Finding Balance in San Francisco

My Earliest Memory

Earlier today I was visiting Sarah Lane's blog, and she had a short post about her earliest memory.   I've been thinking about her post and the comments that went along with it all day.

I wonder what someone's first memory says about them, if anything.  I also now have lots of fresh, new territory to worry about as a mom.

Here's Sarah's:

When I was 2 years old, both of my parents worked full-time and during business hours I went to daycare. It was a place in Santa Cruz called TAM School, where "TAM" stood for Teen Age Mothers, even though my mom was 33 years old. Who knows.  

I remember laying on a cot in a dark room with a bunch of other kids, not sleeping. Not upset, just laying there with my eyes open. Some time later, my mom comes to pick me up and as we're getting my things together to go home, the person in charge says to her, "Sarah didn't take a nap today." To which my mom replies with a sigh, "Oh, well, that's ok."

And then under her breath, "Shit."

               

One of the comments to her post made me laugh out loud:

My earliest memory, was a time I was hiding from my mom in the closet, and when she stuck her head in the closet I slammed the door and broke her nose. I remember quite well, when she said, "Fucking son of a bitch my nose!"

On so many levels, I think 'oh, that poor mom' to that one.  Broke her nose.  I try valiantly not to swear around my kids, but... I could easily see myself swearing if Quinn or Jordan did that to me.  They do hurt me sometimes, like pulling out whole handfuls of my hair... in part to see what will happen, I think. 

Jordan hit me in the face with a hockey stick the other day.  Searing pain in the nose.  I was so mad I yelled a few sentences at him and threw the hockey stick down on the ground.  Hopefully that won't be his first memory, for crying out loud.

It will, however, be a lovely lasting impression of me on my new neighbor, who walked past our open garage just as I was yelling and hockey stick throwing.  I wanted to run after that neighbor and explain that I'd just gotten a hockey stick to the face, but didn't.  It was just one of those unfortunate, unlucky moments that we all come across from time to time.  At least I got that unlucky moment out of the way.

It did seem to me that a common element to the first memories in Sarah's comment section was some element of shock on the part of the kid (in one case, quite literally... the kid stuck a screwdriver in a light socket).  So it's entirely possible that my kids will happen to remember one of those less than stellar moments. 

My own first memory had no shocking elements.  It's just me and my dad, sitting on my parents' bed.  I was wearing a red plaid coat.  I think I was 2 or 3.

I remember loving the buttons on the red plaid coat and not wanting to take it off because it was so pretty.  My dad was gently teasing me about wearing a coat around in the house and I was enjoying being teased and laughing. 

Then I remember my mom calling up to us from downstairs, but that's it- the memory fades completely after that.  Just one random in hundreds of thousands of moments I had in those first few years, but for whatever reason that particular moment is the one that stuck long-term.

Ah, well.  These things can't be scripted.  I wonder if either or both of my kids (currently 2 and 3) has formed his first lasting memory yet, and if so I'd love to know what it is. 

Hopefully it's a happy one.

I remember laying on a cot in a dark room with a bunch of other kids, not sleeping. Not upset, just laying there with my eyes open. Some time later, my mom comes to pick me up and as we're getting my things together to go home, the person in charge says to her, "Sarah didn't take a nap today." To which my mom replies with a sigh, "Oh, well, that's ok."

And then under her breath, "Shit."

               

My 20th High School Reunion

I spent Saturday night at my 20th high school reunion at Crystal Springs and Uplands School in Hillsborough.

My 3 short years at Crystal Springs (oddly enough, I didn't even go there for high school- I instead went to my local public school, San Mateo High) gave me a keystone piece of the academic and social foundation that I rely on to this day. With the exception of my 3 pampered years in the rarified air of Crystal Springs, I spent all of my academic career in public schools.

For me, Crystal Springs was a magical place. When my parents unexpectedly took me there for an interview back in 1980 (the day of the hostages were released from Iran and Reagan's inauguration), I felt like somebody had handed me Willy Wonka's golden ticket. I blossomed and thrived at Crystal Springs. In recent years, I've returned there on a number of occasions to try to discover what exactly that magic was and if there's any way for me to bring some of that magic forward into my current existence.

Part of the magic of Crystal Springs is most definitely the place itself.  Since 1956, Crystal Springs School has been situated in the lovely, affluent town of Hillsborough. At its heart and center lies the crown jewel: a gorgeous, 39 room beaux-art mansion (pictured above).

