You know those fancy wicker picnic baskets? The kind that are lined with red-and-white checkerboard fabric? The basket with the miniature plates and cups and silverware snuggled inside?
Yeah. I don’t have one of those.
Every time I see one at the store, I think I want one. Ah, the picnic. Perfected.
Well, let me tell you, the perfect wicker picnic basket is not needed for a perfect picnic. Neither are the perfect “picnic fixings.” In fact, I used to spend a lot of time making the sandwiches, chopping up a fruit salad, packing homemade cookies, adding carrots and dip and extra snacks. Then we would arrive at our destination with a frazzled (slightly resentful) mother; smashed, soggy sandwiches; limp carrots; and–oops–watermelon juice oozing all over our Igloo cooler.
Our new-and-improved family picnics are more like this.
- Stop by Subway.
- Pick up sandwiches, chips, drinks.
- Simple. Done.
Our family picnics are not drawn-out, check-off-your-grocery-list-kind of picnics. They are pick-up picnics. As in let’s-go-on-a-hike-around-the-lake-and-grab-some-food-while-we’re-out kind of picnics.
What’s important is who you’re with. Not what you’re eating. And it’s not about the “perfect presentation.”
My buddy @NoRegretsParent reinforces this nicely: “It’s not where you go but who you’re with and what you do there.”
With Subway sandwiches in-hand, we sit on the grass. Or the boulders. Or a park bench. We talk. Chomp chomp. We drink. Gulp gulp. We laugh. Chomp chomp. We slurp. We throw away. And head on our hike.
And you know what? No heavy-ass wicker contraption to lug around.
