[We took the kids canoeing yesterday, which brought to mind a canoe trip down the Rio Grande that my father and uncle took my brother, sister, and me on when I was seven years old—the same age as my son now. I kept trying to write about that trip as a story, but it kept coming out as a poem of sorts. So here it is.]

It is not the lapping water at the edges of the boat that brings to mind the memory of age seven and sunburned—paddling down the Rio Grande, a snake finding its way onto our boat, the Indian boys swimming out to meet us, their brown skin that looked so much thicker than my own. The sun bounced off them. It saturated me.

And it isn’t the tug of the earth under the boat as it’s pulled ashore—my children scrambling from it as I did then.

It is the oar in the water, that act of cutting without blood, that returns the memory in full color. You were younger than I am now. No shirt and no plan beyond making it down the river with your brother and three young children. I never doubted you.

And when it was all over, hours later than planned, no drinking water, skin seared in retribution, a worried wife and mother waiting at home, we all had a story to tell, didn’t we?

We’ve told it so many times since I sometimes doubt it ever really happened. That snake. Those Indian boys reversing evolution before our eyes: human to amphibian as they slid from the shore to the water. You said later that you worried they were angry. That we were trespassing. That they would capsize the boat. You held the oar ready to fight. But they just asked us where we were going, as those who are stationary always ask those who move. I still remember one boy—the oldest one—brushing aside his long, dark hair that hung like curtains across his face.

And I realize now the light that bounced off their skin is the same light that reflected off the water yesterday. It is the same sun—its rays spanning a generation. But we saw no snakes and no Indian boys. My children’s adventures are a thin page next to my own. I try to give them the world unfettered by rules, but I can’t. I strap them in life jackets and apply sunscreen and tell them not to rock the boat. But you…you parented as if your very will for our survival would be enough. And somehow, it was. Somehow, the oars cut into the water and pulled us forward in spite of it all.

I’ve often wanted a glimpse of what my life would be like if I hadn’t made the choices I have. I know I’m not alone in this. It’s the great human dilemma: that every time we say yes to one thing it means we say no to something else. And so we comfort ourselves with phrases like “everything works out for the best” and “I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for those mistakes I made yesterday”—but I think it’s just what we say to protect ourselves from the much scarier truth: We don’t know. Who’s to say if we hadn’t gone to a different school or married someone else or not married at all or had more kids or had no kids or devoted our life to music or God or the stock market that we wouldn’t be happier than we are today?

Of course, it’s futile thinking. The fact is, my choices have made me who I am, and it’s better to learn how to live and love that reality than wonder “what if” about the million and one things I did or didn’t do. And I do that quite well, actually. “Happy” is an arbitrary word—one that I’m more comfortable attributing to a moment than an hour, much less a life—but still, if someone were to ask me, “Are you happy?” I would answer, “Yes,” and mean it.

But because I’m me that means I have to navel gaze and create these stories in my head about what my life would be like if I’d chosen a different path. I call it Sliding Doors Syndrome and hope you will, too, because I really think “coined an internationally recognized phrase” would be a cool thing to add to my resume.

Lucky for me, I have a couple people in my life who fulfill the “what if” role for me. One is my best friend, Natasha, who is single, childless, and a lobbyist. When she and I were in our early 20s, we moved to DC together. My career sights were set on being a lobbyist. Hers were less clear but she had no interest in lobbying and thought I was weird to want to do that. Back then, she was also more inclined to marriage and kids than I, who had just ended a two-year relationship that had lasted 23 months too long and had thus fully committed myself to singlehood for the next decade (three days after landing in DC, I met Dave).

If you had asked me then who, in 18 years, would be a writer, married and the mother of two, I would have guessed Natasha, and so would she. Yet our lives flip-flopped somewhere along the way. (We once went to a psychic in Sedona, Arizona, who told us that Natasha and I have been friends for hundreds of years and were even married at one point—she was the man, which brings me no end of joy to remind her.) She is living the life I had expected I would have; and I am living hers. Whenever we’ve doubted our decisions, we’ve often said how great it would be to swap lives for a couple months. But we can’t, so instead we listen to one another’s joys and disappointments and, depending on the day, are thankful for being where we are or filled with longing for the other’s   [fill in the blank] .

But in some ways, Natasha’s life is too far removed from mine to really give me an idea of what my life would be. We’re different in many ways and the things I love (animals, the outdoors, country life) hold little interest for her. Plus, I always thought I would be married. Kids might have been a question mark in my life, but marriage never was. So often when I look at Natasha’s life, I can’t really see mine, simply minus a husband and kids.

So I have Lori Dagley. Lori and I were best friends in Mrs. Tomlin’s third grade class. But the cruel lottery of class assignment separated us after that, and neither of us could handle the long-hallway-distance relationship. Although we graduated from the same high school, we have virtually no memories of one another after third grade. And even then, my memories are fuzzy. Lori remembers us playing with my model horses on the steps of our house and I remember her being in my childhood bedroom—but beyond that, nothing.

But then Facebook (glorious Facebook) reunited us. I’ve been reunited with a lot of old classmates through Facebook, most of whom I don’t remember. So reuniting with Lori shouldn’t really matter, except that I fell a little bit in love. I saw in Lori a childless and more interesting version of myself (and isn’t that always why we fall in love…because we see in the other the potential for whom we could be?). She lives in the middle of nowhere in Idaho, where she and her husband built their own house. She plays the cello. She loves dogs and the mountains and backpacking. She also loves horses, although she doesn’t own one. Instead, she and her husband own a plane and spend a lot of time flying to remote locales (they just logged 4,600 miles on a nearly two-month trip to Mexico). And she’s a really amazing photographer (check out her work here).

Now before I scare you and, more importantly, Lori (who’s likely Googling “restraining order” as she reads this), I’m not obsessed. I swear. And I realize that, like any virtual relationship, the person I’ve created in my mind is probably not who she really is. The fact is, I don’t know Lori. Not really. There’s a good chance she and I could meet for coffee someday and have nothing to talk about beyond our pixilated memories of third grade. But I can’t help but feel like I’ve found in her that sliding door that shows me a little bit what my life would have been like had Dave and I stayed in New Mexico and not had children—but without the plane or the cello or the photography and carpentry skills. We exchange occasional emails and I live vicariously through her adventures that seem so much more interesting than my own.

That’s not to say I don’t think I have an interesting life. It’s just that it’s mine, so I know it. I’ve wandered its hallways and poked into its dark corners and memorized the wallpaper. I imagine even the most interesting life becomes mundane when you live it everyday. And when you add the domestic routine of life with children, “rote” is pretty much a given.

Although I would never give up my children for anything—and even in my darkest times as a mother, I know they’ve enriched my life in a way it never would have been had I chosen not to have kids—I have that longing deep within myself to see what could have been. So I turn to my third grade friend, with whom I played horses on the steps of my childhood home, and crane my neck to peer into her world. And as I do, I tell myself it’s okay, that everything works out for the best.

So as you’ll recall, I volunteered in both Noah’s and Gwyneth’s classrooms last month as part of my annual Pretend-to-be-a-Good-Parent campaign. I talked about the experience in Gwyneth’s class here, so now it’s Noah’s turn.

A couple weeks earlier, I received an email from a mother of one of the other kids in Noah’s class asking for volunteers for a “science” segment on animal habitats in which parent volunteers would lead a group of kids on a nature walk. Now I put science in quotes because he’s in first grade. I don’t recall learning any science when I was in first grade. My dominant memory of that year was leading a charge of The Girls’ Group (of which I was a founding member and self-appointed dictator) on the playground in pursuit of The Boys’ Group and falling face-first in a puddle of mud, which drenched me head-to-foot. I had to spend the rest of the day in the nurse’s office sitting in my underwear while my clothes dried on the heater. There was no science learning going on in my first grade class, I’m pretty sure.

But back to Noah…so I emailed her back and said I’d love to volunteer (don’t laugh). I like animals and the outdoors, so I thought this was a well-suited opportunity for me.

So the Big Day, I walked into the classroom and introduced myself to the other parent volunteers—the organizing mom and a father. “I’m kind of nervous,” I admitted almost right away because I’m a firm believer—despite mountains of evidence to the contrary—that saying the awkwardness aloud makes it less awkward.

Luckily, the other mom admitted being nervous, too, saying, “If I were giving a presentation at work, I wouldn’t think twice. But this has me kind of scared.”

The father is a regular weekly volunteer so he gave the other mom and me a sympathetic “yeah,” but I could tell he really wasn’t scared. And the reason was this: All the kids clearly thought he was the coolest grown up IN THE WORLD.

As soon as he darkened the door, all the kids in the classroom flocked to him like the Pied Piper. “I want to be in your group, Mr. X!” “Can you please pick me, Mr. X? Pleeeeease!” And then there were the little inside jokes: “You won’t get me this time, Mr. X!”

“Oh, yes, I will!” Mr. X said, lunging playfully at the kid, who ran away shrieking with laughter.

Oh great, I thought. We’ve got ourselves a rock star.

But, you know, Mr. X deserves it. If he willingly volunteers in the classroom every week, then he absolutely should get the unwavering adulation of the children. He’s earned it—believe me and the two extra-strength Excedrin I took when I got home. But seeing how adored he was made me realize that’s what I was nervous about: I wasn’t scared that I wouldn’t be able to teach the kids what they needed to know about the food, shelter, and water animals require to live. I was scared the kids wouldn’t like me.

As we all know, I’m not very natural with children. When Noah and Gwyneth have friends over to the house, I’ve noticed that they always look at me out of the corner of their eyes—in the same way we’re taught to look at wild animals, as if they’re afraid direct eye contact will result in a foaming mouth, a low growl, and snapping jaws.

I really didn’t want that to be the case on this day. I was there representing Noah. I didn’t want to embarrass him. I didn’t want his friends to say after I left, “Wow, what’s it like having her for a mom?”

I vowed to put on my kindest mom face—and hoped desperately that I didn’t look like John McCain smiling at a political rally…or anywhere else, for that matter.

First, the introductions. The children of the other two parents introduced their mom and dad first. “This is my dad, Mr. X. He likes coffee.” “This is my mom, Ms. Y. She likes to read.”

Then Noah introduced me: “This is my mom, Ms. Laura. She likes to ride horses.”

I sighed in relief, thankful he didn’t say, “She likes to sleep and eat croutons straight out of the box.”

Then we each got up and talked a little bit about animal habitats. I asked the children what kind of animals lived around the school and where might they live. You’ve got to love kids. In addition to the obvious—squirrels, deer, mice, turtles—a few kids also shouted out “Lions!” “Monkeys!” “Kangaroos!” I don’t think they were kidding.

I wrote down on the chalkboard everything they said. I’m not sure why because, with my atrocious handwriting, I’m certain they couldn’t read a word of it.

Next we broke up into groups and headed outside. I embarked with my intrepid explorers to the part of the school grounds far from the madding crowd where there are a lot of bushes and trees and, inexplicably, a big pile of mulch. I brought a pencil and notepad to dutifully record our findings—praying to a god I’m not sure exists that we found something…anything…so Noah could go back to class proud that his mom led a successful expedition.

The kids dug through the mulch and found worms! Praise Allah! I wrote WORMS in the notepad and asked the kids what the worm’s habitat was. DIRT. Why? It has WATER and FOOD and PROTECTION FROM THE SUN. Score one for Ms. Laura who likes to ride horses.

Next we found BIRDS in BIRDHOUSES. Yes, they’re manmade, I explained to the kids, but habitats nonetheless. After all, they provide PROTECTION FROM PREDATORS and WARMTH. We got to see a mother bird fly from the birdhouse as her babies poked their heads out. Score two!

The kids then found ANTS and STINK BUGS and a SQUIRREL’S NEST. Yes, yes, yes!

When the kids’ attention would begin to wander, I would snap them back to the task at hand. I wasn’t mean, but I wasn’t going to tolerate any disorder in my ranks, either: “No running on the soccer field.” “Keep your hands to yourselves.” “No interrupting.” “You. Yeah, you. I’m talking to you. Care to join us?”

But all in all, I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. I maintained discipline without being rigid. I don’t think I scared anyone. I don’t think any of the kids would go home that night and talk about “Noah’s mean mommy.” It was all good.

And besides, we found some cool shit, right? So I led the kids back to the classroom feeling triumphant. That was until we arrived and I realized we were the first to return. Although we were gone from the classroom for a good 15 minutes (the time we had allotted), we were the only ones there. I felt the quick twinge of failure. It’s so typical of me: rush through things…rush the kids along…don’t waste time exploring…check the boxes and move on to the next thing. I had images of the other parents meandering unhurriedly from one tree to the next—letting the kids poke their fingers in all the holes and talk about things that weren’t related to animal habitats. I bet they let them run in the soccer fields and grab at each other, too.

Five minutes later, the doors burst open, through which charged the kids from Mr. X’s group, their faces flush with heat and excitement. “We saw deer!” They shouted. “Two of them! It was so cool! Deer!”

Of course, I thought. I should’ve known, shouldn’t I? Of course Mr. X’s group would find deer.

I looked at the faces of the kids in my group and could see the disappointment fall across them like dominoes. All of a sudden the worms and birds, of which they had been so proud and impressed a moment ago, were nothing more than, well, worms and birds.

After everyone assembled back in the classroom we all talked about the different kinds of things we’d seen. As the kids from my group shouted out their discoveries, I could see that they weren’t nearly as disappointed as I had projected onto them. Because, it turns out, they’re kids. And, really, kids don’t care that much about worms or birds or even deer.

That night, I asked Noah if he and his classmates enjoyed the nature walk. “It was great, Mom!” he said. “Really great!” Hearing that, I felt my insides open up a little and a sense of pride fill the larger space.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” I said. “What was so great about it?”

“We didn’t have to do math! We ran out of time!”

Yes, of course. For the kids in Noah’s class that day, I wasn’t cool or interesting or a great teacher. I was nothing more than a way to get out of math. And that’s good enough for me.

I noticed while I was washing my hands that the toilet paper roll wasn’t on the toilet paper holder. The empty cardboard roll was still there instead, stark in its nakedness. And I realized that this was the case in every bathroom in the house: all of the new rolls of toilet paper sat perched on the skeleton of the last roll. I had a sudden urge to go through the house and correct this—to discard the old and put the new in their proper place. Because it’s not about just the toilet paper. (It’s never about just the toilet paper, is it?) It’s this life that so often feels like it’s flying faster than I can manage it…

Today I ordered new underwear for the kids (and, yes, I ordered it because I refuse to go to the mall unless under the threat of death—so the $5 shipping is absolutely worth it) and I asked Noah if he wanted the kind with patterns and pictures or plain white. “Plain white,” he said.

He’s seven, and he wants plain white underwear.

At that moment I wanted to freeze time and tell him he couldn’t grow up anymore. I, who have dreamed of my children’s eighteenth birthdays since the day they were born, wanted to stop the clock and maybe even turn it back a few clicks to a time when Noah would have wanted trains or cars or aliens or footballs on his underwear.

But I can’t, of course. Every parent wants to do this at some point in their children’s lives. It’s the occupational hazard of being a parent, I suppose…the knowledge that these small creatures will keep growing and slowly shed the accoutrements of childhood. We know that it’s just a matter of time before we ask them if they want to snuggle on the couch and are met with eye rolls and a shudder that starts at their earlobes and ripples down to their toes. Babies grow up. Old people die. It is the same as it ever was.

I can’t change that.

But I can change the toilet paper rolls. So I do. One by one, I go to each bathroom and slide the cardboard tube off its plastic spring-loaded cylinder and replace it with the new roll. It’s a mediation of sorts and I’m ashamed by how satisfying it feels. And after I’m done, I go to my office and I make a list of all the things I need to do this week. And I pay bills. And I answer emails. And I file paperwork.

And for a fleeting moment I believe that I’m in control of it all. I’m holding my finger on the second hand of the clock and daring it to tell me otherwise.

So a couple weeks ago I volunteered in my kids’ classrooms. As you might have guessed, this is rare for me. I’m not really the volunteering type—especially when it comes to kids. Last year, I volunteered to chaperone Noah’s kindergarten class field trip to the Air and Space Museum. The resulting headache lasted three days.

Still, I think it’s important that I make the effort to volunteer in their classrooms for no other reason than Noah and Gwyneth love it. Really. Their faces light up when I walk into the classroom. They run to me and throw their little arms around my waist as if they haven’t seen me for weeks, as opposed to that morning over cereal. They take me by the hand and introduce me to all of their friends. It’s precious, and I remind myself this won’t last. Someday, I’ll walk into their classrooms in my mom jeans and a sweatshirt that says, “Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays,” and they’ll slither under their desks in embarrassment. So I should seize these moments while they last.

But I’m me so that means I only require myself to seize the moment one day a year. And a couple weeks ago was that day.

I took the “ripping off a Band-Aid” approach and decided to volunteer in both classes the same day: spending the morning in Gwyneth’s kindergarten and the afternoon in Noah’s first grade classroom.

My job in Gwyneth’s class was to read with the children. Or, more accurately, to listen as the children read to me. Each child has a folder with short books at his or her reading level. One student at a time would come sit with me on the couch in the back of the classroom, where they would read their books to me. I would then go back through the book and cover the pictures and point to single words asking them what they said—testing whether they could recognize them out of context.

I had Gwyneth read to me first. A quick disclaimer: Like all parents, I think my kids are exceptional. And they are. They both read and do math above their grade levels. They’re smart kids and hard workers. So I wasn’t surprised when Gwyneth flew through the three books in her folder with sentences like “I want to go to the park,” and “I like to ride trains,” without stumbling on any words. When I asked her to read the words to me out of context, she could. I told her what a good job she did and then sent her back to her table as I quietly beamed.

Then, one by one, I had the other kids come to the couch with me. First, let me say this: children have no sense of personal space. Every time I would sit on the couch, I would make sure to sit a good body-length’s distance from the child. But, without fail, every single kid would scoot next to me, lean against my arm, and put a hand on my knee that had no doubt just wiped off a viscous string of snot. Part of me was a little grossed out (kids are so germy), but mostly I just found it funny. All I could do was imagine adults behaving the same way: walking into meetings and sidling up next to their co-workers until they were practically sitting in their lap saying, “Okay, should we go over those reports now?”

But back to the reading…

The first kid who read to me after Gwyneth was a boy I’ll call “Jonah.” Now I readily admit that I was anxious to see how the other kids read in comparison to my daughter. It’s petty, I know. How many times have I told my children that how they compare to others shouldn’t matter? “There will always be someone smarter than you and always someone less smart,” I say. “What matters is that you’re trying your hardest and doing the best that you can.” Yeah, sure. I mean, I believe that, but I also believe it’s innate in humans to judge our own success by measuring it against others’. After all, if everyone gets a gold star, is the gold star really worth anything?

Maybe it’s best that I don’t volunteer in my kids’ classrooms more than once a year.

So Jonah and I sat down on the couch and I pulled the first book from his folder. I knew immediately that any delusions I might have entertained of Gwyneth being the smartest kid in the class were about to evaporate. Compared to Gwyneth’s six-page books that boasted a whopping six sentences, Jonah’s books were the kindergarten equivalent of Moby Dick. The first sentence of the 16-page book was something to the effect of: “Once there was a fisherman who lived with his wife in a hut in a small village by the sea.” It was easily a second-grade level book, if not higher. I was half-expecting it to say something about “maritime trade agreements” or the “economic impact of climate change on commercial fishing enterprises.” I mean, seriously. Jonah read through this book with words like “enormous” and “ocean” without even stuttering. I told myself that he probably just had the story memorized…until I noticed that he accidentally skipped a sentence. After he finished, I went back through the book, covered the pictures and pointed to individual words, expecting him to falter when they weren’t in context. Uh, no. The first word I turned to was “enormous.” Jonah read it easily.

Good for Jonah.

I mean that. I really don’t harbor any resentment toward this very sweet, very smart kid. I’m okay with the fact that Gwyneth isn’t the class genius. I’m not the kind of parent who thinks academic brilliance is the key to a happy, fulfilling life. In fact, I often think the opposite is true. Regardless of Gwyneth’s reading level, she’s a well-adjusted, engaged daughter with a kind heart.

This last point was driven home when one of the other boys in the class came back to the couch to read with me. I introduced myself as Gwyneth’s mom and he said, “Oh! Gwyneth is always nice to me.” I thought it was an odd statement to make, but as I read with him, I realized he probably said it because it’s the exception, rather than the rule. The boy was socially awkward in a way that I guessed made it hard for him to relate to his classmates. I imagined him struggling to fit in with his peers and being made fun of on the playground. My heart broke for him.

But, “Gwyneth is always nice to me.”

It reminded me of a few weeks earlier at Noah’s Tae Kwon Do class. Prior to the start of class, a group of kids, including Noah, were sitting on the mat talking. Cole, the son of a friend of ours, had just joined the class and was sitting off by himself. Noah had met Cole a few times but didn’t really remember him (having last seen him a year or more ago). I was busy checking my email or talking to Gwyneth, so I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on until Cole’s father walked up to me and said, “Can I give Noah a huge kiss?”

“Why?” I asked.

He told me that when Noah saw Cole sitting by himself, Noah turned to him and asked, “Do you want to join us?”

These are my children. And this is why, when it comes down to it, I really don’t give a shit what level they read at. It is their hearts, wide open and brimming, that make them exceptional. And I bask in the glow of it.

Next week: Noah’s class.

The kids walked home by themselves the other day. This was not a sanctioned walking-home-alone. This was a “mommy shows up late to pick the kids up from school and they’re gone” walking-home-alone.

Have you ever seen a really, really mad gorilla? Me neither. But I can imagine what they look like: bloodshot eyes, bared teeth, long arms waving in the air like Slinkys.

Ok, after I found the Slinky ad on YouTube, I searched for “angry gorilla” and this is what I found:

First, let me say for the record I wish this gorilla could have been successful in his attempt to smash through the Plexiglas. I wish he could have grabbed the punk who was teasing him, pinned him to the floor—along with his giggling parents—and then thrown them around the room a bit…not to the point where they were actually injured, but to the point where they crapped their pants.

Seriously, I hate it when people tease animals, especially at zoos where it states very clearly: “DO NOT TAP ON THE GLASS.” “DO NOT TEASE THE ANIMALS.” “DO NOT BE AN ASSHOLE.” In an alternate universe, those people live behind the glass and gorillas are banging on their homes, à la Planet of the Apes. But I digress…

Okay, take this angry gorilla and multiply him by about a thousand and you’ll get an idea of what I looked like when I got home on Thursday and found my children waiting for me in the front yard.
But let me start at the beginning…

Most weekdays, about 45 minutes before it’s time for me to pick up the kids from school, I take the dogs for a walk in the woods behind the elementary school. I time it so I’m finishing the walk right when school is letting out. I meet the kids at the corner, where they’re waiting near the crossing guard, and we all walk home together—two kids, two dogs, and me. We’ve been doing this practically everyday since the school started in September.

But on Thursday, I was a little late—emphasis on little. By the time I got to the corner, school had been out for a whopping three minutes. I waited at the corner, watching the children pour out of the doors of the building, looking for Noah and Gwyneth. They never came.

As any parent who has been in this situation will tell you, it’s hard not to imagine the worst in cases like this. I consider myself rational and measured and know intellectually that chances are, the kids are fine. But on a gut level, I imagine white, windowless vans driven by men with mustaches, or speeding cars careening around corners just as my children step off the curb.

More than likely, though, they’re fine. They just got confused, I told myself. Maybe they started walking home on their own? I began to walk toward home, but I didn’t see them in the sea of kids making their way down the sidewalk. So I got out my cell phone and called SACC, Gwyneth’s after-kindergarten program from which Noah picks her up everyday before meeting me on the corner.

“Did Noah pick Gwyneth up today?” I asked the man who answered.

“I didn’t see him,” he said, “but he usually does, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. But Gwyneth is gone, right? I mean, she left?”

“Yes, she’s gone.” I could hear the worry creep into his voice. “Why? Is she not with you?”

“No.” I replied. “And neither is Noah. I’m not sure where they went.” By this point I had turned back toward the school and was walking briskly across the street—practically dragging my dogs, who were hot and tired and ready to go home—to kiss-and-ride, the semi-circular driveway where parents pick up their kids. Maybe for some reason they thought we were meeting there today?

I hung up with SACC and asked the teachers who were on duty at kiss-and-ride whether they had seen Noah and Gwyneth. They said no. I think they started to ask me a follow-up question, but I was already rushing back toward home. I looked at my watch. School let out at 3:55. It was almost 4:10. It would take me another five minutes to get home. That was 20 minutes of not knowing where my kids were.

As I walked home, I got out my cell phone to call my neighbor, Beth, who picked up her kids around the same time and often walked home in step with us. I called her house. No answer. I called her cell and got a “this cellular telephone is no longer in service” message. I wanted to scream. Instead, I started jogging. My poor 13-year-old dog, Barrabas, looked at me as if to say, “Since when do we jog? I’m the equivalent of a 90-year-old man and you expect me to run?” He trotted as far behind me as the leash would allow, his collar nearly slipping off his head.

I turned the corner of our street and strained my eyes to look down the block toward our house. I saw a few kids and an adult standing across the street. As I got closer, I could see the adult was Beth, my neighbor, who was waving at me to tell me everything was okay; the kids were there.

As I approached the house Beth said, “I was just about to call you,” but I didn’t let her finish. I pointed to my children, who were standing in the front yard completely oblivious to the shit-storm that was about to descend upon them, and said, “You guys are in so much trouble.”

Noah, always quick on defense, replied, “But you were late!”

“I was three minutes late, Noah,” I said. “Besides, I don’t care if I was late. You’re not supposed to walk home alone.”

Beth told me she was walking a ways behind the kids and that Noah was very good about stopping at the corners and looking both ways. I thanked her for waiting with them and quickly escorted Noah and Gwyneth inside, who were now aware of the aforementioned brewing shit-storm and completely silent as a result.

Before I tell you about all the screaming and crying that ensued, let me admit right here that I overreacted. The kids, after all, were fine. A neighbor was with them; they were careful crossing the streets; there were no white vans or trips to the ICU. In the grand scheme of terrible things to do, walking home alone is very low on the list. But I couldn’t get out of my head what if—what if they hadn’t been fine? What if my neighbor hadn’t been with them?


This is what I shrieked at the kids like the out-of-control gorilla before sending them to their rooms, tears streaking their faces. I then stood in the kitchen for a solid five minutes, literally shaking.

Protecting kids is tricky business. As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I believe parents today (including myself) over-protect their children. Just two days before, I was telling Dave how I think the kids are old enough this summer to play on the school playground by themselves. I was remembering that by the time I was five—Gwyneth’s age—I was going to the park without my parents. At seven—Noah’s age—I was riding my bike around the neighborhood all by myself. When I was just a year older than Noah, I rode horses bareback all day alone at my uncle’s ranch. Dave, too, remembers doing more by himself when he was our kids’ ages than not. We both agreed that those were really important moments of growth for us. They taught us to put into use all the advice our parents had given us over the years. They taught us to be independent and trouble-shoot problems and take care of one another. They taught us to think for ourselves.

I remember when I was four years old and living in California. My sister, Amy, and I were playing by ourselves at the park, when Amy fell off the monkey bars and broke her wrist. The two of us had to figure out what to do…which, by the way, involved accepting a ride home from a strange man. (Granted, we lived on a military base at the time, so the environment was a little safer than it otherwise might have been…but still, it cracks me up that this was the choice we made and my parents were fine with it.) Then there was the time I was five years old and riding my bike with my brother around our neighborhood in Florida. I fell and scraped my knee so bad, it looked like someone had taken a melon-baller and scooped a chunk of skin out of it. As I stood there screaming, my brother dutifully looked for the missing chunk of skin on the ground—convinced, as was I, that we could find it and put it back in its place to speed the healing. He didn’t find the skin, but he did carry me home that day.

I’m probably not doing a good job arguing in favor of letting the kids play alone when the two stories I drum up involve substantial injury and a ride in a car with a stranger. But I remember those events because they forced us all to rely on ourselves and each other in a way we never would have been able to had our parents been around. There’s something to be said for skinned knees and broken bones when they teach you important life lessons.

And there’s something to be said for my kids making the decision on their own to walk home by themselves when I didn’t show. They took initiative. They took care of one another. They looked both ways before crossing the street.

But what if. This is the speech I gave them after I finally stopped shaking and made them write out 10 times, “If Mom is late picking us up, I will go to the office or SACC.” And not just the scary what ifs—which I didn’t dwell on lest I scare the crap out of them—but the more realistic what ifs: “What if I was stuck somewhere and wasn’t able to get home for one or two hours? What if I never showed up at the house?”

