Out of Tragedy, a Stirring, Powerful Discovery: Community Matters

For several days I was perpetually choked up, felt as though there was a lump in the middle of my throat after learning that a young boy – who was friends with my oldest son – had suddenly passed away.

But as I forged on, pushing through the heavy sadness and unmooring shock of the news, I realized that there’s power in something about which we don’t place nearly enough emphasis these days: The power of being a physically present in a community, not just being a part of an amorphous, sometimes antiseptic community online.

The horrific news about the 12-year-old boy’s passing circulated throughout my town in dribs and drabs. Initially, cryptic, mass, automated phone calls were made from the schools to students’ homes telling parents to check their e-mail for an "important" message. After reading the stunning e-mail, some parents went old school and called one another on the telephone, then quickly turned to local web sites and Facebook to share their collective grief as they prepared for their crestfallen children to come home from school and melt into their arms. No one could quite believe that a young, seemingly healthy seventh grader could really be gone. He just couldn’t be. It made no sense.

He had just been playing basketball the night before, some said. He’d been online with friends the day before too, added another. He seemed fine at school yesterday . . . this didn’t compute for anyone, not for the students or their parents who fearfully eyed their own children wondering, “What if?”, not for the educators who cared for these children or for the church community which spiritually embraced the boy’s devastated family.

I read and re-read the note from the middle school not quite believing its contents. There was no way that a child – a polite, smart, talented shining light about whom no one had a bad word – as young as he was could’ve gone to bed and then passed away because of complications due to a seizure. There was no way that this was happening to his nice family, particularly to his mother, about whom the most frequently invoked adjective when her name came up in conversation around town was “sweet."

Parents literally clung to their children, holed up in their homes as after-school activities and practices had been cancelled. At first, we all marinated in our grief from behind our computer screens or on our phones, in an electronic isolation of sorts, sharing despondence, warm memories and effusive compliments about the boy and his bereaved family online. People, particularly the children, texted one another, exchanging sentiments as simple as, “I am so sad” that conveyed an ocean of heartbreak.

The next day, however, the community began to stir, to rise from the ashes. In school hallways throughout town and at the regional high school, students donned a commemorative color – green – in honor of the child who was universally well liked and respected. One of the boy’s classmates labored to make hundreds of green ribbons and distributed them to willing takers. It was a sea of green, people said, a sea that coalesced around that vacant space where the lost soul used to be because that’s all that the people wearing green could do, because they couldn’t bring him back.

Then, as the children and their parent-coaches eventually resumed their sports activities, this boy’s name became a clarion call from indoor soccer arenas to youth basketball courts, a rallying cry, a cause: He will not be forgotten. His easy smile, his talents, his kindness would guide them through, no matter what it said on the scoreboard. He will help us go forward.

Parents bought green socks and handed them out to players in his memory. Kids texted their teammates suggesting that they don green T-shirts under their uniforms. Green duct tape was adhered to the fronts of basketball jerseys, and, band-like, around the upper arms of coaches and the parents in the stands who teared up every, single, time a parent from an opposing team asked what was up with all the green. Girls took makeup pencils and decorated their cheeks and their hands with their classmate’s initials and shouted, “Go Green!” at the beginning and the end of their games. This is for him, they said. And, for the first time since I could remember in my very athletically competitive town, it didn’t matter who won, who scored, who fouled. All that mattered was that we were all together. We were one. And our hearts were broken.

People came out of their homes, out from behind computers and cell phones and spent time with one another in person. Children hung out and played video games together or watched the Patriots’ game in groups, drawing comfort from merely being in one another’s presence while their parents embraced and tried to console one another, remarking about how rare it is these days for them to just ditch their packed schedules and hang out together. Parent after parent said that this grab-you-by-the-lapels moment which shakes you to your core has taught them that, no matter how insanely busy they are, time with friends, with one another, in the flesh, is important. Checking in on Facebook, while comforting and a useful source of information, was not enough. Not by a long shot.

“I’m really glad we live here,” my daughter said to me the other day. “People really care about one another.”

