A Walker in the Suburbs

News of the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami racing across the Pacific Ocean makes it hard to think of much else this morning. But a Washington Post review of the movie “The Kids Grow Up” raises questions about our highly observed younger generation and the ethics of posting cute kid videos on You Tube. At one point the mother of the girl profiled in “The Kids Grow Up” said to her husband, the girl’s father and a documentary filmmaker, “Just think, when she works through all this in therapy, she can bring the footage with her.”

I don’t write much about kids anymore; writing articles for parenting magazines and an anti-parenting-book parenting book cured me of that tendency. But this article brings it all back, the self-absorption, the child-absorption, the difficulty of raising kids these days. I’m glad I’m at the end of my child-rearing years, not the beginning.

Our youngest is visiting our oldest in college, so we are alone: Tom and I and the dog. Downstairs we busy ourselves paying bills, filing insurance claims (the children may be gone but the paperwork of parenting goes on).

Upstairs, though, upstairs — three empty bedrooms stretch like a long sigh down the hallway. The shower is still, the hairdryer, too. I catch myself talking softly. Amputation is too strong a word, but this is more than missing. I’m glad I have a couple years to ponder the imagery here. It will take at least that long.

It may be December, but November weather is upon us. Not too late to think about these lines from Maurice Sendak’s charming poem “Chicken Soup with Rice”:

“In November’s gusty gale, I will flop my flippy tale.
I’ll spout hot soup, I’ll be a whale.
Spouting once, spouting twice, spouting chicken soup with rice.”

Today I hear the wind chimes clattering; they are the treble notes above the bass roar that is the wind. There is such commotion outside that it’s hard to think about leaving the house.

I would rather think about reading “Chicken Soup with Rice” to the girls when they were young, their scent warm from the bath, their footed p.j.s on, each of them clamoring for “their month.”

That’s what will keep me warm when I head outside.

Yesterday I found myself in an old-fashioned neighborhood where half a dozen kids were playing outside. Middle school kids, I think, or older elementary-age. A fleet of bikes under a tired old pine. Some dubious swings hanging from spindly trees. A couple of half-hearted skateboard ramps. But the overall impression was of invention and ingenuity. Kid-engineered.

Looking at this scene made me remember the grand kid klatsches of my youth. The kickball games, SPUD, 10 Sticks, all ages invited, the big kids humoring the little ones (well, sometimes). There were children in every house, more than 25 in one block, scads of banana seat bikes, constant drama. I still remember the songs we sang, the dogs that terrified us, the hedge apples used as weapons.

I was so lost in the past that for a moment I almost forgot where I was. Then I noticed a table set up on the corner, a girl walking toward me. “Would you like to buy some lemonade?” she asked. Every kid-powered enterprise needs its funding source. I reached in my purse and pulled out a dollar.