There's been a lot of talk lately about the new wave of parents who have been termed as 42 going on 22. It's really gotten me thinking, that and a little piece I read about snow tubing.
Are you familiar with snow tubing? I went once several years ago
with The Ex and our then 6- and 2-year olds. It was too cold out
for 2, so I stayed indoors with her while Daddy and 6 had lots of
fun. I got to go down the slope on a tube that day exactly one
time, and I can tell you now that it was exactly the most fun thing I
had done in probably 15 years.
I've been a parent since I was
20. Since I was having a baby I figured that I'd better get to
work on being a grown-up so we'd know who was who in the family.
I started reading woman's magazines like Family Circle and Woman's Day
and began worrying about gray hairs and wrinkles. After all, I
was going to be a parent! Right? And parents were, like,
old. And, well, reserved. Right? So part of me stayed old,
and I put away childish notions and pretended to be a responsible
adult. Pretty soon I believed it.
Yesterday my two older kids-at-home (that first one is married
and pretending to be a grownup now herself, so that makes me, like,
really old now!!) went sledding in the 1.2 inches of snow that had
fallen. As I stayed home with the smallest, my lad of 3, I
lamented a little that what I would really like to have been doing was
to be out there myself, playing, kids or no. Playing. After
20 years practicing at being a grownup, it finally felt like time to
let go a little and play.
I wrote a piece on my blog a few months
ago about how I play with my children. It was a good piece, about
being creative and spontaneous and all sorts of good stuff like that,
but what I've realized, as I think about it, is that it only dealt with
playing for the children; that is, creating a space in which they could play, and it had nothing to do with playing with
the children. I mean, in all my play with them, I generally
maintain the mom-persona, the glass wall, the authority barrier. But
dammit, after 20 years I'm tired of being "just" a mom! And I
want to play, too!
As adults there are, admittedly, venues in
which we can play. Most of them involve a copious intake of alcohol,
and while I'm all for that, the "playing" aspect of it seems to be lost
among the mommy-and-daddy-grownup-cocktail-party aspects. When is
it okay to really play? Is it ever, as a parent, okay? Can
we really let go and let our kids see us being real?
I think we
can, and should. Some of us do. It's a big part of this "new wave" of parenting, this
breaking down of the barriers we saw in our own parents. And it's a trend I like.
Tomorrow? I'm buying a sled.
