Out of Office: The Power of Hooky Day

Every spring, my Dad had an annual “Hooky Day” tradition. He would wake us up around 5am on a seemingly random weekday declaring “rise and shine, we’re going fishing!”

My younger brother and I would leap out of bed to find a cooler and tons of gear already packed. Did I mention it was well before sunrise? Dad was as excited as us kids, maybe even more.

We would head off in darkness on that day every spring to chase the tides for fluke, flounder, striped bass, weakfish and bluefish all over Eastern Long Island. In a good year, we took our boat, FishTales. Other years, Mom had put her foot down about Dad’s money pit of a hobby, and we would cast from the shore.

Memory is a funny thing. I had to text my Dad (now retired down in the Florida Keys, of course) to confirm the names of our fishing spots – Heady Creek, Shinnecock Bay, Plum Gut, Great South Bay…. but I remember that feeling of excitement like it was this morning, not 30+ years ago.

To this day, packing up a cooler or leaving the house before sunrise brings me inexplicable happiness and fierce nostalgia, and I can still hear his gravelly voice in my head so clearly “good and lucky you guys….”?

As a child, the chosen day always felt spontaneous.

But Dad was a New York City firefighter (Engine 84/Ladder 34 in Washington Heights). His “job” meant a level of brotherhood and commitment most of us will never experience. Dad wouldn't call in sick, even for Hooky Day. But while he was never completely off duty if needed, the rotation gave him some weekdays off. I imagine him watching the weather the night before and enjoying the anticipation, as I do now.

Back in the 80’s, my Dad wouldn’t have been thinking about vitamin D, the positive immune response of walking barefoot or the respiratory benefits of ocean air. Certainly no one talked about how looking at the horizon literally rewires our brains and thought patterns, let alone the mental health benefits of having agency over one’s life.?

Parenting was a lot more straightforward then. Dad declared Hooky Day because it felt good, and because (as he told anyone who would listen) he believed taking kids fishing kept them out of trouble.

When I became a parent, I continued the Hooky Day tradition with my own boys, now 10 and 8 years old. I’ve even taken them fishing. But if I am being honest, sometimes life got in the way and spring would slip by.?

But 2020 has been very different.

Since Covid-19 shut down school and put life on pause, I’ve already declared “Hooky Day!” an egregious and awesome three times.?

We’ve gone to the beach where I grew up instead of fishing (sorry Dad!) but the tradition lives on. The boys were happy to miss school, but even happier to have an adventure and (I like to think) my full attention. Where they see a fun beach day, I see the power of ritual and tradition in the midst of crisis.?

Cell service at the beach is spotty, so I fully experience the day and my children in a way we all so desperately need right now. The boys and I laugh and get pummeled by ocean waves, the water still freezing in May and June. We protect our sandwiches from the seagulls and nap in the warm sun. As a bonus, they are now of course inspired to be entrepreneurs, and we play with their outlandish business ideas.

I am tempted to leave this part out because I worked hard to shed that “busyness as a badge of honor” affliction in recent years, but the full truth is that my working weekends is how we’ve solved our Covid equation: dual working parents + life + school minus all of our support. So I make up the time while my husband creates his own memories with the boys on the golf course every weekend. There are 168 hours in a week. The beach is relatively empty during the week, and we feel safe there. Even in its early stages, Covid has forced us to get creative and intentional on a level I could not have imagined.?

Raising our boys in Westchester County, we’ve historically had to seek out opportunities for them to develop resilience and grit. This is a work in progress at best, and I’ve often felt conflicted about raising them in such a bubble. A silver lining with Covid-19 has been watching them grow more mature in this way.

While there are blessing for sure, some days are just really, really hard. And we are the fortunate ones with our careers and health.

While the disruptions to life we’ve experienced this spring pale in comparison to others less fortunate and, certainly, prior generations, I have watched our family thrive in some ways but also struggle in others.

On a personal level, there have been many days where my children have not gotten the best of me as I juggle homeschooling and the exhilaration and stress of launching my own business…..in the midst of a global pandemic. So much is out of our control, but I try to remember I have agency over the quality of the time we spend together. I can choose how I show up during all of this.

Which brings me back to Hooky Day, and what I hope my children will remember about this time, beyond their mom breaking down in tears over 5th grade Common Core math.

I hope they remember me packing up the cooler and declaring our day together to be more important than anything else. I hope the ocean brings them a feeling of tremendous joy and safety throughout their lives. I hope they remember how happy I looked soaking up all the health benefits of the ocean while secretly recharging for the challenges I believe are still to come.?

I hope they look back on 2020 as a year of meaning, connection and memories, and continue the tradition with their own children.

What will you remember from 2020?

My professional recommendation? Take a hard look at your calendar this summer and declare a Hooky Day.

I would love to hear your stories!?

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Re-published in memory of my father, John Thompson (August 17, 1946 - February 12, 2021)

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