Thrive Your Odds.
After several long weeks of together time and endless hours in the heat at the skatepark, the day eventually arrived—the first day of school. All the parents took their children’s photographs, with their perfectly quaffed hair and adoring smiles—as they posed arm in arm with their siblings—showing off their new school year attire. They were picture perfect. Meanwhile, I had my children capture a photo of me leaping through the air, with my arms expanded out as far as they would go, as a way of screaming—”Freedom has arrived!” As I compared my social media post with others’, I realized I have a different fondness for the institution of education.
It is not that I do not enjoy the summer months, the longer days, and the extra hours with my kids; when that little thing called routine is absent, we all struggle to keep ourselves from coming unglued. As much as I say my kids cannot handle life without routine; the truth is I struggle more without its presence than they do. Luckily for us, Sandler’s Chase has kept a little routine in our summer months. In fact, it provided an unexpected and exciting new groove.
The project has helped to make me more diligent about documenting all the unpredictable questions and quotes from Sandler’s mouth. As well as capturing the epic experiences he has been fortunate enough to enjoy throughout the last several months; including encapsulating his progression and success on his skateboard. All of which I quickly forget when he has had a bad day, or tells me for the eleventh time in an hour, “Mommy… you might be ‘weally’ annoying, but I sure do love you (complete with a wink and a clicking of his tongue)!”
Between that over used sentence and the other one, “Mommy… you look like an old granny." I had no problem putting him on the bus, skipping behind it, and hoping its return did not come all too quickly. Once I was finally free of both kids, I did what I had been longing to do for months. I met up with a friend for breakfast. After the initial awkwardness of trying to keep myself from cutting her eggs and potatoes into kid size bites, we dove into a much needed chat. It was not but a few minutes into the conversation that I realized everything I had to talk about revolved around skateboarding.
At first I thought I was going to bore my friend to tears—knowing she has no interest in skateboarding whatsoever—but then as I described everything that makes up Sandler’s Chase, I realized skateboarding is the core of the project. Around that core consists of the most beautiful layers. The layers of community, self esteem, determination, passion, dignity, friendship, brotherhood, family, perseverance, love, and most of all—inspiration. It was at that very moment I realized Sandler’s Chase is not just about my kid thriving the odds, but it is about inspiring everyone to thrive their odds no matter how big or small. Guess he gets a free “get out of trouble for calling me an old granny” card for doing his part to inspire others.
- Nikki