Tired, haggard even, Mark looks at me from the client chair. He is in his mid-forties, with a wife, three kids and a big job. In such a forlorn voice he tells me, “I never have any fun, not anymore.” My heart breaks a little because I have heard this pain too many times.
Just before COVID shut down our city, I took the Saturday Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, to Granville Island. Spring was in the air and the sun was warm. I sat out on a large public dock to read the news and all the commentary. The city had just placed an enormous sparkling star as an art installation on the dock. It is a metal and fibreglass construction, clad in shimmering woven threads. Prior to its installation, children here spent their time feeding and chasing pigeons. It was noisy and messy, and not exactly healthy. Much as I wanted to read the paper, I was compelled by the scene transpiring before my eyes.
Granville Island is a major Vancouver tourist attraction. Pre-COVID, children from all over the world arrive on any sunny Saturday. I was amazed at how they turned this star into a play opportunity. Little ones touched it, would-be ballerinas danced about it, daddies lifted them up high into it, young boys jumped and jumped to make the highest touch, volleyball stars in the making. In this photo, one curly-headed lad decided it was a picnic gazebo. He arrived with his slice of pizza and a chocolate milkshake. He looked it over, picked his spot, sat down, unfolded his napkin, set down his milkshake and began to eat. Within seconds, two boys of similar age with giant green lollipops joined in. Children just know that making friends is the most fun. The sculptor, the city and our taxes all combined to make this happen.
When asked to think about play in our lives, many of us return to our childhoods. I am always startled to see children on the news playing in the rubble of war-torn Syria. As children we seem to know that, even in terrible times, play irrepressibly erupts and promises hope.
I know that I have inside play and outside play. Inside, I treasured snow days when I read for hours adventuring in faraway worlds. I played house with dolls. I frightened my mother, who, in those days, made all the beds in the house each morning after the others had gone to work. I ran from room to room ahead of her and hid in the strewn bedclothes. I would jump out at her and scare her. She never seemed to catch on. I see my grandchildren play endless board games on the living room coffee table and also create messes in the kitchen making cookies and cupcakes. Often there is a pet to play with and snuggle with. There are so many magic places in a home.
I have misgivings about inside play that is attached to a device. Much of it is called gaming. It is also called playtime or screen time. I often play solitaire on my computer to relax. Families are playing Ticket to Ride and Code Name or just plain poker with other families online in these times of physical distancing. I think a lot of us see computer games as a guilty pleasure. I expect we sense that they carry an inherent addictive danger like alcohol and drugs? Surely you have wondered if you are addicted to your smart phone?
Outside play is marked by freedom. There is an unforgettable vastness for your voice and your body. My first bicycle was momentous. I remember summer days, picnic lunch in my bike basket, heading out of the city early with friends to go exploring nearby villages. There were no cell phones on which we had to make reports. For my son it was the first a go-cart he constructed, as he never lets me forget, with wheels made from peanut butter jar lids. I am sure that there are many pick-up games in our memories in drive-ways, on ball courts and in soccer fields. For me, it was the community swimming pool. I still kick up a huge spray to catch the sun at the pool after each big swim. For my grandson, it is an enormous ice rink in the back yard. For my granddaughter it is a soccer ball and cadre of girlfriends. COVID is ensuring that families are recovering the pleasure of camping. I have just read that canoeing is perfect for physical distancing.
It seems easy for us to recall the play times of our childhoods. Usually they are simple and do not require too much equipment. How is it that a deck of cards can foster so much intergenerational fun?
I think that there is a gender difference in play that takes shape early in our development. Girls are often less physical and boys more strenuous. How does this happen? I observe that in childhood, boys read as much as girls and then it changes. Both sexes experiment in the kitchen and then girls stay with it. These are stereotypes, of course, and it is changing. But it is still passed down from generation to generation. Boys look to their fathers for forms of play and girls to their mothers. I expect my client Mark’s father stopped playing at some critical moment and left Mark feeling short changed. In a similar fashion, girls often focus on caring so much that they forget to learn the dance steps for themselves. Hopefully I have inspired you to think about this and ponder how much it is changing and what you are doing to establish more gender balance in the field of play. We have come a long way from pink and blue, but we are not there yet.
Post puberty, play enters a new phase. It is more dangerous. Hormones run amok. Sexuality and drugs of various sorts enter the scene; not gently but forcefully. First loves are rarely forgotten. A first time drunk is remembered too. The whole world opens up. I remember my daughter biking in Europe with her peers and a guide as an early teen. Or maybe it is just an overnight camp in a nearby campground with your church group as it was for me. Boundaries are being tested. Parents fret. Risk and danger attach powerfully to play.
As high school ends, the desire for freedom grows even stronger. Presently it is clashing in city after city with COVID constraints. At this moment, mental health experts are rightfully concerned that our youth are being denied an important stage in their development. From the time of our very first steps, we begin to walk away from our parents’ safe orbit. By the time we are young adults we want to live on our own. We have to prove that we can control our own lives. My eighteen-year-old granddaughter finds that university education will be conducted remotely this September. She could stay home but she and her friend will live in the new city in their own digs. At twenty, my grandson just purchased his first car for $500. A thousand dollars later it is road-worthy. Who doesn’t remember the freedom and joy of their first car!
