When It Comes Right Down To It

I came home from swimming lessons, girls with wet hair in tow, with the realization that I am entering new territory.

Am really the mother of a suburban household?  I am not ready.  I will not, cannot do it.

Lest you think this is a bit of a jump (swimming lessons do not necessarily equal the embrace of all that is suburban and mini-vanny), it has been building for a while.  Since we moved here, the girls have been in soccer lessons, ballet, kayak, choir, and gymnastics.  This year, Merry also joined the league of mathletes.  Yeah!  My daughter, a math-geek.  Kevin Maxwell, Pi Day guru, eat your heart out.

And I know this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I am not yet one of those moms who ferries their children constantly to this and that, and please, God, don't make me do it.  But Merry is talking longingly about select soccer next year and Elspeth won't be that far behind. 

Not that it's all bad, really--I sat there on a towel on the metal bleachers, Bea freshly dressed at my side, watching the girls paddle around a crowded pool with their instructors, big smiles spreading over their faces.  I sat there and struggled with my thoughts:  Aren't we lucky, I thought mostly, Aren't we fortunate to be able to pay for these lessons.  I grew up undrownable for the most part but unable to slice the water like the others I watched moving with precision around in the water.  I am an awkward swimmer, never having learned more than the froggie stoke, and I would love my girls to feel proficient and powerful in the water.

Too, I thought: Aren't we behind, as I watched kids younger than Merry or Elspeth butterfly stroke up and down the lanes, their bright swim caps gleaming.

Then I surveyed the other parents, a mix of tired, worn-out looking men and women sporting various levels of success on their faces and in their clothes, and I felt a bit sad.  Is it because we were all sitting there, unable or unwilling to speak to each other, glued to our books or phones or to our own children?

(Part of my emoting, I think, is that Martin and I are still floating, and with every day that goes by, my sense of being untethered increases, despite the fact that I know we are tied firmly to all that really matters.  But the inability to plan is beginning to wear on me, and maybe that's why lessons and schedules and parents watching their kids in the same place every week is increasing my sense of spinning out into space.)

Then I waited for the girls in the lobby and listened to a mother talk on and on about baseball practices to a man who was polite but emotionally uninvolved.  Her son ran back and forth to the vending machine, dropping his towel on the floor a half-dozen times, and the mother talked on and on and I felt rather invisible on the bench in the corner, watching her and others pass in and out the glass doors.  I got the feeling that I was an extra in a movie about a world I never really thought existed. 

Is this world really American suburbia?  The thing baffles me.  We live in a town, so I keep hoping we are not really suburbanites, and I guess we never will truly be, but I feel the pull toward success,coupled with the fact that we are not those people, tempting me to forget about my belief in freedom and all that means: nonconformity, our children growing up in that tension between the rest of the world and our own funky family, the knowledge that we must live responsibly, in community, and somehow in sister/brotherhood with the rest of the world. . .and the courage to live it.

I think courage is the biggest thing.

This whole lesson and practice thing, this programming for your children, is relatively foreign to me.  I grew up in Kenya and mostly spent my days with my family and friends.  There was no program--we spent long hours creating our own fun together.  I didn't go to lessons (except a few guitar and voice at school); I didn't go to youth group, and I didn't have a driver's license or a job until college, and in college I baulked at structured social activities of any kind.  Here I feel like a fish out of water, and I don't have my good friend Sal to ferry me through safely to the other side.  "I am no good alone," I used to tell her, and it's so true.  With a good friend by my side, I can do anything, but alone. . .well, it's no good.  And next year, if--no, when--Martin finds a job, I will be looking at a much different year, and I will have to be brave.

My dear sister is here, of course, and she is a wonderful friend, but I can't expect her to forget her demanding schedule to babysit me.  And truth be told, the children are growing up and so must I.  Ho, hum.  I do not like it.

I returned home from swim lessons, poured myself a glass of wine and banged around the pantry, admitting to Martin, "I do not make a very good adult."

I suppose I will find my way to be a good adult in this world, in whatever is next, but tonight I feel like I need to find a little cottage up on a hill with the sea crashing all around, a few other cottages about the island full of my favorite people, and a big garden in which to work.  And those long summer evenings that never seem to end but fill you with dreams of being brave and courageous, even if, when it comes right down to it, you're a bit of a hobbit who would simply like to stoke the fire, smoke another pipe, and tell tales about leaving.