The mansion, called Uplands, was completed in 1917 for Charles Templeton Crocker (grandson of the railroad tycoon Charles Crocker), as a wedding present for his bride, C & H sugar heiress Helene Irwin. In 1917, Uplands contained 35,000 square feet of living space, a 10,000 square foot basement, 12 bedrooms and 12 baths. It also featured marbled fireplaces, wood-paneled ceilings, a large wine cellar, elevator, dumbwaiter, four staircases and mezzanine level quarters for servants. What a great wedding present! I want to be a sugar heiress!

For ten years the Crockers entertained lavishly several weekends of every month at their "country home," throwing gala parties for San Francisco society. There's definitely a bon vivant sort of glamor that still remains at Crystal Springs. I felt it every day that I attended school there, and I feel it still when I walk into the mansion.

Perhaps predictably, the marriage of the sugar heiress and the railroad-fortune-inheritor didn't last.  For a period of time, Uplands fell into disrepair.  Before the school bought the mansion and 10 acres of surrounding property back in the 50s, the mansion was in grave danger of being torn down.  So it's got that phoenix-like quality about it as well.

Speaking of delapidated mansions, when I go back to Crystal Springs I can't help but think of the horrific Carolands Mansion murder in 1985.   

While we were still both teenagers, a girl who I knew and admired in the class above me at Crystal Springs, Jeanine Grinsell, was savagely beaten, stabbed, sexually assaulted and left for dead in a deserted ravine by the Carolands Mansion security guard, David Allen Raley. Another girl who I got to know after that tragic winter day, Laurie McKenna, survived the ordeal.

I was never quite the same after Jeanine's murder. David Allen Raley killed something in me the day that he ruthlessly took her life. I frequently wonder when that monster will finally be executed, even though I realize that it's not helpful or healthy for me to dwell on it. Jeanine's brutal death instilled in me a deep anger and also a deep terror that affects me still.

Based on some articles published in last fall after David Allen Raley's final appeals were denied, I get the sense that Laurie McKenna (Vanlandingham) has a better handle on the anger/fear duo than I do, which is comforting.  God bless her for moving past it.  Her strength shines through the reporters' words and I respect her immensely.  That said, even though Laurie is zen about it, it would be hard if not impossible for me to forgive David Allen Raley.  I wonder whether the Dalai Lama himself could get me through that one.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the monster's death sentence, so he should be one of the first in line when California resumes its executions.  Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

It's all a bit like the shining triumph of Big Brown's exilirating Kentucky Derby win Saturday, followed closely by the shadow of Eight Belles' own moment of glory and then her shocking, untimely death.

The magic and the murder- two contrasting and intertwined pieces of my past that continue to haunt, fascinate and mystify me.

I Interviewed at Axiom Legal Last Week

Axiom Legal is one of the new breeds of service firms emerging in law, accounting and strategic consulting, among others. By structuring its business model differently from that of a traditional law firm (e.g., by not having an expensive partership pyramid to support), Axiom claims to be able to offer "top flight" legal service at a third to half the cost of a "traditional" firm.

I decided to interview there after seeing an advertisement  in a monthly GGMG newsletter. The ad included several photos of happy looking women, with the tagline: "Why Are All These Women Smiling?"  The ad then went on to claim that via Axiom, a rewarding family life and a rewarding career (in law) are now simultaneously possible.  Pretty appealing thought.  Excellent advertising campaign.

The offices are in the Orrick building in downtown San Francisco, and are done up how I imagine a Virgin Atlantic office would look- complete with white shag rugs, funky white lighting and a bevy of cute girls under 30.

The catch:  they base their work days on a 10 hour rather than an 8 hour day.  In other words, 4 days per Axiom standards is already 40 hours = get paid 80% of a normal person's work week, right off the bat.

I also got the distinct impression that there seems to be a high degree of tolerance for the "part time" jobs going (far) over the alloted hours.  Quote from my interview, describing someone working a 3 day a week assignment: "she was consistently working more like 40 hours a week, so we [Axiom] were able to work it out with the client to change the assignment to a 4 day a week assignment, and everyone was happy." 

Another catch:  According to my interviewers, 80% of their work is full time assignments (50 hours/week).  Much of it seems to be intellectual property based.  There currently seems to be a specific need for someone who does patent work, specifically relating to patent litigation, for example.

Per BusinessWeek:

The company offers its services in various areas, including advertising and marketing, bankruptcy, broker-dealer regulations, commercial agreements, compliance, copyright, derivatives and structured finance, employment, ERISA, and financial services

Some have called it a "high end temporary agency," but the Axiom team resists this categorization. The Axiom team instead describes itself as " a groundbreaking legal firm that is changing the way attorneys and clients work." Axiom's website calls it "Onsite Counsel services to our corporate clients."

