good enough

Yesterday, on a whim, I asked my husband to put up our huge, ten-person Harry Potter tent in the side yard. I asked for it to be garlanded with fairy lights and bowers of flowers and to have poufs and cushions everywhere. Like glamping, only in the yard.

Those were my exact words, not kidding. Ask him.

(I call it a Harry Potter tent because I joke that it has spare rooms and extra wings and a kitchen along with bunk beds. It’s pretty darn big, which is a luxury when camping with the family. As you may know, a four-person tent is really for two people, so a ten-person tent fits a family of four decently well, with room for cots and luggage.)

I was picturing a Nairobi-style tent with a platform bed, piles of white linens, and cute lighting.

(Stay with me here, I realize one cannot magically create that kind of tent from a Coleman Weather Master 10)

What I got an hour or so later with the help of my kid was, yes, the Harry Potter tent. But the rest of it does not match my fantasy.

After much struggle and a slight amount of cursing, the tent is now topped with a tacky blue plastic tarp over it because the sun was too bright. 

Instead of poufs, I got mismatched folding chairs. My husband also set up two green cots as “couches” or lounges, plus I brought out a beanbag chair, a gaudy blanket, and some pillows. (Plus a pile of magazines and books, a pitcher of ice water, and my kindle). So, there are at least seven places to sit, not counting grabbing a pillow on the floor. 

(No fairy lights, although I haven’t lost hope yet.)

I’m not taking a picture of my glamping tent, because it’s not really photogenic. In fact, it might be the very opposite, all bright pink and purple and army green with some red and brown and that horrid blue tarp.

BUT.

The space is close enough to the house for WIFI, the breeze blows through, and the insects don’t bug me because of the mesh. And it just feels like that ephemeral sense of summer. 

So, while mismatched camp furniture doesn’t meet my fantasy, it’s good enough.

Actually, it’s better than that.

Many years ago, someone told me I always looked like I stepped out of a magazine. I remember where I was, on the beach on Catalina Island by a stuccoed low wall, wearing a straw hat and sunglasses and strappy gold sandals and carrying some kind of tote. Until she said that, I hadn’t realized how much I tried to live my whole life like I was going to be caught by paparazzi. The inside of my purse could usually pass inspection, and you should see my sock drawer.

I’m not bragging. This is actually a post about the pressure I put on myself for everything to look just right.

I hadn’t realized how much I tend to focus on the way things look, even if it’s just for my own pleasure. Even if no one else sees.

But this tent is reminding me not everything needs to be Instagrammable.

A blue plastic tarp is not pretty, no matter how hard you pretend. It just doesn’t look like glamping. 

What really matters is that my husband put up the whole thing without me justifying it. Without even rolling his eyes.

It also matters that he and my kids joined me at various points. That he even used it by himself to spread out and read. And now we have a space to go that’s safe from the mosquitoes and harsh sunlight, but it still outside. In COVID quarantine times, that’s golden.

What matters is how it feels, not what it looks like.

I’m writing this post from inside it.

While I’m still holding out for the twinkle lights, and maybe a few more rugs, pillows, and blankets, I think it’s the spirit of the thing that counts most, no?

Plus maybe my imagination.

What can you do that’s just for yourself? That doesn’t matter what it looks like, but how it feels?

Let yourself do it.