a tent

It is full blown summer at the beach. Traffic backs up the 55 and down the hill, cars and vans jammed full of families with their coolers, umbrellas, tents, people who come in droves to set up camp for the day.

Silas looks longingly from our small rumpled bed sheet flung on the sand at the bright tents scattered around and asks to go in. The other day I casually told him for consolation that we could set up our camping tent at home sometime. A promise that we could look for the tent in the big deep closet became an incentive for days that would make him leave any place in a heartbeat.

Finally yesterday I told him we would find it. So after lunch, I crawled into the depths of our huge closet of death, precariously leaning over a bag of golf clubs (ben last golfed 3 years ago), an unused bedside table, folding chairs, a camping stove -- still no tent. Finally I gave up and told him we'd wait until daddy came home. But really, what message is that sending? So I ralied and plunged further into the dark closet using a camping lantern to see into the very back as little Silas peeked over my bent back, and waited with mounting anticipation until -- the tent!!

I pulled out the little green bag of folded tent and poles and up to his room we tromped. As soon as I pulled it out of the bag, I realized that the friendly arm-sized bag was deceivingly small and that a tent outside under age-old trees looks much smaller than it does in a little boy's bedroom. To lay it on the floor, I had to shove over chairs and a small table and it took up more than the entire floor.

Then came the unweildy tentpoles... Their length multiplies beneath an 8 foot tall celing. I alwardly shimmied the poles through the narrow sleeves and cursed quietly as they refused to arc and sprang up in straight lines that nipped the ceiling and again snapped out of their snug little anchors.

But since there is something delicious about being a 2 year old's hero, so I couldn't stop. And finally, I got it up. Here is a picture with Silas inside and an unsure Eden in the chair: