The Unsupervised Child, Outside
A couple of nights ago, I read a bedtime story to Fooey: Danny and the Dinosaur. It’s a book many decades old, in which a boy befriends a dinosaur, and they spend the day wandering around Danny’s city, eating ice cream, and playing with Danny’s friends. When we got to the end, and Danny said goodbye to the dinosaur, and they parted and went their separate ways, Fooey looked at me with puzzlement. She couldn’t understand: Why were the children outside all by themselves? Where were their parents?
That question has haunted me ever since. Fooey does not see children outside in our neighbourhood all by themselves. It is so foreign to her that it leaps out as an aberration when she sees the idea illustrated. Of course, she is only five, perhaps too young to run around the neighbourhood without parental oversight. Perhaps; but perhaps not. I remember playing outside at the age of four or five with my brother (younger) and a friend (my age), by ourselves, unsupervised. We were given the freedom, and trust, to walk from our house to his, to cross backyards, to play in our unfenced yard and garage while my mother made supper, or put the baby for a nap, and checked us occasionally from the window. When I was not much older–seven, eight, nine–I played freely outside in my neighbourhood. I don’t remember having to check in regularly with my mother, or any other mother, nor do I recall being “street-proofed” in any way. We explored beyond our own yards, we crossed quiet streets, played on the college campus nearby, went sledding in winter, had imaginary adventures in the small woodlots on campus, and dipped our toes in the creek. By ourselves. No parents. Hours spent on our own.
My children don’t get to do that. (They play unsupervised in our fenced yard; and they walk to school with friends; but these are activities with obvious boundaries and safety features built in). My eldest is nine. We don’t live in a small town, and we do live on a busy street, but there is a little park nearby, and the neighbourhood is full of other kids … few of whom I’ve ever seen walking alone, let alone just going out to wander around and play. Something about the lack of kids out and about makes sending my own kids out and about feel much less safe. If the little park were frequented by neighbourhood kids, on their own, if the sidewalks were full of kids roller skating and scootering and building snow forts, without parental involvement, if it were the habit of kids to wander around the corner to knock on friends’ doors to see whether someone was home and could come out and play … how different would this neighbourhood look and feel?
What are my kids missing out on? What should I be doing differently, as a parent? Why am I so afraid to let them be on their own for long stretches of time, without me knowing exactly where they are or what they’re doing? (I know what I’m afraid of–terrified of losing one of my children–but I don’t know why I am so afraid. Is the fear irrational? Is my control over my kids’ activities hindering their development as autonomous individuals?).
Dear Diary,
I am in between. This is perpetual. Why do I need to keep discovering it as if it were brand new?
The dishes will never be done: I will turn around only to discover someone eating another bowl of granola with pearsauce. Today’s batch of bread will get eaten before the week’s out–all four loaves. And the cookies. And the yogurt, and anything else that I make. We will run out of canned tomatoes, perhaps before spring.
I will sign a book contract. It will feel provisional rather than triumphant. I will remember all the steps yet to be completed. (Like the manuscript.) It will remind me that Hair Hat never felt quite done either, even after I saw it in print.
My children will grow, but I won’t be done with them.
I will fill pages, but I won’t be done with words.
I will get up at 5:40am to run. But I won’t be done running.
None of this is discouraging; or, it shouldn’t be. To be in between is to be alive.
I am in between.
And I need my bed, just now.
Yours, Carrie
A Birthday
How could I not have gotten a photo of this beautiful child, dressed in her new sparkly black wizard robes and an elegant black hat, as she accompanied me post-cake, post-presents, to The New Quarterly’s fall launch party last night? Let’s just say I was filled with pride.
We juggled a packed schedule yesterday and celebrated eight years of AppleApple. She is quick, hard-working, serious and silly, talented, creative, thoughtful, perceptive, eccentric, independent, an old soul.
I’d planned a chocolate cake, but when consulted, AppleApple said, no thanks, she doesn’t like chocolate cake. Friends on Facebook had just posted a retro-sounding easy-to-make cake recipe: yellow cake mix, vanilla pudding mix, coconut, sour cream (we substituted crema, because it makes anything just that much better). Kevin and the little kids baked the cake yesterday afternoon, and AppleApple decorated it herself after school, with leftover Halloween treats. It was tasty and old-school.