Out of this tragedy, my children, as well as almost every person with whom I’ve spoken, seemed to have stumbled upon something basic, something that we all too often take for granted in this era of instant digital communications and over-scheduled lives filled with the busy-ness of child-rearing: Being together matters. Community matters. Everything cannot be done via electronic or cellular forms of communication.

This sudden, grief-stricken coming together, this recognition of the importance of just being together as a community was one final gift from a boy whose short life was a gift to all of us who were lucky enough to meet him.

Looking at the Kids' Dizzying Schedules & Trying to be All Zen

Youth hockey season’s not yet over – The Youngest Boy’s team is still in the playoffs – and the schedules for The Girl’s and The Eldest Boy’s soccer teams are already rolling in. We haven’t yet been given the practice/game schedule for The Youngest Boy’s baseball team, but I'm sure those games and practices will be slated for dreadfully inconvenient, overscheduled times.

Plus The Eldest Boy has upcoming band events, there’s a middle school science fair and a grade school invention convention.

*deep breath*

There are already conflicts galore with all these schedules – some on an ongoing basis, like one practice at the same time as another kid’s math extracurricular activity – and The Spouse and I are trying to figure out ways to make everything work.

Last fall, I thought my head was going explode, particularly in light of The Youngest Boy’s hockey league where there were no regular practices time and games/practices could be scheduled with little to no notice (like 12 hours). I spent a lot of time being pretty ticked off because my schedule was spinning out of control, hijacked.

And then I started taking yoga again after a very long hiatus,cut back on the caffeine and started getting more sleep. I tried hard to be okay with missing the occasional things, with having shortcut dinners (pancakes, scrambled eggs or sandwiches) when there wasn’t time to make something all Martha Stewart-y, with the fact that this crazy, hectic period of time will not last forever. Instead of wasting all of this negative energy by raging about insane schedules and games that are slated for smack-dab in the middle of church or which overlap with other events, I decided to just say, as pithy as it may seem, “It is what it is,” and try not to get all worked up about it.

Easier said than done.

As the kids’ sports and academic project schedules are ramping back up and the kitchen whiteboard is laden with stuff we're supposed to do, I’m having trouble trying to maintain that Zen mode.

*more deep breaths while trying not to hyperventilate*

Three for Thursday: Spaghetti Tacos, No Time for Life, No Cheers for Skimpy Uniforms

Image credit: NYT

 Item #1: Spaghetti Tacos

The New York Times ran a feature story this week about a joke from a children's television comedy, iCarly, that has become, unironically, an alleged reality: Spaghetti tacos:

“On an episode of the hit Nickelodeon series iCarly, the lead character’s eccentric older brother, Spencer, makes dinner one night. Glimpsed on screen, the dish consists of red-sauce-coated pasta stuffed into hard taco shells. What could be more unappealing?

. . . That punch line has now become part of American children’s cuisine, fostering a legion of imitators and improvisers across the country. Spurred on by reruns, Internet traffic, slumber parties and simple old-fashioned word of mouth among children, spaghetti tacos are all the rage.”

To crib a bit from Saturday Night Live: Really New York Times? Really? Parents – aided and abetted by “mom blogs and cooking web sites" – are honestly serving their children carbs inside of carbs with a coating of tomato sauce? Really? It looks like something you see on those gross surgery scenes from Grey's Anatomy.

Have any of you heard of this trend? The Picket Fence Post kids watch iCarly, but I'd never heard of spaghetti tacos before reading the story, nor had I fielded any requests to serve spaghetti tacos. You?



Image credit: NBC

 Item #2: No Time for a Life

Maybe I should just write a weekly segment: What happened on the NBC show Parenthood this week? The show has been so on the mark about issues facing today's parents that I sometimes wonder if the writers have planted spy cameras in my house.

This week, the issue of family overscheduling was highlighted via the characters of Adam and Kristina Braverman. They, along with the at-home dad character Joel, were the stand-ins for parents who don't have enough time to have lives of their own -- to enjoy their own hobbies, to connect with their spouse -- because of the fact that the expectations of modern day parents dictates that they be hyper-involved in all areas of their children's lives, to enroll them in myriad activities and ultra-competitive sports, and to sacrifice their lives so that they can take their kids to all their activities and oversee/correct homework assignments. It’s, on the surface, a small story, not having time for a date night, but it goes right to the heart of discontent, at least in my house.