Axiom clients include:

• American Express
• AT&T
• Bank of America
• Bear Stearns
• Cisco
• Citigroup
• Colgate-Palmolive
• Credit Suisse
• Deutsche Bank
• Dow Jones
• Electronic Arts
• Goldman Sachs
• Hilton Hotels
• Honeywell
• J.P. Morgan Chase
• Johnson & Johnson
• MasterCard
• Merrill Lynch
• MetLife
• Morgan Stanley
• NBC Universal
• New York Times
• Nokia
• Orbitz
• Pitney Bowes
• Reuters America
• Sun Microsystems
• UBS
• Viacom
• Virgin Mobile
• Yahoo!

One of Axiom's claims to fame among lawyers ties directly to that catchy marketing campaign: people wonder if it might just be a more humane place to work.  The no annual minimum billable hour requirement sounds appealing, for example.  Lawyers testing the limits of human endurance at some of the big firms dream of the ever-elusive high paying, high-caliber work environment that also happens to afford the  flexibility to achieve some sort of work-life balance. 

To make sure I got the point, they made me watch their propaganda video when I got there, complete with fathers rolling around in the grass with their children (or it may have been puppies), happy and smiling and nuzzling with their youngsters.  The video is packed full of loving little anecdotal vignettes (hearsay, and all) of thoughtful, smiling lawyers saying pithy things. This video is simply the long version of the snippets they have on their website.  To bring it all home, there are huge, silver screen sized photos of these same cheerful lawyers all over the office.

I did not get the job.  According to them, only 1 in 60 applicants is chosen (would be hard to disprove this, but...), and they may have sensed that I wondered how a 50 hour a week job (minimum- talk to us if you're consistently billing 60 hours a week) affords the flexibility and freedom they put on so high a pedestal in their marketing campaign.  Reshuffling the deck to base the work week on a 50 hour week (and pay your 40 hour/week people 80%) seems... well... unlikely to be a place where I'm going to achieve balance in my life, if nothing else. 

That said, I'm glad I went and saw it for myself.  Not getting the job was a bit of a relief.

Despite some setbacks, Fun at Bay Meadows

Last week, 2 bad things happened:

(1) My good friend Sunny's husband Torben, who was deported last August ran into yet another bureaucratic hurdle, making it unlikely that he'll get home before their first anniversary on May 4th.

The heartless, mean spirited lady interviewing Torben first aggressively accused him of having a criminal record in England.  When she was inevitably proven wrong, she openly told him how irked she was that his interview had been scheduled so "quickly"- (not that 8 months is setting any kind of land speed record) and began to demand all kinds of irrelevant paperwork that had not been previously requested.  Needless to say, they've already submitted thousands of pages of documentation, and she has absolutely everything she needs at this point.  This woman, the very last step in a very long chain of red tape, has evidently decided, for reasons all her own, to make a point of making it as difficult for Torben and Sunny as possible.

There should be a special place in hell for bureaucrats on a power trip.

(2) Republicans in the Senate blocked the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, inexplicably.  At MomsRising's urging, I sent John McCain my resume. Senator McCain,who didn’t even come to vote, insultingly said that instead of legislation allowing women to fight for equal pay, they simply need "education and training."

I am frustrated and saddened by both of those things, and sadly both are out of my control.  So instead of worrying about setbacks, I took the kids to Bay Meadows yesterday to watch the horses run like the wind. 

And boy did we have fun.  My dad was able to get Turf Club passes out of some friend, and we had a lovely afternoon cheering the horses from a luxurious table right by the window.  Bay Meadows is scheduled to close its doors forever in 2 weeks.  Sigh.  We had a good last run yesterday though.

Yesterday morning, Quinn got ahold of a pair of my sunglasses... and so I'll end this post with my sweet fly:

Senate Voting on Ledbetter Fair Pay Tomorrow!

I've been relatively active in trying to convince my Senate representatives (Feinstein and Boxer) to take up the cause of passing the the Fair Pay Restoration Act in the Senate... and happily the Senate is scheduled to vote on the Fair Pay Restoration Act  tomorrow!

As a quick refresher, this is the legislation resulting from the Supreme Court's decision last year in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. My commentary on that unfortunate decision here.

MomsRising.org (of which I'm a part) coordinated a nationwide effort to help overturn Ledbetter via legislation, an it seems to have worked (we'll see tomorrow)!

