On the brink: Are we there yet?

Feb. 25, 2016

Observing the children’s behavior over the last few weeks, after months of being reminded that we are all standing on the brink of an epic, once-in-a-lifetime adventure, one is all too aware of the mounting anticipation and anxiety. Heaps of hopefully clean clothing spread amorphously where tidy, up-cycled dresser drawers once stood. At the breakfast hour we gather haggardly around a well-worn, less-than-clean Mexican blanket that covers part of the hardwood floor in what we continue—out of mere habit—to refer to as our dining room, and eat greedily from one or two shared plates without the luxury of utensils.

Still, amidst the turmoil and the hodgepodge of over-sized produce boxes marked “philosophy” or “family heirlooms”, the kids are as determined as ever to enjoy their quotidian pastimes, kicking the soccer ball, watching youtube videos about the solar system, or playing a round of pen pal in the freshly painted hallway. But it’s impossible to ignore the increased frequency and escalating acerbity of their periodic meltdowns. Given the rapid erosion of order and structure, the loss of emotional control should not come as a great surprise, but that doesn’t make it any less disruptive or challenging as we cling tenuously to our few remaining threads of sanity.

Focusing one eye on the transcontinental light at the end of our radically shifting tunnel, the other eye keeps drifting back toward the ear-splitting tantrums of our needy children. Are we pushing them too hard? Are we pulling that critical sense of stability and security out from under their tiny little toes? Are we on the verge of causing them irreversible harm and emotional damage?

That’s one possible interpretation, to be sure. And maybe we’re in denial, but we keep telling ourselves that by guiding them above and beyond their limited comfort zones, we are actually providing them with an education far greater than anything they could get from conventional schooling, and helping them develop a whole host of life skills that will one day make them more adaptable adults and more responsible citizens of the world.

Once upon a time, in the early days of the Reagan Administration, my parents sought to protect my brother and me from the kind of childhood that would lead to permanent emotional scarring and irreversible personality damage. So I ended up spending the better part of my youth at the wide end of a short cul-de-sac overlooking a manmade lake and an archipelagos of terra cotta tiles on a sea of colorless stucco.

I have often contemplated the psychological impact of living on a street built with the expressed intention of going nowhere, in a house purposely designed to be indistinguishable from its neighbors, in a city named with grammatical ineptitude after an imaginary old Spanish Mission. Today we can only speculate as to the success of my parents’ noble efforts, but I can’t imagine the circumstances of my own kids being anything inferior to those of a latch-key kid from the suburbs of south Orange County.