We’d organized a birthday brunch for family, and let the big kids stay home from school for the morning. A horse theme was apparent from early gifts, but later gifts revealed a taste for Harry Potter, too. After a somewhat rushed supper (chicken noodle soup and devilled eggs, as requested by AppleApple), and the candle-blowing, the cake-eating, and some fracas over who could pass out the gifts (Fooey was in a state), AppleApple and I raced out the door to our literary date. She and Kevin traded places after 8pm, and she spent the rest of her evening at home putting together her Harry Potter Lego. She still has her friend party, tomorrow (and, I must add, so do we … send us strength). Our house will be transformed into Hogwarts, potions and wands will be made, unicorns sought, and some more of this cake will be eaten–it was such a success, we’re reprising it for tomorrow.
May this year to come be blessed, my child.
Almost Eight
Today is the last day that AppleApple will be seven. So, as is tradition, we took a photo to mark the occasion. Her sister appears in the background of one with a most pitiful expression and a gash on her head, self-inflicted (which may be better than the alternative; not sure), when she was jumping with excitement to get into the back of the truck. I was at home trying to write another story, and Kevin was managing all the kids. It was a picture of gore when they arrived home–gore and chaos. We cleaned her up and steri-stripped the wound (Kevin’s job; mine was to hold her and remind her take calming breaths). At one point, post-supper, I was fielding information that required a response from all four children, simultaneously, while trying to clear the table and do the dishes. With today’s story rattling slightly unfinished around my head. AppleApple was going down the party agenda, in detail; CJ came to report that Albus was being mean to him; Albus explained that he just needed some Alone Time; and Fooey desperately wanted to be held, too (I was holding CJ). I looked at Kevin and said … I am feeling some stress. He agreed.
But onward. This is the pace. I will do my level best to keep up. And tomorrow my seven-year-old will be an eight-year-old.
Trespasser
Part of me wants to write a blog. Part of me thinks it would be more appropriate to write in a journal and close the pages afterward.
One thing to note: I had an excellent writing day on Saturday. For some reason, focus landed in a heap. Better than focus, it was creative energy, and all I had to do was follow the flow of images and ideas. It was a story that I had not planned to write, that came up the day previous; we’ll see whether or not it holds long-term, but it certainly climbed out of me whole, like it had been waiting to be written. I love when that happens.
In terms of the book’s structure, I am seeing it in a very complete way in my mind, seeing what remains to be written. Today is meant to be a writing day. But I have not entered into the manuscript yet, despite the empty house, and the empty cup of coffee. I feel tired, and contemplative. I am thinking about my grandma, whose body was buried yesterday, and I am thinking about what that means …
And this is where I should get out the journal and write privately. But something in me wants to tell how moved I was to stand beside her body, and to speak quietly to her. It was a moment that may not have happened, had Fooey, five years old, not been utterly fascinated by her great-grandma’s body: she asked me to hold her up. She had questions about every detail: Why was Grandma wearing her glasses when she couldn’t see anymore? Why were her hands folded? Why was she wearing a necklace (I hadn’t looked closely enough to see that she was). As we stood there together, I found myself becoming comfortable with the presence of a body emptied of its spirit self. In the past, in similar situations, I have felt–well, frightened–but instead, I felt … okay, somehow. It wasn’t my grandma lying there, it was her earthly body. It was what remained after a long life had ended. We could say goodbye to her.
At the burial site, the minister said that this was as far as we could walk with the body of (she said my grandma’s name, which I won’t). I found that profoundly moving. We could only come this far.
AppleApple said something that struck me afterwards. She said that she felt like she was trespassing, as she looked at her great-grandma’s body. That was the word she used: trespassing. It wasn’t how I felt, and I’m trying to understand what she meant: maybe that without the self to animate the body, the body is somehow unprotected. That there is a fundamental vulnerability. That she is gone, and just like it would feel like trespassing to walk through an empty house and take things that do not belong to us, everything we take from her is now one-sided, forever after, because she is no longer here to offer these things herself. Or maybe AppleApple simply sensed that we were trespassing on something too private, on the body’s still and silent forever rest.
I don’t know.
Rest in peace, Grandma.