I am reminded recently of why it is I chose not to be an academic.  My professors would always say, “Come this way,” philosophy, psychology, sociology, literature.  ”Be one of us.”  While others have a knack for other things, I have always had a knack for ideas. I enjoy them, take pleasure in them, like to fold and unfold them, straighten their seams.  But I quickly saw, over there in academia, that ego was spread thick like–like, uh, butter on a baby’s toast–and so much of what could have been work toward the refinement of understanding, the articulation of experience and meaning, was, for lack of a better term, a pissing match. Something like football, but with words. That was not for me; I am more often than not simply bored by the demands of my own ego, how far can I pee?  So what! Mercifully, out here in life, I rarely find people arguing with ideas for the sake of ideas, most often discussion is fiercely rooted in a concrete reality that will have an impact on day-to-day life, theirs or someone’s they know. But when the argument is not so related, it becomes, to me at least, in my current configuration of self, unreal and uninteresting: while it is all well and good to twist the words and the concepts, I’m more interested, lately, in somewhat more utilitarian uses of the mind.

I’m running around in an area of thought that I used to find myself in quite regularly. It’s around about the area of you can’t be everything and do everything. (When I say ‘you’ I really mean ‘me’ because your you might turn out to be quite different.) But, you, in the sense of ‘me’ or ‘I’ can’t seem to do everything. I can’t seem to pay attention, say, to the nuances of my children’s development, the shifts in their thinking, the modifications of their ways of talking, the slow trek toward independence AND pay attention to, say, the work that is before me. I’m not saying I can’t parent and work. I’m just saying that, say I’m busy focusing intensely on something else for six, eight, 10 hours a day then I’ve not go the same energy/focus of will/whatever you want to call it, to be attuned to them. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. Actually, in many respects, it’s a good thing: the children grow up, they find more self within themselves, and it may well be better for my attention, at least at times, to be elsewhere. But you (again, in the sense of “I”) might sometimes just miss them and that attention and that slow pace of things. I might miss just hanging out for a long time, and seeing what comes up and out. I might even like to do that every day–not just, say, as it is now, on the weekends, like yesterday mid-hike, the sunlight sunlighting, the birds chirping, the wind winding up there in one of our ridgeline parks, when one of the kids might just say something about themselves that you didn’t know, that they’re speaking because they’re happy and relaxed and because, there in the sun, in the calm of a long stretch of day, unstructured, there is time to know one another. And I have always been a fan of knowing one another. Of knowing people. Especially these children of mine. Favorites of mine on this earth.

So, if a kid is particularly athletic or musically talented, say, no one says…ahh, what a great job of parenting that child those parents did. They say the child was born with that talent. When a child has no talent, say, at sports or languages, people attribute it, again, to the child’s genetic traits. But when a child is, say, quick to anger or perhaps not the most smooth at social skills rarely does anyone—parents, teachers, neighbors—say, oh that child has an in-born challenging personality. They say, what did the parents do? How’d they mess up that child? What did they do to that child? And sometimes, that unspoken and sometimes even spoken criticism and judgment gets old.

One of the children around here, who shall remain unnamed, wants a ‘Wii.’ He wants one, of course, because he played with one at a friend’s house. Boxing! He won a boxing tournament. I myself probably want a Wii, too. At least part of me does. I can imagine late nights up playing games, the thrill of the competition, the fun of learning something new. BUT! I also am already worn out with negotiating how much time they spend playing games on the computer, Webkins and PBS kids. Imagine if there were another thing to monitor? It’s not that I don’t enjoy computer games–heck, I spent hour upon college hour playing Tetris. It just seems like there’s got to be limits: time to do all the other stuff that can be done in a child’s life, including doing nothing. And I, for certain, hate enforcing the limits, especially when I understand the fun. But I, Amy, all in all, would rather walk in the countryside—note the trees on my blog—then feed my hours into a video game. And I’ll try to guide my child, who shall remain nameless, along that route.

So there’s that thing when you’re driving, usually back from somewhere–in this case it was a Napa winery and playground (wine for the parents, park for the kids). And it’s afternoon, and one or another of the kids has fallen sleep in the back, the slow drift-off, the bumpity-bump, the peace of it, tired from the sun, from the running around.

And you get back to 80, and, because it’s a sunny weekend afternoon, it’s all trafficy and stop and go starting in El Cerrito and on through Berkeley. And, then, the trick, as the driver, is to keep moving, steady pace, without ever having to stop so quickly that your kids’ necks jerk forward. So you glide, you watch, you switch lanes, you glide some more, all in the name of not rattling their rest. And the sun is shining. And it’s that thing you do, driving with your kids, back from somewhere.

A sunny February day in Alameda!  And the children are not in school. And the parents? The streets are quiet. Where is everyone today–mountains? Watching Tivo’d Lost episodes? “Working from home?” Sleeping in? Peaceful world we have- enjoy it.