Knowing my kids, if that had happened, they probably would have been resourceful enough to figure it out. They probably would have gone to a trustworthy neighbor’s house and asked for them to call me. But what if, what if, what if?

On Saturday, two days after The Event, I took Gwyneth to her ballet class. We were running behind and I knew that, by the time I found parking in the overcrowded lot, she would’ve been late for class. So I dropped her off at the curb. This felt like a big deal to me. The ballet studio is not right by the road. To get to it, Gwyneth would have to walk around to the back of a building and then down a flight of stairs. All told, she would have to walk about 100 feet by herself. “Do you think you can do it?” I asked her.

“Yes!” she said enthusiastically.

“Okay,” I said. “Go straight to class. Don’t talk to any strangers.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

She stepped out of the car with her pink satin ballet bag slung over her shoulder and an umbrella propped open over her head. I watched her walk down the sidewalk until she disappeared behind the building, at which point I drove away to find parking. When I got to the studio, I found her waiting outside her classroom door with her ballet slippers on.

“Where are your boots?” I asked.

“They’re in the dressing room with my ballet bag, where we always leave them,” she told me.

“What about your umbrella?”

“I left it outside with the other umbrellas.” Then she looked at me seriously, “You’re not supposed to bring them inside, Mommy.”

“Okay, good,” I said.

“I didn’t really know how to close the umbrella but I didn’t ask for help because you told me not to talk to strangers, remember? But then I figured it out.”

“Good job,” I told her.

I watched her walk into class, lock step with the others, then I went to the waiting area, where I sat down with my book in front of a bank of video monitors that beam out to waiting parents the goings-on of each classroom. I would look up occasionally and see Gwyneth jumping and spinning across the floor. At the end of class, they turn out the lights, so the only thing visible on the monitors are the girls who dance by the doorway—catching the ambient light as they go by. I watched as girl after girl appeared briefly from the darkness and then disappeared again. But Gwyneth never emerged. She must have stayed in the dark corner of the studio, dancing in the blackness, far out of my sight.

I’ve had it. I’m actually surprised I made it this long—that I was able to endure the seemingly endless days that bled into one another like some sort of Jean-Jacques Rousseau film. (Okay, in truth, I’ve never watched a Rousseau film. I actually have no idea who he is. I googled “French absurdist filmmakers” and his was the first name that popped up…although he’s really Belgian. But this alone should give you an idea of my state of mind lately.)

I’m of course talking about the snow. In case you hadn’t heard, the east coast was walloped last week with two back-to-back storms that resulted in the shut down of the federal government for almost an entire week. The kids have missed seven straight days of school (today, although a holiday, was supposed to be a snow make-up day, but it was—whadayaknow—canceled due to—wait for it—snow!). If you count the two weekends we’ve been snowed in, the children have been home for 11 straight days.

I think those of you who read this blog regularly know a few things about me by now:

1) I like horses.
2) I like to sleep.
3) I have a very low tolerance for spending lots and lots of time with my kids.

And I have to qualify #3 because that’s really about me, not my kids. I need a lot of alone time to function in the world. There’s really no one I can spend that much time with without growing tired of them. And really, my kids are great and actually very low maintenance. As I write this, they’re downstairs playing nicely together. Oh wait…no, they’re not…I just heard the television.

Me: “Kids, who told you that you were allowed to watch television?”

Silence.

Me: “Since when can you watch TV without permission?”

I was answered with a chorus of very unconvincing “sorries.”

Sigh.

They know I’m weak. Like a lion watching the lone antelope limping far behind the herd, the kids know I can’t hold out much longer. Any semblance of routine and discipline I’ve worked hard these six years to establish is one juice box and a snack-pack of Hershey kisses away from crumbling. At this point, I’d let the children draw on the walls and set the living room couch on fire if it means I get fifteen minutes of uninterrupted quiet.

So, yes, the snow. I actually did quite well for the first week of it. There’s no getting around the fact that the snow is beautiful. When I woke up in the morning, I would look out the window ready to grouse and grumble, but then be so taken by the pure white landscape filling the window frame that I couldn’t help but whisper—usually to the dogs—“Isn’t it beautiful?”

And the fact that we had so much snow meant no cars were out, which meant I could walk the dogs all over the neighborhood down the center of the street. The night the last storm hit, I took the dogs out around nine o’clock. The snow was falling in giant, pancake-like flakes. No one was out but us. It was absolutely silent. I could have walked forever.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that the kids love the snow. Our neighbors built the equivalent of a skeleton track in their front yard, and every day the kids would trek down the street with their sleds in tow and spend hours zipping down it like they were training for the Olympics.

And because the government was closed, Dave was home from work for the week. So we’ve had FAMILY TIME like nobody’s business. We played cards. We baked. We cooked. We watched movies together and ate popcorn. We shoveled snow. We drank hot chocolate. Seriously, Norman Rockwell couldn’t have painted a better scene—except for the parts where Noah would serenade us with arm-fart covers of “Happy Birthday” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

For the most part, I’ve enjoyed it. I commented to Dave how rare it is to have time with the kids where we’re forced to do nothing. Even on vacation, we’re usually running from one place to the next. But being snowed-in, running wasn’t an option. Our lives, typically scheduled to within an inch of our lives, all of a sudden had no boundaries. We didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything. No Tae Kwon Do. No Ballet. No horses. No buying snacks for the Valentine’s Day party at school. No homework. Aside from the little bit of work Dave and I were able to squeeze in from time to time, we did nothing for over a week.

But we all knew I couldn’t enjoy it forever. A refrain throughout Dave’s and my life together has been, “What fun is vacation when you don’t have anything to compare it to?” Whenever we’ve had stretches of unemployment or slogged through too-long, too-boring vacations, we’ve said how important it is to have the routine—and work—of normal life from which to take a break. Otherwise, it’s not a break. It’s Groundhog Day.

And that’s what these snow days have become. Nothing distinguishes one day from the next. Thursday night as we were going to bed, I said to Dave, “I can’t believe tomorrow is going to be exactly the same as today, and exactly the same as the day before that. When is it going to end?” Even the dogs have had it. Our young dog Clara, who spent the better part of the first five days of snow bounding through it like a sled dog (in fact, I even bought her a harness and hooked the kids’ sled to it), now stands on the steps leading out our back door with a kind of bewildered “not-this-again” look on her face.



(Our older dog, Barrabas, has been unimpressed since day one.) They keep waiting for me to put on my riding boots and load them in the car to drive to the barn, but that hasn’t happened in ten days because the roads to the barn have been impassable as well.

In a perfect summation of what this snow has done to our spirits, my neighbor Cy sent an email the other night: “I’ve even lost the will to drink.” To which my friend Lee Ann replied, “I haven’t lost the will. We’ve just run out.”

I was ready to take the dogs for a long walk and never return.

Luckily, our friends Heather and Vince came for a visit from Philadelphia this weekend, reminding us that life existed beyond our single, half-mile block. It was like Noah (of the Bible, not my son) seeing the dove with the olive branch in its beak for the first time that signaled to him the floodwaters had receded. The end of the snow tunnel was, however dimly, in sight.

We got a babysitter Saturday night and went to the city with a group of friends for dinner and then to a bar to watch a band. I drank and danced and reveled in the fact that I wasn’t at home watching Ella Enchanted and eating my bodyweight in popcorn yet again.

