On Past Hancock
Or, how to try to make the kind of world I want to live in, one Dole Whip at a time
This has been a week of driving, lots of it. A lot of time spent in the car, putting my trust entirely in Google Maps (because I have a very poor sense of direction and, after living in upstate New York for nearly 20 years, still don't know where anything is), trying not to hit a deer, marveling at how tall the corn is getting everywhere except my garden, and worrying about being late.
My kid started a new day camp on Monday and when I signed her up for it, it seemed totally rational. Well, OK, maybe it did not seem rational, but I was freaking out a bit about summer and when we found this new program that was **only** 17 miles away from my house, it seemed like a half hour to drive her there, plus another half hour to get to work, would be fine. Right? That's fine! People have half-hour commutes! And I was talking to a couple of other moms about their summer plans, and they seemed interested in the camp and it seemed like they might sign their kids up, which would mean we could probably figure out some sort of carpool situation, so I was like Yes, add it to the spreadsheet, let's do it.
This is kind of how I operate. I tend to say "yes" to things easily and then panic later on. Sure, I can pick up your kid and also this other kid and drive both kids to camp!, I say breezily, as if the limitations of time and space do not exist. It will be fine! But I'm going to admit this to you guys: It's not entirely fine. I mean, no one is getting eaten by alligators or being forced to listen to the 2001 hit song "Butterfly" by Crazy Town. But.
It's not perfect. It's a situation that's really familiar to me, and probably to other working parents, of feeling like you don't have enough time to do your work but also feeling like you don't have enough time to really be a good/active/involved parent to your kid or to eat/prepare healthy meals or to really do anything that you're probably supposed to be doing, because it's kind of all you can do to just get through the day.
After a few days of carpooling, though, I realized something important. Sure, I was leaving my house at 7:30 and not getting to work until 9:15. But once I got all three kids squashed into the back seat of my hatchback, something wonderful happened. I got to hear them chit-chatting with each other, interrupting each other, giggling at each other's silly stories, being vulnerable, trying to seem cool, talking about masks and vaccines and bad dreams and songs you hear on the radio and the thing that happened one time. And for those moments, it was absolutely great.
It's been great to see my kid make new friends. It's been great to see a smile on her face when we talk about camp. It's been great at bedtime, when I ask her to tell me one good thing about her day, to hear her say "camp," because if I were doing all of this and camp was horrible, I would just want to run into the woods screaming. So at least someone had a good week, even if it wasn't me. It's quite possible that the inconvenience of a summer camp that's a half-hour away from both my house and my job is, in fact, worth it.
And then on Saturday my kid and I got back in the car and drove for about two hours to eat a bagel, put our feet in the river and get a Dole Whip with my friend Jamie, who is also a writer, who interviewed me for her podcast about spreadsheets (you should absolutely listen), who co-wrote a piece with me when we were still basically absolute strangers to one another, whose YA sequel is coming out in November, and who, after I tweeted something despairing about my kid getting lice on the same day that schools shut down in March 2020, called me and talked me down off the ledge. And for those couple hours on Saturday we were able to hang out, before I had to get back into my little hatchback and head north again, it was great.
I did it all for the Dole Whip
What I'm trying to say is that even when I regret saying "yes" so easily, I also don't regret it, because I am an extrovert at heart, and these moments — the half hour listening to my happy kid chattering with her friends, the Dole Whip with with someone I had previously only "met" via phone, or Zoom, or text — these moments are worth it. They are worth all of it.
I have been thinking this week about a question my therapist asked me once, a question I think about all the time and have thought very loudly in meetings with difficult clients: What are you willing to do to get the thing you say you want? It's one of my favorite questions, one that I wish guided more of our public discourse, and one that I find always challenges me in ways I didn't expect.
The thing I say I want is more community, more eyes to watch all our kids and more hands to help. The thing I say I want is people being together and caring for each other. So I get up at 6 a.m. and I pick up these two other kids, because I want to live in a world where this is what parents do for each other. I drive for four hours round-trip to hang out with someone I met on the internet, because I want to live in a world where people show up for each other, even if it's just to have a Dole Whip together.
Sometimes doing all of this feels — I don't know. It doesn't come naturally to me, is what I'm trying to say. It feels like swimming upstream. I've spent years in a little bubble that only really contained the creatures in my household, and I have felt like there are a lot of messages from SOCIETY that have rewarded my behavior. I've been looking out for my household so intensely and for so long that I kind of forgot how valuable and important and life-affirming it is to push that bubble out a little further and let some more people in. Other people's kids. Internet writer friends. Some mom I met at the pool whose kid has the same first name as mine. Whoever! I'm trying to be that person, even when it's hard, even when it puts a lot of miles on my car, even when I feel sure I'll mess it up.
This has been a rather mushy and sentimental edition of Think of the Children, my weekly newsletter about the intersection of parenting and education (the education bit is kind of on summer vacation right now though, tbh). If you enjoyed it, won't you consider subscribing, and/or forwarding it to someone you know and love?