Moments In Succession

This morning, as we walked by PS 234, a couple blocks from our apartment, Declan said to me, “When I was little, I was scared of this frog,” and then proceeded to straddle it like a broken horse.

This is among the things that amaze me about childhood, both how present fear is, in random little things, and how unashamed kids are in expressing their fear, at least in the early years. I have a vague recollection of being afraid of Dr. Seuss books, and Where the Wild Things Are. Declan and Grey tell us all the time about what scares them, and it’s almost like a physiological description, like an itch or a chill. Are you cold? Yes, a little. Are you afraid of dogs? Yes, even small ones.

It’s a reminder that the shame we all feel around our fears is socially inflicted, and there is a time before it arrives. But fear is still fear, with or without shame, and it’s clear in Declan’s straddle that he is enjoying the distinctive big boy satisfaction of watching it recede.

A couple weeks ago, sitting in a café in London, I wrote a piece for Babble about kids and happiness, in response to the New York Magazine cover story, “All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting.” The article, written by Jennifer Senior (who, in the small world department, has a daughter in Grey’s pre-school class next year) discussed the various happiness studies that show a correlation between having kids and a decline in happiness – the opposite of the conventional wisdom.

Jennifer concludes on a faintly optimistic note, saying that other studies have shown that people are more likely to regret things they haven’t done rather than those they have. She says in the final two sentences,

It’s a lovely magic trick of the memory, this gilding of hard times. Perhaps it’s just the necessary alchemy we need to keep the species going. But for parents, this sleight of the mind and spell on the heart is the very definition of enchantment.

The take away is that parents are alternately deeply frustrated and happily deluded. Though the article was beautifully written and executed – I love Jennifer’s work — the last few paragraphs struck me as inadequate. Both the studies and the analysis are missing a piece of the essence of what it means to be a parent.

My view is that there are a finite number of intense human experiences that we have access to, and having children is at the top of this list. Comfort is abundant and has low scarcity value for those of us lucky enough to live in the first world; powerful, novel human experiences, on the other hand, are increasingly scarce as we get older, and disproportionately valuable:

The truth is that we get too good at life, and we need to be humbled again. We may lose a big chunk of our adult lives to the repetitive maintenance of children; we may lose time to think novel thoughts and enjoy those of others; we may drink less wine and smell more poop, and we surely spend less time in a serene state of equipoise, but there is a payoff in raw human experience that is not measured in the studies. A life with incrementally rising average happiness can get stale, predictable. Novelty, not of scenery but of experience, is harder to come by than average happiness, and consequently has more scarcity value. In the trials of parenthood, we are resubmitted to the work-a-day, stomach-clenching highs and lows of childhood, to the shriek-worthy revelation that is a paper airplane’s first launch or the betrayal of a parent’s departure. We are damned lucky to have all this, even if, in moments, it almost kills us.

There is little doubt that raising kids is no cake walk. For me the single most challenging piece of this is the absence of time. Time to experience loneliness, which for me is an important part of the spectrum of experience, the phase that makes it possible to fully digest and process life; time to watch and take in the experiences of others, time to create things (which in my case involves aspirations to write more, although I hope some day to have time to play music, paint and experiment with photography, and so on).

One commenter, “Mom of two,” disagreed:

I mostly agree with this article, except for the idea that we lose out on creative expression when we have kids. Without my daughters, I doubt very much that I would sing, dress up, finger paint, mold clay, or pretend I’m a shark in a backyard pool as I do with them. It’s a different kind of creative expression than the measured practicing of a piano or ‘chainsaw sculpting’ you might think of, but I actually think it opens me up to other kinds of creativity when they’ve gone to bed.

the joy of Lego

I love this, she makes a great point. Getting on your hands and knees and getting in the head space of kids, which I enjoy enormously for relatively short periods of time, opens you up creatively, not unlike all the wacky “bark like a dog” exercises they make you do in improv class.

In my case, and I have to think for many parents, the problem is simply access to time – between work and family time, reading a novel is a luxury, and pulling out the canvas and oil paints that I have had in storage for eight years and never touched is totally out of the question. Having read David Shenk’s Genius in All of Us and Gladwell’s Outliers recently, I do think there is something to this 10,000 hour idea — that it takes a certain amount of time to gain mastery of anything, and once you do you enjoy a virtuous cycle of affirmation and more practice, all of which makes possible a level of creative expression that is not possible without the base level skills.

I discussed this with David (Shenk) over a drink some months ago, and he seemed to think that part of why a disproportionate number of extraordinary acts of creation and discovery (the writing of important novels, scientific breakthroughs, and so on) happen before people have kids is not that we get stupider, but that it becomes harder to sustain the level of focus, and the time commitment, necessary to gain new levels of mastery.

I like to think there is a way to engage passionately in various pursuits and while being a non-negligent parent, maybe even a reasonably good one. Lord knows many of the greatest artists, businesspeople, thinkers and scientists have been lousy parents, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s a zero sum game. I like to think giving your kids an example of a parent who deeply enjoy what they do is a gift of sorts. And I like Mom of Two’s point that these two identities can inform one another.

We have every reason to believe that eight years from now, perhaps sooner, Declan will be willing to offer any number of lawn mowings, table settings, shirt-tuck-ins, and other acts of obedience in order to get the family photo below, in which he appears wearing Star Wars tighty whiteys (or tighty-not-so-whiteys) in lieu of a bathing suit, removed from the wall.

This photo was taken on a glorious Father’s Day, at Stinson Beach near San Francisco. To my left are the volkman sister trio Teryn, Alisa and Lori (from left to right). Also pictured: Teryn’s kids Lily and Zoey, Teryn’s goteed husband Ed, Lori’s kids Will, Coby, and Ella, and our boys Grey and, in tighty whitey glory, Declan. Following the wise guidance of Mark and Blythe Harris, we had lunch at Mountain Inn near the top of Mount Tamalpais, hung out on Stinson beach, and then had a beer and Fish and Chips on the lawn of the Pelican Inn. Spectacular day.

A knee-weakeningly endearing, prestalgia-inducing shot of Alisa, Grey and cousin Ella follows.

Demonstrating what his parents like to think is an early concern for the environment rather than low self-esteem (of which there is little other evidence), Grey Griscom attempted to recycle himself this morning.

Two Year Old Recycles Self

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This incident followed another act of what appears to be precocious environmental sensitivity. Yesterday, Grey insisted upon putting his poopie diaper back on after it was removed and he was cleaned. Some relatives believe this was, in fact, a case of monumental obstinacy, following as it did ten minutes of Grey screaming “no change diaper” and “no fresh diaper” and “put poopie diaper back on!” Grey is, without a doubt, a child whose willfullness and intractability bring to mind that of a 3,600 horsepower diesel locomotive. But his father prefers to interpret this incident as an early attempt at conservation, following in the footsteps of his carbon negative Aunt Amanda and Uncle Bronson.

Yesterday I took the photo below of a father-son duo strolling through Soho. I sent copies to a few impulsive fellow dads, who I like to think are susceptible to peer pressure, with the subject line “dare you,” and another to my mother with the subject line “it could be worse” (she tends to think Declan and Grey look like underattended chia pets).