…and then came the email yesterday afternoon from the school district telling us schools would be closed Monday…and the weather report predicting another snowfall, albeit lighter, tonight. And with all this went my sanity and any hope that life will ever return to normal. The dove with the olive branch in its beak just took a nosedive into a snow bank. But, alas, I still have my will to drink.

Sunday, January 31, 2010, Orlando, Fla. – I fear I’m becoming a curmudgeon. Or maybe I’ve always been a curmudgeon and am just now realizing it. I’m not sure.

I’m writing this from DisneyWorld. The Happiest Place on Earth. Where You Wish Upon a Star and Dreams Come True. Where Magic Happens. I’m here with Dave and the kids (I hope that goes without saying) and my parents, who very generously bankrolled this trip. It’s our fourth and final night here and, I have to say, we’ve had a really great time. We’ve ridden the rides. We’ve seen the shows. We’ve eaten cotton candy. (Okay, I’ve eaten cotton candy.) We got to enjoy 70 degrees and sun while it as 20 degrees and snowing in DC. All in all, a really great trip.

And yet, when it comes down to it, I don’t like it. I don’t like Disney.

I’m sure writing that sentence just put me on a terrorist watch list somewhere. After all, how un-American can I be? That’s like saying I don’t like football or beer or apple pie (incidentally, I don’t really like those things either). But the truth is, something about Disney gives me the creeps…something beyond the ubiquitous animatronics and mouse ears. It’s the singularity of it all—both commercially (Disney owns virtually all of Orlando) and metaphorically. As metaphor, Disney represents the small world. The belief that we’re all ultimately the same. One nation (nay—one world) united under Mickey. It feels suspiciously like groupthink. Walking around DisneyWorld, I feel like the only one who hasn’t drank the Kool-Aid and that it’s only a matter of time before I’m found out and put in the fake stocks in Frontierland for the rest of my life.

DisneyWorld to me feels eerily similar to the 1960s British TV series “The Prisoner,” of which my high school boyfriend was a huge fan. It only ran for 17 episodes but, as luck would have it, Blockbuster Video carried every single one. So on Friday night, my boyfriend and I would rent them and go back to his apartment (although he was in high school, he lived alone in his own apartment—my parents were thrilled about this fact) to watch it. The series chronicled the life of a British secret agent who resigns from service only to wake up and find himself held captive in an unknown village on an unknown coast, where everyone is happy and pleasant and the weather is always sunny and 75 degrees. No one in the village has names, just numbers (our hero is “Number Six”). Number One is the leader, but no one has seen him (her?) or knows who it is. Everyone in the village seems content with their happy, perfect little life, and Number Six distrusts all of it.

Needless to say, it was the perfect TV show for a couple of high school kids who lived in a picture-perfect suburb of Houston and fancied themselves rebels who raged against the machine on a daily basis. As it turns out, it was also a business model for DisneyWorld (which, suspiciously, opened just three years after the finale of “The Prisoner.”) In Disney, all the little girls are referred to “princesses” (not quite numbers, but close). All cast members (not employees, but “cast members”) smile pretty much constantly. “Dreams come true” is the inescapable theme of everything—every song, every ride, every show, every piece of merchandise…even sections of the park closed for renovation are plastered with signs that say “dream builders.”

Then there’s just the fact that everything is a façade. The buildings aren’t real. Most of the plants are fake. Even the “mud” that the safari trucks drive through in Animal Kingdom (where, to Disney’s credit, the animals are real) is actually plastic molded to look like mud.

Now I realize this is the whole point of a theme park. It’s intended to be a world of pretend into which you escape for a brief period of time. You shouldn’t go there expecting reality. If you want to go on a real safari, take a trip to Kenya, right? I get that. And I have to say, as a patron, I appreciate that the parks are well run and well maintained and the staff is courteous and helpful. But I just can’t lose myself in the fantasy. I don’t trust it. Instead, I spend my time walking around the park looking for glimpses of reality. I try to glance through open doors that say “cast members only” to see if I can spot the scaffolding propping up the saloon wall, or Snow White taking a smoke break, or, hell, even the bathroom attendant scowling and muttering under her breath, “Damn tourists.”

I was talking to my parents about this, and remembering how, as a child, I never liked books or movies that were set in fantasy worlds. I loathed Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The book James and the Giant Peach freaked me out. Even now, I rarely read or watch anything that would qualify as sci-fi (thus why I have no desire to see Avatar and haven’t read any of the Twilight series). My dad said he’s the same way. He tried to read the Harry Potter books but couldn’t because the whole time he kept thinking, “If they have all this magic, why don’t they just use it to stop the villain?”

My mom shook her head. “But if that’s your approach to life, you never enjoy anything. If you’re always skeptical, you can’t lose yourself in a book or movie.”

Both my dad and I protested that we could, but only if the book or movie had an element of realism.

Yet I can’t help but wonder if my mom is right. I’ve often wished I could suspend disbelief long enough to read and enjoy a really cheesy romance novel, or spend three hours watching a self-indulgent James Cameron film, or believe in God. Am I missing out by being so hell-bent on what’s real?

I once read about how, when Captain Cook’s ships first arrived off the coast of Australia in the 1700s, the aborigines didn’t see them. Or, rather, they could see them, but they couldn’t perceive them. Because they had never seen these huge sailing ships before, their minds were unable to create an image of them. It wasn’t until they saw the rippling wake of the ships on the water that they could then perceive what they were.

The veracity of this story is widely debated. New Agers like to use it as proof that we are, indeed, surrounded by all sorts of things—spirits, energies, auras—that most people don’t have the mental vocabulary to see. Scientists say the story is apocryphal and that the mind has no problem perceiving things it doesn’t understand.

While I want to believe the New Agers are right, I tend to side with the scientists. It’s kind of sad. I’ve always loved Hamlet’s words to Horatio, who doubts the events that are transpiring: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” But even if I love the sentiment, God knows (if He exists) that I don’t live it.

And what’s worse, I’m passing this way-too-healthy dose of skepticism on to my children. Noah lost his first tooth a couple months ago, and already he doubts the existence of the tooth fairy. He’s not too sure about this whole Santa thing, either. Gwyneth told Dave today that the only princess she likes is Pocahantas “because she was a real person; the others are made up.” Dave blamed this on his genetic contribution (his side of the family is lousy with scientists), but I know I’m responsible, too. Not just my genes (which are weighted heavily in favor of engineers), but my very outlook on life, which seems to be slowly sucking the magic and wonder of childhood out of my children.

Last night, we were at the Magic Kingdom for the fireworks. And I have to admit, it was, for lack of a better word, magical. We arrived just as the first firework made its arc through the air. Amazingly, we even managed to find our own private little spot from which to watch the display burst in all its pyrotechnic glory above Cinderella’s castle. For a few moments, I forgot that the castle was nothing more than plywood and plastic. I forgot that the music being piped through the loudspeakers wasn’t a live orchestra, and that the fireworks were specifically designed for Disney using a reduced-smoke chemical (which Dave informed us). For a few moments, I completely lost myself in the beauty of the show. I looked down at my kids and could see the wonder of childhood seemingly steeled against escape and locked deep within them…until about half-way through when Noah and Gwyneth turned to us and said, “Can we go now?”…reminding me that magic, even in its truest form, is always short-lived.

