The Power of Play

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Cruising a desert highway at seventy-five miles per hour, Trin hangs his upper body out the window. I roll down my window and join him. When Trin dodges back inside to the passenger seat, the wind takes my breath away, and I laugh. We turn to the camera, full of wind energy, and I think of my mom. When I was a teen, she and I stood upright in the back of my boyfriend’s Audi to take the wind full force through the sun roof, driving through the coastal mountains on a double date. I don’t tell my kids this, but part of them was born knowing.

When we arrive at my nephew’s wedding in Phoenix after eighteen hours of driving and a good night’s sleep, I seek out the youngest guests. The 7-9 year old sons of another nephew look stiff in their formal wear. They kick the dirt and scan their extended family and friends under crinkled brows. One squats and begins to draw in the dust with a stick. I crouch down beside him, introducing myself as his second aunt. With my own twig, I sketch a Tyrannosaurus head.

“What’s that?” he asks. My artistic ability doesn’t match my confidence. It takes him a minute to see it. He draws a circle around my dinosaur. Then he draws a circle around me. “You can’t leave the circle,” he says, sounding bored.

It’s like he knows me. “What?!” I ask, incredulously. “You mean, I have to sit in this circle for the next eight hours?” He nods solemnly. ”Great,” I say. “Just great.” Then I lose my balance and, with much waving of arms, I fall sideways out of the circle.

The kid is cool. He grins faintly. He draws another circle, smaller this time. “That’s the circle,” he tells me. “You stand there.” I cannot fit more than a foot in this circle. I balance precariously, grab his shoulder to right my wobble, then fall out again, groaning.

I love to play with power. Kids have it down. They test themselves and they test others to find the edges of systems. There is nothing more amusing than an adult who is willing to fall out of line to a child’s tyranny. And when I do ask to be entrusted as leader when it matters, these same kids are happy to follow. They know I see them and that humor is a shared value.

My own kids, now twenty and twenty-three, drove most of the eighteen hours. Trinidad navigated our course and found us an isolated campsite in the desert, peopled with wild burros and gemstones. Both “kids” read aloud books they chose for the journey. We shared trip planning on a Google Doc. Though it was more preparation than Trin thought necessary, he was willing, because he knew it mattered to me. We spent a few hours at Red Rocks, so the boys could climb, because it mattered to them.

The power of play is that all beings engage equally, all beings are co-creative. That’s good practice for life. When we let go of our identities, we find safety and joy in new ways, together. My heart sings at the opportunity.

Where do you love to play and what are you willing to let go of to show up co-creatively?