by the gray and rain. I’ve done a lot of things to use that time wisely. Thankfully, I don’t feel pulled to screens for entertainment except for a Survivor show each week and funny clips now and then of Ellen, James Corden, and Stephen Colbert when I need some laughter before hitting the hay at night. The art projects, blog posts, and books I’ve written probably wouldn’t have ever happened had the sun been out most days.
Everything is relative. How frivolous it is to complain about rain when people are being tortured and killed in Ukraine.
And you Northwest natives, some of you don’t even bat an eye when it rains. You’re used to it.
I’m trying. I’ve kept a good attitude until the past couple months. It is really wearing on me after a few years of life being shut down for the most part. I don’t like to use this blog as a place for expression of negativity, but I gave in this time because I imagine many of you are feeling the same thing. Perhaps it helps to know you are definitely not alone.
It also helps to know that the sunny part of the year is coming. Who knows when, but it’s coming. People will be out laughing, congregating in town and at the Village Green. The theatre is opening up again, the farmers’ market will begin in May, and life in its social and ultraviolet abundance is on its way. When the clouds clear some evenings, I am reminded that the days are lengthening and that sunny, cheery times are imminent. Spring and summer bring with them the promise of way-too-long-awaited gatherings and fun. And Easter’s weather showed us what is possible when that gray blanket clears for an entire day.
I can’t wait to see you all when the sun consistently beams over the land and everyone comes out of the woodwork!
As you said, Edee, it’s all relative. I love the quiet, the rain, and all the life-affirming potential it brings salmon, slugs, amphibians, and our massive and beautiful cedar trees. I feel like they are all soaking it up silently now before the onslaught of tourist season, the smoke-filled skies of wildfire season, and the relentless sunny days. Every rain event we get now, the better off we’ll be for late summer – even if slugs claim a few of my baby pea plants now. To all of the islanders traveling elsewhere now, soak up the sun and enjoy the sights elsewhere else – you deserve it after these past two years. But for me, I’ll enjoy the quiet, rainy days of spring and be thankful for every wet day we get from now until fall.
Thank you for your take on things, Jenny. I think I need to vacation to Chicago in winter in order to appreciate the rain here. (Ha!) What are some of your teenagers’ favorite things here? Maybe I’m missing something. I’d love some fresh ideas.
Many years ago, I was head of the Orcas Island Drug Prevention Task Force (what?) … yep. It was a countywide program based on a way to assess the situation in the community. We reseached and listed the risk factors (an unsupervised cigarette machine would be one old fashioned one) or a local bar not checking IDs. And we also listed the Protective Factors. (The overall program was called COMASA, Community Mobilization Agains Substance Abuse…might be some remnants of it on the web somewhere.)
The biggest risk factor then, and now, it the lack of things for kids to do (or the perception of it, I would think…”You want something to DO? I’ll give you something to do, smarty pants!”… the mothers’ song. )
So, each island was given a fund to ask the community for projects to reduce risk factors or enhance protective factors. Those interested got a little flip chart training. So we presented this opportunity to the students, and they came up with ideas to create a mural and to furnish an area with couches and arm chairs as a hang out in. What they really wanted was a shopping mall (ahem, risk factor).
Here is the ONE thing that I recall actually helping the situation, for years and years. We granted Suzie Fraser $300 to buy a starter set of tap shoes for the classes she was starting. OMG, those classes grew and grew, with young ones growing into skiller performers and even choreographers. The musicals at the Orcas Center were turbo charged. (Might compare to the aerial acrobatics classes these days.. except you don’t find a trapese and ropes hanging everywhere.)
Terry Anderson and I brought the Grange back from almost ruin, and he added a sound booth and brought the stage back to life. We tore off the old plaster in the kitchen and replaced the drywall. But mostly, he started a Teen Center (protective factor…now there was a place for kids to go!) Wrong. Risk factor…it was where they SAID they were going while they went elsewhere. Their parents thought they were safely supervised.
There are two other establisments that were built for teens with nothing to do. One was the Fun House. It sported souped up Mac computers, a recording and video studio, a pitching hallway that measured one’s throw in MPH. I even used the computers occasionally. I believe that has fallen back to being a grade school after hours activity center.
And another guy, director of skiing movies, donated the state of the art skate board park. Warren Miller (died in 2018).
My own teen years free time were totally taken with volunteering for three theatre groups…and this is 5-7 evenings a week… and sometimes weekend day times as well. Because the theatres were in Palo Alto, I had the rare opportunity to be an “equal” around Stanford students and profs, as well a theatre professionals.
Your son, now on a literal mission, seems to have that focus… as well as computer geeking.
Now on the other end of the age bracket, I missed the opportunities offered by the Senior Center, the 3x week lunches. Now here at the Long House, the community room has been long empty, but once hosted meetings and bridge parties…
Wow, Carol, I LOVE your comment – thank you so much for all of that insight!!! I hope that as life opens up more and more, Orcas will soon be back to “normal” as much as possible, with gatherings and events of all kinds filling our calendars, from pizza days out in open meadows to boys’ dance classes and Seniors Have Talent!