This summer, I took a part-time job at my daughter’s day camp.

A few weeks ago, several teachers and I brought more than forty children to a water park in Wisconsin Dells. The bus ride took over an hour, and the air-conditioning wasn’t working. By the time we arrived, I felt wilted from the heat.

The children did not.

They had spent the ride talking over one another, vibrating with excitement, as if the hot bus itself were part of the adventure.

I had brought a book, thinking I might read on the way, but after a few pages the swaying made me dizzy. I put it away and started talking with the teacher beside me.

We talked about field trips.

For children, they are almost entirely anticipation. For the adults responsible for them, they are mostly vigilance.

Once forty-some kids scatter in different directions, a part of your mind stays permanently occupied: Who went where? Who needs the bathroom? Who fell behind? Who is crying? Who is suddenly no longer friends with whom?

At a water park, the teachers are not really there to have fun.

We are there to make sure everyone else can—and to return with exactly as many children as we arrived with.

The moment we got there, the kids changed into their swimsuits and rushed toward the water.

My daughter disappeared among them.

I stood nearby and watched.

I already had my swimsuit on under my clothes.

No one had told the teachers we had to stay dry.

Still, I didn’t move.

I was tired from the bus ride, the head counts, the reminders about rules and bathrooms and staying with the group. It wasn’t the kind of tiredness that made movement impossible. It was the kind that made stillness feel like the only sensible option.

Almost immediately, my mind began building a case.

It would be a hassle.

My clothes would get wet.

My hair would get wet.

I would have to dry off, change, and then wash my hair again when I got home.

And beneath all those practical objections was another thought, quieter and harder to admit:

I was an adult.

Wouldn’t I look a little ridiculous splashing around with a bunch of children?

None of these reasons was especially persuasive on its own.

Together, they sounded airtight.

There was another thought underneath them—I actually want to go in—but my mind was much faster at producing counterarguments.

Stay here.

It’s easier.

It’s safer.

It’s less embarrassing.

It is, somehow, more adult.

So I stayed put.

Then I got bored.

And suddenly I remembered that I had done this before.

The summer before, we had come to the same water park. I had stood beside the pool then, too, watching the children scream and splash and chase one another through the water.

I stayed dry all afternoon.

By the time we left, I was exhausted.

But it was a strange exhaustion. I hadn’t really done anything. I had simply stood, watched, waited.

In fact, I could barely remember that afternoon except as a long stretch of waiting for the children to finish having fun.

I looked at the water in front of me.

Am I really going to do the same thing again?

Children rarely seem to have this problem.

If the water is there, they get in.

Getting soaked is a problem for later.

Wet clothes belong to later.

They do not stand at the edge first asking whether an experience will be worth the inconvenience.

Adults, somewhere along the way, seem to acquire an invisible ledger.

Before doing anything, we start calculating.

How tiring will this be?

How much trouble?

Do I really need to?

Will it interfere with what comes afterward?

Will I look strange?

We become very good at protecting our energy, our schedules, our routines, our dignity.

None of this is unreasonable.

But if you keep the books too carefully, you can end up standing at the edge of your own life.

And there I was.

In a swimsuit.

I thought of a book I had been reading recently, The Let Them Theory. Its central idea is simple: Let other people think what they think and do what they do. Stop spending so much energy trying to control them.

Standing there at the edge of the water, it occurred to me that maybe I could treat the voices in my own head the same way.

It thinks getting wet is annoying?

Let it.

It’s worried about my hair?

Fine.

It thinks a grown woman running through a water park looks silly?

Let it think that, too.

The thoughts did not have to disappear.

I just did not have to take instructions from them.

I knew better than to keep arguing. Given another minute, my brain would come up with five more excellent reasons to remain exactly where I was.

So I counted down.

Three.

Two.

One.

And I ran in.

Within seconds, a giant bucket tipped over above me.

A wall of water crashed onto my head.

My hair was soaked.

My clothes were soaked.

Nearly everything I had spent the last several minutes trying to avoid happened at once.

And none of it mattered.

All I could think was:

Oh, this feels good.

The cold water seemed to wash away the heat from the bus, the fatigue, the heaviness that had made standing still seem so appealing.

I started laughing.

A few of the children noticed that one of their teachers had suddenly joined them and found this extremely funny. They crowded around me, laughing, and immediately began splashing me on purpose.

Then I saw my daughter.

For a second, she just stared.

Then her whole face lit up.

There was surprise in it, and delight, and—I could have sworn—a little pride.

She ran over, grabbed my hand and started pulling me toward one attraction, then another.

“Come on!”

Usually, I am the one saying the opposite.

Hurry up.

Shoes on.

Did you bring everything?

Be careful.

Don’t go too far.

Drink some water.

We have to leave.

Becoming a mother seems to have moved me, almost without my noticing, to the edge of things.

I keep track of the time.

I pack the towels.

I remember what everyone else might forget.

While other people are losing themselves in whatever they are doing, I am the person keeping one eye on the clock, eventually saying, “Okay, five more minutes.”

I manage the fun.

I am not always inside it.

But that afternoon, my daughter saw someone else.

She saw me drenched, my hair stuck to my face, shrieking under buckets of water and laughing with a crowd of kids.

It occurred to me later that it had been a long time since she had seen me do something for no reason other than that I thought it was fun.

There was no lesson in it.

I wasn’t trying to model spontaneity or make a memory for her.

I wasn’t trying to teach her anything at all.

I wanted to play.

That was enough.

For the rest of the afternoon, we ran from one water attraction to another.

My daughter kept turning around to make sure I was still following.

I was.

And I was having fun.

Getting into the water did not make the day easier.

I still had to watch the children.

I still had to count heads.

Wet clothes were, in fact, unpleasant.

My hair did, in fact, need to be washed again that night.

Every inconvenience I had predicted came true.

They just turned out to be smaller than I had made them while standing safely on the other side of them.

On the bus ride home, my hair was still damp against my neck.

I leaned back in my seat and watched the scenery slide past the window. I thought about the shower I would have to take when I got home.

And I smiled.

How many times, I wondered, had I talked myself out of something in exactly the same way?

Too much trouble.

Not necessary.

Maybe next time.

At my age?

They are all reasonable thoughts.

That is what makes them so persuasive.

And if I listened every time, my life might indeed become easier to manage.

My clothes would stay dry.

My plans would stay intact.

I would rarely lose control.

I would rarely look foolish.

And some things that might have happened simply wouldn’t.

I don’t intend to become someone who ignores consequences or follows every impulse.

I will still get tired.

I will still resist inconvenience.

I will still care about my hair more than I would like to admit.

And I will probably keep wondering, from time to time, whether I am too old to look this silly.

Those thoughts are not going anywhere.

Maybe they don’t need to.

I only want to remember that I don’t have to obey them every time.

Especially when I have already put on the swimsuit.

Especially when some small part of me still wants to go.

Especially when the only thing keeping me on the edge is that familiar, sensible voice saying:

Maybe not.

Next time, I hope I don’t give it too long.

Three.

Two.

One.

And in.