football for softies

It all started with this fella, upon whose abundant dreadlocks I gently placed a single seashell hat.

"It's a football helmet! He's on the Cowboys!" enthused my dear boy, who has permanent sports-on-the-brain.

Yesterday we hosted three of Gabriel's friends from preschool, so I made a big batch of our favorite play dough. (There really is nothing like manipulating this stuff; it's a shame we adults don't have more opportunities to squish and roll and flatten in our lives.) Then this morning I had a sitter come over so that I could work on the child abuse prevention article I mentioned recently. In the freakishly springlike sunshine I walked to a cafe, where I got to feel independent and productive, sipping coffee from a wide elegant cup and typing away with only the sounds of muffled adult conversations and frothing milk to distract me.

grateful

Before we went to my mother's for Thanksgiving on Thursday, we took a much-needed Family Day, organized around two special events: going out for breakfast in the morning and going to a movie in the afternoon. Funny how things that were once part of our everyday (pre-children) lives have become nothing less than momentous. All the better to appreciate them! And it was our first movie-going experience as a family, which is something to grin about no matter how you slice it.

If it had been any other new release, we might not have taken a chance with our sensitive three year old boy at the sensory extravaganza that is the movies these days (oh, it is loud!). But The Muppets had just opened. We'd watched some of The Muppet Movie at home, but the thirty-year-old jokes and pacing seemed hard for the kids to access. Kermit the Frog is universally appealing; Steve Martin as a surly waiter is not. I hoped this new movie would call to my kids in a voice they could respond to.

Parenthood, for me, has been a time of suspicion towards pop culture. My sensitivity to crassness, meanness, loudness, cynicism, bad music, bad books, and bad art skyrocketed within minutes of giving birth to Frances. I wanted to keep everything ugly and stupid away from the perfect seven pounds of person that had been entrusted to us. When I read Jonathan Richman quoted saying that he didn't want to play music that would hurt a baby's ears, I knew exactly what he meant.

magic

Frances: Mama, will you just tell me? Is Santa Claus real? Is it just you and Papa who put presents in the stockings?

Me, caught off guard, looking up from the winter squash I have been hacking away at: Well...what do you think?

Frances: Mama. You always say that. Just answer, yes or no.

I look at her. I have no idea what to say.

Frances: I hate lying and secrets, Mama.

Me: Me too.

Frances: So please just tell me.

So I did. I told her that Santa Claus is just a story. She got me with that bit about lying and secrets, which is why for the first years of parenthood I felt squeamish perpetuating the Santa Claus myth, unable to meet my eager toddler's eyes when the subject of elves came up. Over the years though, her delight trumped my qualms about lying. When she was about 18 months old, Frances discovered the Santa Tube, which is her direct line to the North Pole. Mike had casually picked an empty cardboard tube that had recently held gift wrap up off the floor shortly before Christmas. Gently placing one end on Frances's ear, he had whispered through the tube: Frances. Hello, Frances.

Eyes wide, her face registered a shock of immediate recognition. Santa??

a shout out to all the villagers

I've been working on an article about child abuse prevention efforts in Maryland over the past couple of weeks. The United States has the worst record on child abuse in the developed world; a congressional report cited 2,500 child abuse-related deaths in 2009 alone. It's hard to wrap one's head around a figure like that, and hard to understand what it is about the particularities of American life that leads to such a disheartening reality.

When I interviewed the director of a state-wide nonprofit dedicated to preventing abuse and neglect, she told me it wasn't just up to their programs. She said ensuring children grow up healthy is everybody's business: the mail carrier, the bus driver, the elderly neighbor, the checker at the grocery store. It made me think of Mr. Rogers and his unique emphasis on being a good neighbor. Everyone was part of Mr. Rogers' neighborhood, including the viewer, and everyone had an important role to play. The model of community Mr. Rogers shared was one of deep interpersonal connections and mutual responsibility and care.

The director of the nonprofit told me that reducing isolation and education were the central ways that her programs helped parents manage the stress of raising children. Because no matter where you live or who you are, being a parent is hard. I didn't know I could feel rage--coursing through my body, making my hands involuntarily curl into claws, I-could-strangle-someone style rage--until I became a mother. It is a job that tries you in every conceivable way. Like so many of you, I am blessed with a caring partner and supportive friends and family members. I've long recognized that without them, I'm not sure I could have always managed to protect my children's bodies from those moments of rage.

But talking with this director made me realize that it's not just about our intimates. It's about our neighbors! I think of the octogenarian great-grandmother who commiserated with me in line at the post office when my children were behaving badly, a woman who exuded warmth and humor and helped me put things back into perspective. The librarian who volunteered to help us find a special book when one of the kids was about to tantrum and I was about to cry, kindly steering us away from the edge of the cliff. Or the man who ran up to me with a peach-colored rose as I pushed a crying baby in the stroller past his garden, explaining that it was the last one on the bush and he wanted me to have it.

The whole 'it takes a village' thing is often seen as a warm and fuzzy idea, the kind of thing a person who likes potlucks and church bazaars and community theater (check, check, check) might pronounce. A fine bumper sticker indeed; an excellent guiding principle for organizing family life!

But there is so much more at stake. Maybe it takes a village to keep a child alive. Maybe every time you meet someone's eyes or offer a small gesture of support, every time you tell a new mother how beautiful her baby is, hold a door, or ask if you can help, you are doing something huge. Critical. You are being a good neighbor, and perhaps good neighbors reduce isolation and educate parents better than any formal program. And given our country's stats, we are all in need of a bit more neighborliness in our communities.

To the villagers in my life, many of whom I have met only once: thank you. I am so grateful. Thank you for my beautiful, healthy children.