And What About the Children?

I do sincerely believe that children are not given enough time these days to just daydream. Daydreaming is undervalued. In a society where new parents scramble to make geniuses out of their kids with Baby Einstein videos, and designer toys that were drafted by some developmental scientist in Sweden, one has to wonder how we as a society survived and flourished for so long on nothing but a rattle and our fists.


Really, some of our greatest thinkers and inventors were bored off their cloth-diapered asses as children. They were left alone for hours while parents toiled in fields, homes, and factories with not much for entertainment but the world at large around them. It was their world, all they knew existed, so they figured they'd better make the most of it.

By the way, I didn't mean to imply that these innovators' parents were negligent and physically left them unattended to fend for themselves. What I meant was that they weren't shuttling Jr. Genius around to Gymboree. They weren't plopping them in a musical chair that buzzed and lit up in front of a 60 inch big screen with surround sound so they could watch dancing shapes announcing themselves to soporific tunes. Parents were too busy then to obsess over their children's cognitive development, and thankfully great thinkers and ponderers flourished.


Oh I know parents mean well, and they want to do what's best for their children. I probably would have been drawn to those brightly-colored, whimsical playthings when my kids were little. Fortuitously this childhood consumer conundrum did not launch until after my youngest was already toddling around bashing his head in trying to keep up with his brother and sisters.

Furthermore, I am all for safety. I was quite the safety Nazi when my kids were little, but really a helmet on a tricycle? If your toddler has the ability to drive that vehicle fast enough to crash and cause a serious head-trauma, and you can't keep up with her, maybe she shouldn't be let out of the house!

You've Got to Have Friends

Why is it that most men maintain ties with the same buds for decades, and women let their friendships slip away into oblivian? There's college, the boyfriends, the husbands, kids, careers. They all put little roadblocks up on the highway of friendship, or at the very least some serious detours.

So your childhood pals, and highschool homegirls are gone; what do you do now? Where does an adult woman make friends? If you're a mom, you could try making friends with other moms. Might work, might not, might work for a while till one of the moms goes back to work, moves away, or starts dating the wrong guy, and you can't stand to see where she's headed.

Sometimes friends turn around and come back to you. You bump into each other at a concert, or you two have a mutal friend that reunites you. Time goes on, everything's great, and then the reason you lost touch in the first place rears it's ugly head, and once again, she's gone.

Women tend to come with an awful lot of drama too. You don't see men carrying on the way women do about being "soooo busy....", or ignoring their friends because they are making asses of themselves. No, men just say, "Hey, come over my freakin' house already, bring the kid with you." or "Hey dude, you're making an ass out of yourself; knock it off!"

Women also let some more serious things errode their friendships. One is infertile for years, while the other pops out baby after baby, year after year. Another is constantly dieting, while the other is trying on new bikinis. The marriage of one presents years of increasing bliss, while another's crumbles. One gets sick, and the other doesn't know what to say.
Whatever it is that makes it so hard for we women to make and keep friends, we need to knock it off, maybe even (gulp) take a lesson from the men. We need each other. We should be sharing our joys and woes, kicking back and getting silly drunk together, or even.........what?.......oh never mind. The point is love your friends, be open to the possibility of the treasure that lies within a new friend. Make time for your friends, because that is making time for yourself, truely indeed. That is recognizing that individual part of yourself that is not "mom", "wife", "Director of Human Resources", that is just you being you, and someone else appreciating it.