having fun

Our youngest daughter Boo spent the whole day with her boyfriend. They watched a movie, they had dinner in a restaurant and before she went home they stopped over at Starbucks for coffee. The following day our daughter had to spend the whole day at work while her boyfriend accompanied her until evening. Even after having spent so much time together, when I’m in the car with them, I notice that they don’t stop talking throughout the whole trip. I said to myself, these two must be having a lot of fun with each other. Both of them seem to be fun people.
I remember when I was still courting Cora during our early married days, I too was a fun person. We used to have a lot of fun. We were both beach people so we would go to the beach very often and the best part was always the sand castles we would build and the pictures we would take after. We also had dinners at our favorite Italian restaurant where we would always sit at our favorite corner table and we would order the same thing every time. We would spend evenings dancing at night clubs and play gin rummy games or play pool until the wee hours in the morning. On our first year of marriage we would stay in bed the whole morning on Saturdays and while in each others arms, we would talk the whole time. I guess one of the main reasons we got married was we were having a lot of fun with each other. Cora was a fun person to be with and I guess so was I.
Unfortunately after a few years, when the children came and as I slowly moved up the corporate ladder -having fun slowly diminished from our lives. The children and my career came first over having fun. As a matter a fact, the few times we would have fun now would usually include our children or friends. More often than not, fun for me was either golf or drinking with office mates and old buddies. I started to forget how to have fun with Cora . Because of different conflicts in our marriage I also became very formal and careful with her when discussing topics –especially the sensitive ones.
Now when I look back at those years, I regret having become too serious and having left out fun from our lives. We could have included having fun with each other more often. After all it was having fun that brought us together and encouraged us to get married. But now that I am getting older I think there is still time to bring back the fun we had but to do this I need to at myself first and ask the question “ Am I a fun person to be with or am I too serious? Do I even know how to hang loose?” The other thing I must do is to make an effort and be creative so cora and I can schedule fun activities. This is difficult for me because the few times we had fun, it was always Cora who made plans. I like to schedule my weekly activities and write down my appointments but I rarely put down any schedule for us to have fun. This I must correct. As someone said “ It never is too late or too old to have Fun” .