Independence day

Growing up in Carlisle doesn’t offer a lot of opportunities for children to practice independence. With its narrow winding roads, distantly spaced houses, and lack of sidewalks outside the town center, the fact that few kids walk to friends’ houses or school isn’t a matter of laziness: it’s logistics. The single standard rite of passage for a middle schooler here is to be allowed to go to Ferns Country Store and the library after school with friends – exactly as it was when I was a middle schooler in Carlisle 30 years ago.

So a mother like me, determined to renounce the notion of helicopter parenting, has to seek out ways to let children stretch. An afternoon meeting near Concord Center earlier this week gave me an idea. “How about if I drop you two off on Main Street?” I suggested to Tim and Holly. “You can get an ice cream cone at Helen’s and then walk to the library. I’ll find you there when my meeting is over.”

Concord Center is full of shoppers, tourists and community members who were sure to intervene should anyone try to snatch the kids off the sidewalk. Moreover, Tim and I were both carrying cell phones: it would be virtually impossible for us to fail to connect, even if the plan didn’t go exactly as anticipated.

As we drove to Concord, I reviewed the itinerary with them. “I’ll drop you off by the monument. We’ll be on the opposite side of the street from Helen’s, but just go to the crosswalk and be sure cars stop before you cross. Then to get to the library, you just walk down Main Street. When you get to the fork, the library will be on your right. You’re not supposed to answer phone calls in the library, so I’ll text-message you to find out exactly where you are. But just in case all else fails and for some reason we can’t reach each other, expect to find me at the library around three.”

I made myself stop. Part of this exercise needs to be seeing if they can figure it all out themselves, I told myself. You already know they can follow instructions. Take this opportunity to find out how capable they are when you’re not hovering.

My appointment ended at 2:50. I sent Tim a text: “On my way to the library.”

I parked outside the library at 2:55. I sent Tim another text: “Where are you?”

No response to either text. For the first time, I felt a twinge of apprehension. Suppose I couldn’t find them?

But how would I not be able to find them? From the library lawn, I could practically see the whole distance down Main Street to where I dropped them off, all two blocks of it. Where could they be other than in the library or somewhere along those two blocks?

Except that I couldn’t find them in the library. Not in the children’s room, not in the reading area, not in the reference room, not amidst the DVD stacks.
I went back outside and tried calling Tim’s number despite my instructions to him not to let his phone ring in the library. It went to voicemail.

Was it actually possible for two almost-teenage children to disappear on the streets of Concord Center? I couldn’t imagine how. With two of them together, even if something awful had happened to one – being hit by a car, a seizure, an attack of amnesia – surely the other could manage to get help.

I dialed Tim again. This time it rang. And he answered.

“Hi Mom. We’re at the bookstore,” he said nonchalantly before I could say a word.

The bookstore is halfway between Helen’s and the library. I arrived in less than a minute, and just as reported, both of my children were sitting together in the children’s section, poring over the newest picture book by Mo Willems. “Mommy, this book is so silly!” Holly exclaimed as soon as she saw me.

“Hi you guys,” I said as calmly as I could. “How’d you end up here?”

They explained: they’d bought ice cream cones, walked to the library, sat out on the library lawn for a while, then on a whim decided to double back to the bookstore. Tim wasn’t sure why he hadn’t heard the text message beeps or my earlier phone call; just too engrossed in books, he guessed.

Partly it was just the relief of finding them, but even after that passed, I realized I didn’t really mind the way it had turned out. Sure, they should have followed my instructions, but it was no big deal. After all, they were in a bookstore in Concord, the heart of literary America. They weren’t so much disobeying instructions as following a historical imperative.

My goal was to give the kids a small sense of independence. Not only had they had a taste of independence; they’d taken the ball and run with it, improvising their own plan along the way.

It’s not exactly Outward Bound. But for two kids from the suburbs who don’t get a lot of opportunities to chart their own course, it’s a start.

A Veterans' Day walk in the woods

The kids didn’t have school yesterday, and although we didn’t do anything overtly related to veterans, we were all conscious of the significance behind the day off.

For me, it was interesting to see how many of my Facebook contacts wrote posts yesterday in honor of specific people in military service and reminded me that even though my closest circles include few recent veterans, we’re just “two degrees of separation” in myriad directions.

And Holly reminded us several times that we should all be thinking of Great-Grandpa John, Rick’s grandfather, on Veterans Day; he was a World War II vet and was buried with his military medals last February.

What we did do, after a quiet morning during which I worked on an article under deadline, Holly played school and Tim read, was take a short hike around the Fairy Pond in Concord. (I usually call it by the more dignified name of Brister Hill, but as my father pointed out to me yesterday afternoon, it’s not called Brister Hill, which may explain why I’m the only one who refers to it as such. Brister Hill is on the opposite side of the street. So I’ll need to swallow my dignity and call it Fairy Pond like everyone else does.)

Many people close to me, and almost anyone who reads my blog, know of my ongoing quest to get my kids to do more hiking. Sure, they like time outdoors, but usually in the form of playing touch football in the yard or picnicking on the lawn. Getting them to combine nature with exertion is an ongoing struggle.

Yesterday it wasn’t that hard, though. In part, this was probably because I didn’t make a big deal of it. I didn’t insist or implore. I just asked, “Want to go for a walk in the woods? Maybe that trail we did last fall in Concord, where I took the picture of the two of you dipping your walking sticks in the pond?”

They remembered, and they wanted to try it again, though the recollection was also followed by several minutes of debate as to whether the day we went there last year was the same day a park ranger told us we couldn’t walk around Walden Pond with our dog and we also couldn’t walk around Walden Pond while leaving our dog in the car, a rule none of us could understand. (“I went to the woods because I wanted to live canine-free…”)

So we drove to Concord and spent 45 minutes on the trail. The kids found walking sticks again and scampered up the steep hillsides, then slid down on a slippery scrim of oak leaves. We saw ducks in Fairy Pond and a 5-member arrow of Canada geese flying overhead. (“Where are they going again?” Holly asked. As I said, my kids are not exactly precocious as naturalists.)

After the walk, we drove to Bedford for Tim to get a haircut, and then had hot chocolate at Starbucks.

I expend so much time and so much breath trying to get my kids to join me for activities like hiking in the woods of Concord. Yesterday they agreed to do it with very little discussion, maybe because I didn’t introduce the idea with a great deal of discussion – just casually suggested it. And the haircut and hot chocolate underscored, I hope, the idea that going for a hike doesn’t need to be a major or time-consuming or tiring activity. It’s just an enjoyable thing to do on a sunny cool fall afternoon.

At least it was for me. And I hope for them as well.