The text came from my friend Lee Ann first thing Saturday morning: “Read the Washington Post Magazine, if you have time…Not even halfway through but I’d like to punch the guy they pull quoted already.”

Uh-oh. I knew if Lee Ann’s hackles were up, mine would be, too. After I made my bleary-eyed way downstairs, said good morning to the kids, let the dogs outside, and opened the curtains, I found the Post’s weekend magazine and opened it to the cover story: “The Test of Time” by Brigid Schulte. The subhead read: “An expert told her she had loads of time. She decided to see if he was right.” Immediately I saw the pull quote Lee Ann was referring to: “Women have time. Women have at least 30 hours of leisure every week. In fact, women have more leisure now than they did in the 1960s, even though more women are working outside the home.” The quote was attributed to John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who is known as the Father of Time-Use Studies.

It didn’t say whether he is the father of actual children, but it did mention that he is now, at the age of 74, divorced and living alone. As soon as I read that, I, like probably 99 percent of the women who read the article, thought, “Of course he is.” Because either he never had kids and doesn’t realize how time-consuming they are, or he had kids and his wife did all the work and promptly divorced him.

I really, really didn’t like this man.

I’ve actually read this argument before: that we have more free time now than the generations of women before us. And why wouldn’t we? We no longer have to scrub clothes on rocks or cook dinner for twelve over an open fire. I remember reading an article years ago in Ms. magazine that interviewed women who were at least a hundred years old. It asked these women what, in their century of living, they thought were the greatest achievements for women’s rights. The first thing all of them cited was the right to vote. But do you know what came second? It wasn’t the Pill, or women being accepted in greater numbers to law and medical schools, or women flying into space. It was the washing machine. Almost all of the women talked about how being able to toss clothes into a machine instead of scrubbing them by hand on a washboard revolutionized their lives. It gave them free time, something none of them had had before.

So I get why we should have more free time. But I also get why we don’t. Or, rather, I get why most women don’t. Because as I read the article, I realized that I actually have what seems to be an inordinate amount of leisure time.

I hesitate to write this for fear that you’ll all find a way to stone me through the computer screen. But it’s true. I did a quick calculation and found that I spend more than 30 hours each week doing leisure activities:

• Four days a week, I ride my horse. If you count my drive to the barn, grooming, tacking, etc., it’s about a four-hour excursion: 16 hours
• On days that I don’t ride my horse, I walk the dogs for roughly an hour: 3 hours
• I read for pleasure (a book and/or newspaper) at least an hour each day: 7 hours
• I watch TV (including movies on the weekends) an average of about two hours a day: 14 hours
• I take a half-hour nap every day. Okay, I know this sounds like the epitome of laziness, but I’ve always believed the Spaniards were on to something with the whole siesta idea. And now multiple studies have proved it: we’re much more productive if we close our eyes for just a few minutes each day. So I do: 3.5 hours

Weekly total: 43.5 hours. And that doesn’t even count Facebook.

So, as much as I don’t like Mr. Robinson, I’m living proof that he’s right. And it’s embarrassing. Most working mothers I know, like the woman who wrote the article, barely have time to shower, much less spend 16 hours a week on a horse. Admitting that I have this much free time makes me feel spoiled and lazy and, quite frankly, unimportant.

The reason I feel this way, according to Edson Rodriguez, a professor of cultural sociology at the University of Southern California, is that being busy is a status symbol. As the article observes, “Everybody who aspires to be anybody is busy. Gone are the days when the goal of the wealthy and elite was to laze around doing nothing.”

But the weird thing is, I’m not the wealthy and elite. We’re far from rich. I don’t have a staff taking care of us. Aside from having someone clean the house twice a month (which we just recently canceled), everything else it takes to run a household (grocery shopping, cooking, daily cleaning, shuttling kids to and from activities, laundry, paying bills, filling out school forms, and so on and so forth), we do on our own. And, in truth, I do most of it. So how in the world do I have all this free time?

Right now, the answer is easy: since the economy went south, my contract work (the corporate communications stuff I do that actually makes money) has slowed to a crawl. I still write for several hours each day (working on articles or this blog or my book), but I don’t have the pressing deadlines looming over me like I have in the past. But even when I think back to those days when I was juggling multiple projects and working 50 hours a week (often including nights and weekends), I realize that, although my leisure time activities were truncated, I still found time to do them. I don’t think a week has gone by since I started riding horses that I haven’t gone to the barn at least once.


Part of the reason for this is that I work from home and am my own boss. So I can decide, in the middle of the day, that I’m going to leave my work for a few hours and go ride my horse, or take a shorter break and go walk the dogs. I might pay the price later by having to work after the kids go to bed, but still, I can make the choice to do that. If I worked in an office, I wouldn’t have that kind of freedom. Any leisure activities I might do would be crammed into the small windows before 8 a.m. or after 6 p.m.—at which time I’d also be juggling kids.

The other reason I have the luxury of free time is, no doubt, a supportive husband. It kind of amazes me that in all the years Dave and I have been together, I can count on one hand the number of times he’s looked visibly annoyed when I’ve told him that I’m going to the barn. Most of the time, he’s happy that I go (in part because when I don’t, I turn into a raging lunatic). I return the favor and encourage him to take time to go for long bike rides on the weekends. But there’s no question my horse habit sucks up infinitely more time and money than his cycling one. Still, he enthusiastically supports it.

But I think the biggest reason I have more free time than most other working moms—and this is the hardest part to admit—is that, when it comes to my kids, I don’t feel the guilt most other mothers do about spending time with them. I don’t think it’s ever crossed my mind as I was riding my horse (even those times when I was working nights and weekends), “Wow, I really should be home right now. My poor kids.” I have no problem when I’m reading the newspaper telling them not to interrupt me. I don’t feel bad when Dave and I get a babysitter and go on a date. And I don’t think twice about telling them I’m going to go lay down for 30 minutes, so they need to play quietly.

And as I say all that, I immediately want to start qualifying it by telling you that I love my kids and I love spending time with them. Because I do. But I don’t feel this compulsive need many other mothers have to spend my every spare moment with them.

Dave and I were talking about this over dinner last night (while grandpa babysat the kids) and how masculine this approach to parenting is. He was saying that if he were a mother with the career he has now (which involves many late nights and fairly frequent travel), he would feel incredibly guilty about all the time spent away from the kids. But he’s not a mother; he’s a father. As such, he doesn’t have that kind of guilt. That doesn’t mean that if he had a choice, he wouldn’t forgo the late nights and travel to spend more time with the children, but he doesn’t necessarily feel bad that he can’t. And neither do I.

When I write things like this, I often wonder what my children will think someday when they read it. Will they doubt that I ever really loved them? Will they print out this blog entry and take it to their therapist as proof of what a selfish, self-centered mother I was? Or will it just tell them what they knew all along: that I love them, but I also love being able to pursue other things I love away from the demands of my family? More than likely, the answer will be: both.

I know because I lived it. My father was an astronaut who loved flying above pretty much everything else in his life. He has said (and even wrote in his memoirs) that if someone had come to him and told him that he could fly into space only if he sold his wife and children into slavery, he wouldn’t have hesitated before handing them the shackles and chains, saying, “Take them.”