I've spoken with both Feinstein's and Boxer's offices, and according to their respective office staffs, both of my Senators plan to vote for the  Fair Pay Restoration Act.

Below is some info. from MomRising in case you want to participate:

Tell your Senator to vote YES (again!) now: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=24276

THE LOWDOWN: The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (H.R. 2831) is an important legislative "fix" to a May 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.), which severely limited the ability of victims of pay discrimination to sue and recover damages under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Without this "fix," the impact of the Court's decision will likely be widespread, affecting pay discrimination cases under Title VII involving women and racial and ethnic minorities, as well as cases under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Basically, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is a narrow "fix" to reestablish law that was in place until the U.S. Supreme Court Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. decision of last year.  This Act stops us from losing ground on civil rights and fixes a fundamental unfairness in the workplace which many women face.

MAKE A QUICK PHONE CALL TOO!  Thanks to our policy partners working on this issue with us, we have an additional way for you to contact your Senators.  The AFL-CIO set up a toll-free phone number just for people to call in support of the Fair Pay Act:

(866) 338-1015*

* note that I just tried to call Boxer's office and her voice mailbox in D.C. is full.  Call her representative Jennifer Tang in the San Francisco office instead: 415-403-0129 to make your voice heard.  I talked with Jennifer about the voicemail problem in D.C. and she also assured me that Ledbetter Fair Pay is "huge" on Boxer's radar.

You can use this number through Wednesday.  When you call, you will reach the Capitol switchboard.  Ask the operator to connect you with your Senator's office.  Then you can just say, "Please pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (H.R. 2831). We need this protection back now so none of us faces wage discrimination without tools to challenge it."

And don't forget to call back to reach your other Senator's office! Now is the time for us to use those outside voices and let the Senate know-- we need fair pay now!

*Don't forget to email your Senator to vote YES now! http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=24276


P.S. Some press links about the Ledbetter decision:

New York Times Ledbetter Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/us/30pay.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Washington Post Ledbetter Article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/29/AR2007052900740.html
New York Times Ledbetter Editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/opinion/31thu1.html
LA Times Ledbetter Editorial: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-court31may31,0,6046584.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail

And, here's what some of MomsRising's aligned organizations have to say about this issue:

Alliance for Justice, http://www.afj.org/assets/resources/take-action/ledbetter-background-final.pdf
Alliance for Justice's 5 minute documentary short on Lilly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w1eSymFBOg
National Women's Law Center, http://www.nwlc.org/display.cfm?section=employment
National Organization for Women, http://www.now.org/issues/economic/070530equalpay.html

      

Calling Mark Twain

I was skimming the NYT (online) headlines this morning and I came across this snippet:

                                                   

ON THIS DAY

On April 21, 1910, author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, died in Redding, Conn.

• See this front page

Mark Twain was one of those great writers whom I've always admired- particularly many of his famous and witty quotes. So I decided to look up more about him, including how old he was when he died, what killed him- not to be morbid, but that is actually what I was initially looking for: death stats.

I started, of course with Googling him.  Wikipedia naturally had a nice, comprehensive piece on Mark Twain.

I quickly learned that he was 74 when he died.  Then I learned that he may have been 75.  There seems to be some discrepancy about this.

Then I did a quick comparison of him vs. me at my age:

• 33 when he met his wife, 35 when he got married (I was 31 and 34, respectively)
• first kid, a son, at 37 (I was 34)
• first important work, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, published about a week before he turned 30 (I've yet to produce an important work and I'm 38)
• Tom Sawyer was published when he was 41, Huck Finn when he was 49 (I've yet to complete -or begin- a Great American Novel), but at least I have some time here

and that's about as far as I got in trying to determine how far ahead and behind I am before my initial morbid thoughts took back over.  I started focusing on all of the death that surrounded one of America's great humorists.

Mark was sixth of seven children, only three of his siblings survived childhood.  His dad tragically died of pneumonia, when Mark was only 11.

His younger brother, Henry, was killed in a boat explosion when Henry was 20 (and Mark was 23). Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens, if you will) was grief stricken by Henry's death and never forgave himself for it because it was Mark/Sam who convinced Henry to work with him on the river, while Twain was trying to get his steamboat pilot license. Twain was by Henry's side when he died.

In a Twilight Zone sort of way, Twain had foreseen Henry's death in a detailed dream a month earlier, which inspired his interest in parapsychology.  Mark was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research.