While I find myself struggling not to be negative or resentful about the sheer quantity of the time-demands placed upon our family by our children’s many activities, I cannot escape the fact that I frequently find myself mourning that I don't have the time I crave and need for myself and for my marriage. Time with my friends? Forget about it. Our schedule is almost entirely devoted to work and kids' stuff, with a bit of volunteer work tossed into the mix. (That last hour-and-change after the kids have gone to bed in the evening and the dishes have been cleaned, doesn't count as grown-up time in my book because The Spouse and/or I are frequently doing work or we're both falling asleep.)

You can read my review of Parenthood, including how the at-home dad of a kindergartner freaked out because he said he has no life outside of taking care of her and the house, here. At least when I'm watching the show, I don't feel like I'm the only one trying to figure out a way to deal with these issues without losing my mind.

New York Magazine Asks, Why Do Parents Hate Parenting?

New York Magazine has a very provocative cover story this week by Jennifer Senior about happiness and parenting. Senior wrote:

“Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so.”

The most horrifyingly accurate paragraph went as follows:

"Before urbanization, children were viewed as economic assets to their parents. If you had a farm, they toiled alongside you to maintain its upkeep; if you had a family business, the kids helped mind the store. But all of this dramatically changed with the moral and technological revolutions of modernity. As we gained in prosperity, childhood came increasingly to be viewed as a protected, privileged time, and once college degrees became essential to getting ahead, children became not only a great expense but subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed. (The Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer describes this transformation of a child’s value in five ruthless words: 'Economically worthless but emotionally priceless.') Kids, in short, went from being our staffs to being our bosses."

. . . being our bosses.

I oftentimes feel that, in the world of modern parenting, many things, people and institutions elevate children above their parents, putting the parents – who are financially, legally and morally responsible for said children, must raise them and teach them, etc. – at a power disadvantage. A loud chorus of parenting "experts," who are so fond of prattling on in the media, loves to tell us how very important it is to focus on bolstering our children’s self-esteem, urging us to concoct alternatives to the word “No” and to afford children, even very young ones, the “illusion” of control on many things in their day-to-day life.

Additionally, these experts tell parents that they should not ever shout (never mind swear) at their children because to do so is akin to committing lasting emotionally damage, like the verbal equivalent of whacking the kids on the head with a two-by-four. When parents are struggling for alternatives to the word "No," when they can't shout, can't reprimand, they're expected to be hyper-vigilant, hyper-involved and hyper-aware of everything, like whether the kids have applied sunscreen, bug spray, are properly hydrated and whether they've consumed any high fructose corn syrup.

Then throw into the mix the notion that, as Senior wrote, “middle- and upper-income families . . . see their children as projects to be perfected.” Those “projects,” and the high expectations that people have for parents to entertain, educate, fill with organic/homemade/locavore fare (but not too much "filling" lest we have an obesity issue with which to contend), to take to the “right” sports camps, to get onto the “right” teams, to make sure have the "best" science projects for the science fare (it's called “aggressive nurturing” in the article) are, frankly, freakin’ exhausting. It’s no wonder people aren’t having fun and really enjoying this precious time with their children before they grow up and leave us crying about the end of their childhood like the parents in the audience did at the end of Toy Story 3.

The most fun I have with my own kids, the times when I feel most fulfilled is when we’ve got nothing planned, when we’re not in a rush and there's no pressure to make a specific meal and we just hang around together, maybe talking or playing a game or just lying in a big pile on my bed being goofy. That’s when the pressure to be perfect, to “aggressively nurture” is off and joy enters the picture. And I think that if parents were able to spend more time hitting that release valve and depressurize our families – and stop making parents do things like sign all the homework assignments, fight with their second graders to make them complete homework assignments and run the children run off to yet another practice or game – we’d all be a lot happier, or at least I would. The simpler, the better.

“Loving one’s children and loving the act of parenting are not the same thing,” Senior wrote . . . especially when "parenting," according to today's insane standards, has become an unnecessarily complicated, high-pressured gig.

Image credit: New York Magazine.