I see more of myself in this statement than I care to admit. Although I wouldn’t give up my children for anything (and I don’t really believe my dad would have either…ummm…would you have, Dad?), I understand that children can be one of the important things in a person’s life without being the only thing. This was my father’s approach to parenting, and it’s mine, too. But I can safely say I always knew my father loved me…even if I wasn’t the center of his life. I’m hoping my kids feel the same way.

And with that, I have to go. The kids are awake and I need to get them breakfast. I wish I had more time…

I’ve started writing three different posts today, and abandoned each after a few paragraphs—bored to tears by what I’d written.

And then I found a “One Step Ahead” catalog in the pile of mail on my desk and started thumbing through it. I’ve now decided this catalog is my muse. Because it is such a rich treasure trove of crap to make fun of.

For those of you who don’t know what “One Step Ahead” is, it’s a catalog that bills itself as “Thoughtfully Selected Products to Help With Baby…Every Step of the Way.” But what it should really be called is, “Thoughtfully Selected Products For the Most Paranoid and Guilt-Ridden Of Parents.”

Ok, a quick disclaimer: I’ve bought several products from this catalog, thus why I’m on the mailing list. Some of them are really useful: the baby gates, the booster seats, the outlet covers, and the like. And it has some cool, creative toys. But so many of the products seem so outside the realm of normal, I shudder to imagine the parents who are buying them.

A few examples:

• The “Relax Right Memory Foam Pillow”: A $24.95 pillow for toddlers ages 18 months to five years. “Ordinary pillows push the spine out of alignment; that’s not good for growing bones!” it tells me.

Oh really? Every night when I put my kids to sleep, they ‘re laying with their heads on their $5 cotton-poly pillows. By the time I check on them before I go to bed—three to four hours later—their heads aren’t anywhere near the pillow, which is a good thing because usually it is either on the floor, or wedged into the corner of the bed against the wall. Why in the world would I spend that much money on a pillow that would likely suffer the same fate? I’m going to take a gamble and say that my growing bones did just fine on the pillows I had as a child, which were likely made out of asbestos, and assume that my children’s bones will do just fine, too.

• The “Gummi Crib Rail”: For just $13.95, you can turn your baby’s crib rail into a teether! I’m not exactly sure what this is. From what I can tell from the picture, it looks like a strip of rubber you attach to the crib rail, that your child can then suck and chew on. “Protects both baby and his crib,” the catalog reads. I really didn’t know either of these things were an issue. I’ve never heard dentists warn parents about the myriad dental problems that result from chewing on bed rails. Nor have I heard of paint ingestion or gum splinters. I mean, I have a lot of friends with kids and never once have any of them complained about their teething babies chewing the furniture to pieces like a new puppy. But a product has been developed, so I assume this is a problem for at least some children? Or was this a product that was developed in search of a problem? I seriously suspect the latter.

• “Infant/Child CPR Instructional DVD”: “In a mere quarter of an hour [and for just $19.95], you can learn how to save your child’s life!” Okay, there’s nothing wrong with learning CPR. It’s a good skill to have. But I hate the paranoid tactics used to push CPR classes onto parents. They talk as if babies are suffocated on an hourly basis and the only thing standing between your child and certain death is your resuscitation skills. Further, this DVD in particular bothers me because, according to the ad copy, “it uses real kids—not dolls—so you learn more effectively.” What the hell? It uses real kids? What child actors did they find to agree to that: “Here, Kate, inhale this marble into your wind pipe.” Or, “Here, Josh…we know you can’t swim yet, but two words: ‘Canon ball!’” [splash.]

• But I think my favorite product the catalog has to offer is the “Portable UV Pacifier Sterilizer.” That’s right, Mommy! If you’re tired of your baby dropping his pacifier in the tobacco-spit in the Wal-Mart parking, now you can sterilize on-the-go. For just $29.95, you can have this “ingenious, palm-sized sterilizer” that is “clinically proven to destroy 99.9% of germs” in just six minutes!

First of all, I’d love to see a kid attached to his pacifier wait a full six minutes for it to be sterilized before it’s returned to his mouth. By definition, children are an impatient lot, and I can’t imagine any child kicking back and reading the latest issue of Scientific American while waiting for the advanced UV technology to work its magic on his binky. If a child does have that kind of patience, that’s a clue that he’s way too old to be sucking on a pacifier.

Second, aside from children with suppressed immune systems, is there any mother out there who thinks any sickness her child has ever had can be attributed to a dirty pacifier? If your baby is mobile and has any contact with other children in any way (at the park, in Kindermusik, in preschool or daycare), the number of germs they’re swapping is so astronomically high, it makes the bacteria swimming around on a recently crash-landed pacifier look like a sample taken from a clean room. I’ve seen toddlers eat each other’s boogers. I’ve seen them lick ketchup off tables in restaurants. I’ve seen a baby regurgitate a cracker and then hand it to his playmate, who quickly swallowed it. Do you really think the pacifier that spent three seconds on the ground is your biggest worry?

Oy.

Mostly, I just enjoy laughing at this stuff. It gives me something to do between eating and checking Facebook. But when I stop laughing, I find myself really, really annoyed by it. Because I think marketers who hawk products like this do a real disservice to parents and, ultimately, their kids. We already live in a parent culture ruled by fear—why propagate it?

The answer, of course, is because it makes money. In this way, the baby products industry is eerily similar to the beauty products industry: Make people insecure so they’ll buy products that give them the illusion of control. No one wants to be the parent who didn’t spend $13.95 on the bed rail teether and then have a child with an abscess from a splinter. Nor do you want to have the kid who catches the rare auto-immune disease from the contaminated pacifier. These products shout at us, loudly and insistently: “What if…?! What if…?! What if…?!” and leave us to fill in the horrifying blanks.

I’ve spent the better part of my time as a mother rebelling against this. When the preschool Noah was attending as a two-year-old offered a low-cost CPR certification class, I refused to sign up. “How many people do you know who’ve had to do CPR on their kids?” I asked Dave, who thought I was being unnecessarily stubborn.

“None,” he answered.

“Right.”

“But what if something happened and you needed it?” he countered.

“That’s what 911 is for.”

As I recount that, I realize it sounds a bit cavalier. How could I not take a course that would teach me how to save the life of my child? But being a parent means constantly balancing our natural fear for our children’s safety with reality. I used baby gates because the risk of my toddling baby tumbling down the stairs was high. I put squishy rubber things on the corners of our coffee table when Noah and Gwyneth were little because it was very likely one of them was going to clock their head on it. I kept medicines and chemicals locked up and out of reach. I put plastic thingies in the outlets. But a specially designed pillow to help my child’s bone development? A bed rail teether? A portable pacifier sterilizer? Really?

I remember my grandmother looking at the small mountain of gifts I’d received at my baby shower before Noah was born. She shook her head and said, “And to think I raised six kids without all this stuff.” At the time, it annoyed me. As a rule, I don’t subscribe to the whole, “Well, you ate lead-based paint chips as a kid and you turned out fine!” parenting philosophy. But now that I’ve had two kids and successfully raised them through babyhood, I realize what she meant. There are actually very few things you really need to get you through your child’s early years: a good nursing bra and breast pump; a good baby carrier and stroller; and a lot of diapers. What you really need, you can’t buy: patience, perspective, a good night’s sleep, and love—lots and lots of love.