His first year of marriage to Olivia was tough.  Olivia lost her father, Jervis, as well as a good friend (who actually died in their home about a month later). 

The next few years marriage were depressing as well.  Mark's firstborn son, Langdon, was premature and died of diphtheria at 19 months, in 1872. This put so much strain on Olivia that she contracted typhoid fever and nearly died herself. Because Langdon's diphtheria developed from a cold he got when he was with Twain, Twain blamed himself for the child's illness and rarely spoke of his son's death.

Then there seems to have been a relatively good period in Twain's life.  Children born, professional success, his daughter Susy was a talented writer.

Mark's mother died in 1890. 

His beloved and favorite daughter, Susy, contracted a sudden case of meningitis and died unexpectedly in 1896 when she was only 24. Twain and his family were devastated by Susy's death. His last living brother, Orion, died in December 1897.

In the last 10 years of his life, sickness and death of loved ones plagued him and he became quite depressed.

His beloved wife Olivia's health got progressively worse, especially after 1902. She was advised to keep a distance from Twain, and the couple went months without seeing each other during this illness. Finally, by the end of 1903, her doctors advised Livy to take up residence in the warm climate of Italy, prompting the family to move to a villa outside Florence. About six months later, in June 1904, she died at the villa. Twain's 31-year-old daughter Clara had a nervous breakdown following her mother's death, and spent a year in a sanatorium.

Twain's only surviving sibling, Pamela, also died in 1904.

His youngest daughter, Jean, was in constant need of medical attention throughout her life, and Twain was very protective of her. She never picked up a vocation or had a serious involvement with a man. Following her mother's death in 1904, Jean's epilepsy took a turn for the worse. She attempted to kill the family housekeeper twice, in 1905 and 1906. Over the next five years, she spent most of the time in sanitoriums.

One of his closest friends and confidants, Standard Oil executive Henry Rogers, died of a sudden heart attack in May 1909 and his youngest daughter, Jean, died on Christmas Eve, 1909 in Twain's bathtub following a seizure.

Only one daughter, Clara, survived him. He never got to meet his only granddaughter, Nina, she was born 4 months after his death.*

No wonder he was depressed.

He was born two weeks after the closest approach to Earth of Halley's Comet.

In 1909, Twain is quoted as saying:

“

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'

”

His prediction was accurate—Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910 in Redding, Connecticut, one day after the comet's closest approach to Earth.

Eerie that he was able to so closely predict his own death like that, as well as the death of his brother Henry. So.... Mark Twain, parapsychology believer, I'd sure like to talk with you. I could use your wit and humor in my life right about now and I'd like it very much if you paid me a visit.

We'll see if that works.  I'll keep you posted.

* Nina overdosed on barbituates in an L.A. motel room in 1966. She was Sam Clemens' last direct descendant descendant.

Sunday morning on the back deck

off to the Y now!

Saturday afternoon fun at Uncle Rick's

After a certain amount of horsing around at our apartment in the morning,

the boys and I went down to my brother's house in San Mateo yesterday to visit with him and Cousin Charlie

Cousin Charlie is a sweet natured little boy who loves to give lots of hugs and kisses

"Uncle Scott" also came over for a bit.  Scott is very much like another brother in our family

Three cheers for Saturday afternoon fun!!

I have survived spring break!

Doesn't seem like so long ago that spring break was cause for me to feel glee.  Post kids, that feeling has reversed itself: I've been dreading spring break week all year.   Now that spring break is officially over, the glee has returned.

With Ryan starting another trial next week (read: he works past 2am most nights), spring break = single handed with both boys all week, without their school helping me fill the hours.  And I always try to do it without the aid of TV (or videos) to the extent possible- though when I'm really pooped I'm ok with the occasional video.

Sunday night the boys and I spent the night at my parents' house, and then we hung around their house most of Monday, so that helped start the week off with a glide.  Kind of like a flip turn in swimming... gets you part way down the pool without exerting much effort. 

On the other end of the spectrum, today I took them to the zoo. Enriching, good exercise, outdoors... all good things... but high effort. Neither one wants to be in a stroller, they often run opposite directions, selective hearing (theirs) is in full flower.  Plus I still have an underlying anxiety about the animals breaking free. So when the lion roared at us today I hustled the boys along and kept looking back over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't following us.

The rest of the week was a mix of high and medium (and, I have to say, at times low) effort, but I did it! 

I feel like opening a bottle of champagne.  I probably won't because... well... who drinks champagne alone? 

Plus I'm sure I'll be asleep inside of 10 minutes, especially since I'll be single handed with both boys all weekend.

