Over the Rainbow

Many years ago, my husband and I took a family trip with our two young children to Hawaii. Neither of us had ever been and had always wanted to visit. So we saved up our money, found a condo deal, reserved one of those rent-a-wreck cars, and lived on peanut butter sandwiches.
Like any good vacation, within the first 30 minutes of arriving, my husband was stung by a bunch of jellyfish and I broke a tooth. Consequently, the two of us spent much of the time downing ibuprofen.
During the week, our rent-a-wreck started smoking as we braked down Haleakalā Volcano, and we all got carsick driving the 620 hairpin turns (roundtrip) on the Highway to Hana.
But the islands were absolutely spectacular and, more importantly, our two kids had a ball.
On the last day of our trip, I could only think about my aching tooth, wondering how fast I could get an appointment with my dentist. My husband’s jellyfish bites had subsided, but now he had developed a strange rash on his feet and needed a prescription. We were worried we would be responsible for wrecking the rent-a-wreck even more than it was already wrecked, and we had no idea why the television had mysteriously stopped working… In other words, both of us were more than ready to go home.
As we packed up the suitcases, our young daughter – sweetly tanned with sun-streaked hair – wandered into the bedroom and asked us a strange question.
“Who are all these people around here?” she wanted to know.
“What do you mean?” we asked. “Which people?”
“Everyone,” she said. “Are they all still on vacation?”
“Are you talking about the people in the condos?”
“No,” she replied. “I mean all the people in Hawaii.”
My husband and I stared at each other, confused. Then I informed her, “Most of the people in Hawaii live here, honey, so they aren’t on vacation.”
“What?!” Now she was upset. “How come they get to live here? Why don’t we get to live here?”
“Because we live in Massachusetts,” my husband reminded her.
“But why do we have to live in Massachusetts and they’re allowed to live in Hawaii?”
And then it dawned on me.
“No one assigns us to a state where we have to live. We choose the state where we want to live.”
“Are you kidding me?” Hands on her little hips. “You two chose Massachusetts when you could have picked Hawaii?!”
Neither of us knew what to say. When you thought about it from a child’s perspective, it was hard to argue with that logic. So my husband fell back on the age-old grown-up excuse that covers just about every adult dilemma:
“It’s not that simple.”
But the truth is, it is that simple to choose a goal, a plan of action, a dream. The problem is, it’s very difficult to make it happen.
Last weekend, kids from all over the country not only made a choice for a better world, but they’re doing the incredibly hard work of making it happen.
From the bottom of our hearts, thank you for reminding us to stop focusing on the difficult details of daily life and remembering the power of our childhood aspirations.
We grown-ups couldn’t be more impressed or inspired or proud.

 

 

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