This land is your land
My son is fourteen years old and his friends roam the streets of the city as Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger and co. – Not starting wallets of people and bags, but hanging out in an enthusiastic audience, ragged, happy to be together and excited to be wandering, and certainly in no hurry to return home. When I told a friend about the new freedom of my son, she replied: "That's why we live in the city, right? So our children can have that urban experience, independent. "
But the truth is that when I initially imagined parenting in the city, somehow I always thought to be perpetually with them – a kind of Zelig-like mother figure lurking inappropriate in the background of every scene. Yes, of course, the city is a great place to live with his family, even before giving birth, you imagine that tolerant Sunday stroll through the museum galleries all illuminated by the sun together, both parents and Chuck pointing Seurat painting with children excited. "See all points!" mourn, and nods with enthusiasm the children and try to count them. Or you imagine your family on a picnic in the park, which has brought a bottle of wine for adults, and a thermos of chocolate soy milk for children, who remain perpetually frozen in his mind four years of age.
At four of them are yours. May arise in the city and feel very pleased with the cultural stimuli that continuously launched against them like asteroids of high quality. And as long as you can control your actions and activities and guide them in various directions. Four belongs to you. Fourteen, of course, belongs them and the underground, and St. Mark's Place in the East Village, and basketball courts, and the corners where they join, haggling with vendors on seat belts with skull's-head buckles. Fourteen can head into town and go to places where, in its forties, lumpen, are no longer welcome.
The desire to have a boy springs from many sources, but frequently mentioned by parents is the fantasy of creating a world that contains elements that were missing from her own childhood. I grew up in a neighborhood where the toll road was full of fast food franchises and carpet shops. For a long time there was only one Chinese restaurant in town – one bedroom dark green where the plates had silver caps, and inside you will most likely find chop suey or almond ding. Friday night my friends and I went to an event high school (back when it was called "high school"), known as "REC", short for "recreation." This receive a frenzy of Nok-Hockey-playing, not much any orange drink with sugar in small packages, y. One night a girl came to rec boring drunk Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill, and was carried out in an ambulance as everyone stood around and was surprised to fool.
However, as we grew, we with more places to go, were not new emerging fast food franchises all time – although still stayed out of the carpet shops. Suddenly, a cinema art and essay appeared in an old public school; saw "Persona" while sitting on a small chair. There were parks and bars and basements of panels, Always basement panels. This was the 1970s, and our parents had little idea how or where we spent our days and nights of the weekend. My friends and I did not live within the world of "The Last Picture Show" – a village of dreams and despair dustballs black and white – but do not live in the city.
In my mind I have given my children to the city as a gift, and yet it is a gift that comes with caveats and restrictions, dictated by his mother in particular strain of anxiety. The city is theirs, if I will let them take. When I consider the continued progress towards improving generation, I wonder if my children want to raise their own children. Maybe not even want have children – or perhaps, instead, the presence of the city in his childhood have given place to go in his mind except, perhaps, another planet, that they and their spouses and children to settle, Ray Bradbury style. I'm not sure when they look back over the years, exactly what they will remember and how they feel. But I suspect that that most children take away from children and not so much the landscape in which they lived in the freedom they were allowed inside.
© 2009 Meg Wolitzer, author of The Afternoon of the Ten Years: A Novel
Author Bio
Meg Wolitzer is the author of seven previous novels, including the position and women. His short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York.
About the Author
To purchase The Ten Year Nap please visit http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781594483547,00.html?The_Ten-Year_Nap_Meg_Wolitzer
La clemenza di Tito – Del più sublime soglio (Rec. & Aria)
[phpzon]Rec Gifts, 35, Electronics[/phpzon]