Paranoia, self destroy-a

Someone just posted the article (reproduced below) on GGMG, and it made me pause for a moment. 

I definitely think that the author has a point.  We're so hyper paranoid these days compared to the "olden days" of the 1970s and 1980s when I was growing up.  The extreme vigilance is  probably doing ourselves and our children a disservice, based on the heightened anxiety level alone.

Back in the day, nobody even wore seat belts.  I walked a couple miles to school and back with a fellow 6 year old to first grade, and nobody thought a thing of it- seemed like the most normal thing in the world. Half the time we'd stop by my grandma's house for a half hour to an hour on the way home from school and not even call our moms.  When we arrived home, our moms were totally at peace, and so were we.

The other evening I listened to a group of my yuppie friends ('yuppie' - how long has it been since you've heard that?) talk at length about how none of them let their nannies take their kids out in a car.  Not that anybody's nanny's car is lacking a car seat- it's not.  The underlying fear seemed instead to be lack of control on the mom's part:  maybe the nanny isn't maintaining her car at the optimal level; maybe the nanny could take the kid somewhere that the mom wouldn't approve of; maybe it's 'just easier' to have the nanny limited to pushing a stroller.  I quietly wondered whether I've been reckless in letting my own kids go in a car with our babysitter to the zoo, the Discovery Museum, the babysitter's apartment, where ever. 

Granted, my kids and those of my friends are 3 and under, so even back in the day people weren't letting 3 year olds ride the subway by themselves.  That said, there was something shocking about the article below... even though I know intellectually that there's nothing shocking about it at all, really.

I wonder how I'll feel when my boys are 9.

Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone

By LENORE SKENAZY | April 4, 2008
New York Sun

I left my 9-year-old at Bloomingdale' s (the original one) a couple 
weeks ago. Last seen, he was in first floor handbags as I sashayed out the door.

Bye-bye! Have fun!

And he did. He came home on the subway and bus by himself.

Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn't strike me as that daring, either. Isn't New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It's not like we're living in downtown Baghdad.

Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him 
somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. 
So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn't want to lose it. And no, I didn't trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn't do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, "Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead."

Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.

Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids.  It's not.

It's debilitating — for us and for them.

And yet —

"How would you have felt if he didn't come home?" a New Jersey mom of 
four, Vicki Garfinkle, asked.

Guess what, Ms. Garfinkle: I'd have been devastated. But would that just prove that no mom should ever let her child ride the subway alone?

No. It would just be one more awful but extremely rare example of random violence, the kind that hyper parents cite as proof that every day in every way our children are more and more vulnerable.

"Carlie Brucia — I don't know if you're familiar with that case or 
not, but she was in Florida and she did a cut-through about a mile from her house, midday- at 11 in the morning, she was abducted by a guy who violated her several times, killed her, and left her behind a church."

That's the story that the head of safetynet4kids. com, Katharine Francis, immediately told me when I asked her what she thought of my son getting around on his own. She runs a company that makes wallet-sized copies of a child's photo and fingerprints, just in case.

Well of course I know the story of Carlie Brucia. That's the problem. 

We all know that story— and the one about the Mormon girl in Utah and the one about the little girl in Spain — and because we do, we all run those tapes in our heads when we think of leaving our kids on their own. We even run a tape of how we'd look on Larry King.

"I do not want to be the one on TV explaining my daughter's disappearance, " a father, Garth Chouteau, said when we were talking about the subway issue.

These days, when a kid dies, the world — i.e., cable TV — blames the parents. It's simple as that. And yet, Trevor Butterworth, a spokesman for the research center STATS.org, said, "The statistics show that this is an incredibly rare event, and you can't protect people from very rare events. It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightning."

Justice Department data actually show the number of children abducted by strangers has been going down over the years. So why not let your kids get home from school by themselves?

"Parents are in the grip of anxiety and when you're anxious, you're  totally warped," the
author of "A Nation of Wimps," Hara Estroff Marano, said. We become  so bent out of shape
over something as simple as letting your children out of sight on the playground that it starts seeming on par with letting them play on the railroad tracks at night. In the rain. In dark non-reflective coats.

The problem with this everything-is- dangerous outlook is that over- protectiveness is a danger in and of itself. A child who thinks he can't do anything on his own eventually can't.

Meantime, my son wants his next trip to be from Queens. In my day, I doubt that would have struck anyone as particularly brave. Now it seems like hitchhiking through Yemen.

Here's your MetroCard, kid. Go.

 

lskenazy@yahoo. com

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