US family life AND PARENTING
American of middle age male squash like me vacation
their pants off, but we don’t know how to relax. Buster Brown, our 4 year-old, is obsessed
with organized sports in to games, at summer soccer matches baseball games and flag football scrimmages I was the spectator—sometimes and their mother
too, almost every day of infinite number and interminable length. To judge by
the confusions about time, place and personnel, with the rules of play made up
on the spot and many players whose role was apparently to stand around looking like
they had to go to the bathroom, Buster himself often times did the organizing
of these organized sports.
Sweet Pea, our 5-year-old, loves
horseback riding. She arranged for the "half-lease" of a pony at a local
stable. I never fully grasped the concept. But, since Kibbles-'N-Bits didn't
inform her of his candidacy for president, I gather she was leasing the front half.
We have no idea what our 6 year-old is
interested in. Muffin spent the summer with her face plunged into her laptop,
her ears plugged into her iPod and her fingers thrust into the buttons of her
smart phone. Mrs. O. is afraid that Muffin is being sucked down the trash chute
of popular culture. I'm afraid she's trading derivatives. She's going to wake
up one morning (afternoon, actually) and inform me that her venture-capital
fund has effected a hostile takeover, new senior management is being brought
in, and I'm fired. Muffin did not, as
far as I could tell, leave her bedroom this summer. And yet somehow I was still
always driving to pick her up, usually at Abercrombie & Fitch. Alarming
photographs appear on their shopping bags.
Our 10-year-old loves horseback riding.
She arranged for the "half-lease" of a pony at a local stable. I
never fully grasped the concept. But, since Kibbles-'N-Bits didn't inform her
of his candidacy for president, I gather she was leasing the front half.
We have no idea what our 8 year-old is
interested in. Muffin spent the summer with her face plunged into her laptop,
her ears plugged into her iPod and her fingers thrust into the buttons of her
smart phone. Mrs. O. is afraid that Muffin is being sucked down the trash chute
of popular culture. I'm afraid she's trading derivatives. She's going to wake
up one morning (afternoon, actually) and inform me that her venture-capital
fund has effected a hostile takeover, new senior management is being brought
in, and I'm fired. We might have had, nonetheless, some relaxation this summer if we hadn't ruined travel and leisure by deciding to combine the two. It started well. We took the kids to south Texas, where we have friends with a place on a lake. The ferocious June heat was ideal. Our Utah bred children for whom summer at home is the season when they wear just one layer of fleece.
Our 11-year-old loves horseback riding. She arranged for the "half-lease" of a pony at a local stable. I never fully grasped the concept. But, since Kibbles-'N-Bits didn't inform her of his candidacy for president, I gather she was leasing front half.
We have no idea what our 13-year-old is interested in. Muffin spent the summer with her face plunged into her laptop, her ears plugged into her iPod and her fingers thrust into the buttons of her smart phone. Mrs. O. is afraid that Muffin is being sucked down the trash chute of popular culture. I'm afraid she's trading derivatives. She's going to wake up one morning (afternoon, actually) and inform me that her venture-capital fund has effected a hostile takeover, new senior management is being brought in, and I'm fired. Our 11-year-old loves horseback riding. She arranged for the "half-lease" of a pony at a local stable. I never fully grasped the concept. But, since Kibbles-'N-Bits didn't inform her of his candidacy for president, I gather she was leasing the front half.
We were forced to immerse them in water every waking moment. They couldn't argue with each other, or water got up their noses. Keep children wet at all times. When combined with frequent slathering of sunscreen, what you're doing is marinating them. The tough, stringy gristle of the child skin is tenderized, and, after prolonged broiling, child flesh goes down to sleep easy, but we have to wash the sheets every day.
Supposedly, summer vacation happens because that's when the kids are home from school, although having the kid’s home from school is no vacation. And supposedly the kids are home from school because of some vestigial throwback to our agricultural past. This is nonsense. The little helping hands of farm children were needed during spring planting and fall harvest. (And they must have been more helpful than the little hands of today's children, or our grandparents would have died of starvation.) Farm kids, if they went to school at all, went in midsummer and midwinter, when nothing much was doing around the bay summer vacation is, in fact, based on horse crap. American urbanization predated the automobile. Horses and what they leave behind them clogged cities that were already insalubrious from coal smoke, industry and notional sewage systems. Come summer, it was vacation time because—if you had any sense, common or olfactory—you vacated. Men who could afford it sent their wives, children and, if possible, themselves off to the mountains or the shore. I live in New Hampshire, several hours from Boston, which has been full of prosperous urbanites for longer than anyplace in America. Every summer, people who use "summer" as a verb dutifully peregrinate here to the middle of nowhere and take up residence in crumbling ancestral 30-room shingle cottages, although they can't quite remember why. And what are Americans doing taking summer vacations anyway? Note how the euro fell when the Europeans went back to work at the end of August.) And me, I drink.
American children are said to be overscheduled. We have three, ages 7, 11 and 13, and they are. But neither my wife nor I remember scheduling anything for them. What we had planned for the summer was a little light gardening followed by mimosas on the patio while the younger kids disported themselves on the swing set and the 13-year-old moped in the hammock. Instead, we spent June through August less as parents than as common carriers, driving a Suburban full of children to places like Math Camp. If my parents had taken me to Math Camp, I would have soaked their martini olives in ant poison. We could not, however, impose ourselves on our friends for three months. We have our local lake with its charming collapsing boathouse-style New England lake club, complete with peppy, preppy lifeguards to whom the task of yelling at the children can be delegated. But no heat wave since the Mayflower landed has been sufficient to bring our lake water up to the recommended temperature for serving iced tea. We stick the children in, but they jump right back out no matter how long we hold them under. Thank goodness for junk food and health nut Mrs. O., whose strictures against anything whole-grain or inorganic make junk food so alluring. Eating Whoppers and fries for breakfast together was a bonding experience. Every boy treasures that moment when his father first says to him, "I don't think Mom needs to know about this."
Mrs. O. decided that she should have her own bonding experience with Muffin and took her to London. They were cagey about what they did there. "London is so beautiful," said Mrs. O., "we spent most of our time just walking through the streets." I think I know what streets—Sloane Street and Brampton Road, between which is Harrods. There was much more luggage when they returned than when they left. Poppet is our most obliging and good-natured child. As usual with the obliging and good-natured, she'd been forgotten. Some sort of trip had to be cobbled together for her on short notice. Poppet loves horses but is also fascinated with ancient Egypt, particularly mummies. A "Mummies of the World" exhibit was at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Mrs. O. whisked her there. Poppet returned aglow with enthusiasm about old dead people. Since that's a 66.6% description of her father, I was flattered. But if Poppet gets fascinated with probate, I'm hiding the martini olives and ant poison.