As we age, play often gets attached to winning. People do not forget when their sports team takes the championship. That is an unmistakeable high that entices us to invest more in sports outcomes and sets a standard for fun. I have talked with many male adults who, when asked to share their moment of greatest joy, cite when they held high a trophy either as an individual or as part of a team. Victory is an altered state of being that is treasured and coveted. Unfortunately only a few attain it, but many get a taste of it second-hand as a spectator.
Winning is all about performance, and performance in our society is linked to wealth. Frequently people think that having money will give them access to enhanced playtime. Money and play are connected. Money makes it possible to have the most toys and the best travel opportunities. In reality, the capacity to play can be lost in the pursuit of wealth and it can also be enhanced. Play is not possible without time. Too often the pursuit of wealth demands all the time there is. Why is it that our poorest provinces, the Maritimes are noted for fun-filled musical evenings where the community gathers and sings and dances until morning, not one night a year but regularly?
In my definition, play is an umbrella term for fun, pleasure, joy, ecstasy and all the other feeling words listed in the thesaurus. I think there is a continuum along which play moves, from exuberant antics to quiet pleasures. At certain stages of our lives, one form may emerge stronger that others. Perhaps the quiet end of the scale is often overlooked and undervalued.
Play is also associated with losing time. We become so engaged in what we are doing that we are later amazed that time seemed to stand still. Time did not control us. We have all been with a three-year-old who just discovered an ant. Could this be one of the allurements of our devices? They help us move into that space that stops time.
What happened to my client Mark, and all others like him? Why do so many people, particularly men, experience an absence of fun and a longing for it? Responsibility descends with courtship, which turns into commitment for the long haul. Homes are created and families birthed. Time is now precious and limited. After the endorphin high of sex and winning, simple pleasure is just not enough. A new stage of play emerges.
I think women are more at ease with this change. Most women played house as children. Many played with dolls. We see creating a home as a deep creative pleasure. Caring for children is fun. As young girls we wanted dolls that wet themselves. How crazy is that? It prepared us for the joy of responsibility. Men might think we just got duped. Maybe it is a conspiracy!
As women, our bodies have an innate rhythm that comes with regular periods. We expect seasons. Creating a home and having children is a season. This is expected, anticipated even. It is not a foreign interlude between unencumbered fun and later hoped for Freedom 55. I do believe this mid-life season is not so easy for men. As I watched the play at the Granville Island star, I noticed one dad who began to play, led by his little one. I expect long ago memories inside him bubbled up. He almost danced with pleasure.
Is there such a thing as adult play that is fun and not hurtful to others or ourselves? Swimming with sharks may be totally exhilarating and it is most certainly life-threatening. It is not easy to experience fun that lacks the danger. As well, fun that doesn’t involve winning is often judged as boring. It is difficult to balance play with responsibilities. Ask any couple in a committed relationship.
I wonder if it helps to partner with a person who plays as you do and at the same level? Two ballroom dancers, two tennis players; I have always wondered about Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. Does this make it easier? How do they handle the competition?
I expect Mark longs for the play of his childhood and youth. Growing up is not fun for many men. His buddies have disappeared into an acceptance of family life as fun: camping, play structure outings, and, for some, a once-a-month card night or a yearly fishing trip. What happened to meeting up and carousing and flirting and scoring? What happened to spending all summer building go-carts out of scraps? What happened to locker room jostling after winning a hard-fought game? Family fun that is safe is dull!
I am starting to ask adult men what they do for fun. One fifty-year old told me that the feeling he has after an intense yoga session is absolutely blissful. I know another whose joy is having a camera attached to his hand. He makes beauty from beauty. On one of my local walks I pass the garden of a man who I know takes inordinate pleasure in a new bed of peas that he has created on the city boulevard. My ninety-year-old brother and his wife still enjoy ballroom dancing twice a week in the afternoon!
In the second half of life I notice that a lot of having fun is about giving. Recently, my friend, a middle-aged and physically compromised woman, told me about getting her sister (who is equally compromised) to accept the help of her two hunky sons to help her into the warm Caribbean Ocean. Her face was flushed with the joy of it. As girls, these sisters were acclaimed synchronized swimmers. Play is about accepting who you are and going for what is possible within your limitations. I retrieved my bicycle this past weekend from two years of storage. After filling the tires and cleaning it, I tried riding it up and down the back lane. I was very unsteady. My neighbour kindly offered me the training wheels her grandchild had just given up.
I know a man and his wife whose kids helped them celebrate their sixtieth wedding anniversary by renting them a honeymoon suite and giving them the gift of every wild sexual toy they could find. They all laughed and teased each other, and the kids gave thanks for the inventive sexual life they knew to be their parents’ deep and abiding pleasure. What a gift that couple gave their offspring. Sex as play for sixty years and counting!
COVID is so much about containment. Play is about freedom. Growing up is accepting limitations, being a child is about open horizons. Play evolves in stages. New play horizons are always before us. We can stay fixated on our past experiences of play or we can embrace the new stage of play before us, treasuring, even incorporating, the memories of what was. Maybe I am needing a tricycle!