Evolution

The evolution of your relationship from that of strictly being a parent to becoming more of a friend with your your offspring is one of the most enjoyable surprises that comes with having a kid. A lot of the pressure disappears from the relationship when said offspring has an issue and you can respond the along the lines of, “well you’re an adult now. so…”

There is no buck like a buck that is passed, that is for certain. Not that you ever get to completely stop being a parent or feeling like a parent, especially if a national housing shortage forces you into becoming roomies with the fruit of your loins. There will be those facepalm moments like coming downstairs and finding all the windows wide open when you have had the aircon on for hours, etc.

There is also the matter of the tables turning as we, the parents age, and we notice our kids are occasionally having to parent us. It can be humbling.

I deal with changes in my plans about as well as anyone else with Asperger’s Syndrome does, which is to say not well at all. We arrived at Chestermere Lake on Saturday evening to find the public parking blocked off for some sort of music festival, completely impeding lake access. Calling me perturbed would be an understatement. My eyes were not only red from anger, but they could have worked as headlamps in the dark.

At some point — as we searched around town for alternate lake access — I became aware my kid was monitoring me for signs of an impending outburst. There were none (I hope), but she knows where my impulse controls goes when I look like that. Realizing it took some of the wind out of my sails, which was a good thing.

We did find a place to launch from; Chestermere Point at the south end of the lake. It had started to empty out by 8:00 pm and we snagged a parking spot where we could inflate our boards easily enough.

My daughter and I had a lovely time on the lake, especially after the sun dropped below the horizon. It got very quiet and we had the water to ourselves, save one lone speedboat with a water skier in tow. He kept well away from us and his wake wasn’t an issue. We actually had fun riding it and were wishing he was closer.

I made a point of crossing the lake to the opposing shore when we first hit the water just because I could. It isn’t that far and there was no boat traffic at that point. It looks like we went a fair distance in the initial GPS track, but it’s not much when you zoom out and see how little of the lake we actually used. We never made it farther than 2.1 km that evening. We hugged the shore pretty closely as it got darker since neither of us had lighting on our crafts and we would have been hard to see on the water. I’m not sure if we were legal to be on the water at that point, to be honest. It was getting pretty dark by the time we exited the lake.

While my kid was parenting me a bit earlier on the way to the lake, she relaxed and left me to my own devices once we were on the water. She kept tabs on me early in the season after the problems I had when kayaking in a previous year and she had to rescue me. My experience level and conditioning have improved to the point where she trusts me to do my own thing on the water now. I appreciate that as I’m not ready for the inevitable role reversal just yet.

Maybe not ever.

All images made with my OM System (Olympus!) Tough TG-7, which did better than I thought it would half an hour after sundown. **This is a reference to the song, “Pump It.”