Small Town in the Big City

I live in a neighborhood full of delusional people. I am one of them. We like to believe that our four block radius is actually a small town, even though we are in the middle of a big city. Kids run in and out of each other’s homes as if all the homes on are street are one big house that all the kids share. People watch out for each other’s children and pets and property as if it were their own. We pass down outgrown clothes to the next youngest child on the block, do dinner trains when someone is sick or there has been a death in a family. We have group trips to the beach, picnics in the park, and potlucks throughout the year.

The way our neighborhood celebrates the Fourth of July reminds me most of our small town longings. There is a big, neighborhood-wide block party with hot dogs and sack races and pie contests. An antique fire truck leads a parade up and down the street. Mini flags are placed on lawns, children decorate their bikes or scooters and themselves in anything red, white and blue. Last year, a mom on the block used her artistry, face painting our children’s faces with stars and fireworks and flags.

After the block party, we gather at someone’s house for a potluck and the musicians in the neighborhood bring out their guitars and drums and even a violin and play as the rest of us sing Beatles songs off key and the kids splash around in the pool, completely ignoring any warning not to swim until 30 minutes after eating.

As evening falls, a group of us from our street will walk together carrying folding chairs, pulling little red wagons full of children or juice boxes or jug wine, and we will go down to the wash where the street dead ends and set up an area to view the fireworks. We’ll sit there until it is dark and then marvel at the streaks of color lighting the sky. I glance over at our children, thrilled, happy, safe, and try to keep our small town delusion going a little bit longer.

The Meaning of Things

I sometimes forget that children are born without knowledge. Everyday, they acquire information through experience. They form impressions, develop understanding and attach meaning based on sensory information, social involvement and direct and indirect teaching. It is an acquisition of knowledge that is constant, rapid and in some ways so subtle, that it is easy to forget that it is going on until you probe deeper to see what is being learned. The process of attaching meaning to things struck me like a stray firecracker last week when we took our daughters to Tucson for the Fourth of July. Given my previous rants about Arizona and my strong feelings about their immigration law, I went with great trepidation. But my husband’s band was performing there and rather than have him drive the 14 hours round trip on his own, we tossed the entire crew in the car and went.

As we walked around the neighborhood near the hotel and observed preparations for the evening fireworks display, my kids talked excitedly about America’s birthday party. Their conversation made me wonder exactly what they thought the celebration was about.

“America’s turning another year older,” is what my seven year old said, lamenting the fact that there was no birthday cake involved in this party.

My older daughter added with the certainty and wisdom that only a nine year old can have when trumping their younger sibling, “It’s a celebration of our country’s independence.”

I asked them who we were trying to be independent from and they both looked at me, confused, knowing they should know the answer, but realizing in that moment that it was a fact they just didn’t have in their heads. Then the wild guessing began.

“Independence from George Washington!” Natalie shouted.

“No, don’t be silly,” Nicole said, dismissing Natalie’s theory for her own. “Europe. Independence from Europe.”

Well, at least she got the continent right. David and I gave them a mini history lesson, which I swear we have given them every year prior on the same day to explain the same holiday. But for some reason the fireworks and pool parties which have come to dominate the celebration made more of an impression in their memory than the story of a bunch of guys in white wigs back in 1776, sitting around a table and signing a document saying that they no longer wanted anything to do with an English king and his increasingly unfair tax codes.

But what the exchange reminded me, other than the need to watch more programming on the history channel, was that kids get meaning from what they see around them and unless we give context to the meaning, they can go on for years, for lifetimes with impressions and ideas which neither inform or serve them well.

We were at a movie screening recently and a father with his two young children in tow, was trying to get into the event early to get the best seats, even though his wife, who had the screening passes to get them inside, was still parking the car. After being told that he needed the passes to enter, the father became angry and started swearing at the usher, eventually bullying his way in after using a few unprintable words. It was bad enough that his own children had to witness his behavior, but I didn’t appreciate mine being subjected to it as well. I know what I thought about pushy dad, but I wondered what meaning they attached to the incident. My older kid, knowing better, but also catching the disapproving mom look on my face, talked about how and why his behavior was bad – the curse words he used, breaking the rules for his own purposes, being impatient and rude. But my younger daughter pointed out that he got what he wanted while we were still waiting outside of the theater. She learned from his bad behavior that if you act up, you get what you want. That was the meaning she walked away with from the experience. She saw the exchange in a completely different light, in a way that makes perfect sense for a young child, but in a way that if I hadn’t corrected her impression, would have been behavior that she would have thought was acceptable and adopted as her own.

Both incidents reminded me of the tremendous responsibility that we have as parents to give background and meaning to what our children experience in the world around them so that they grow up with a deeper knowledge and understanding of things and the ability to be open minded, interpret interactions and ascribe their own moral and ethical compass to them. And if we don’t, I guess we can be like the mom I heard the other day on the news. Trying to explain away her son’s fifteen years of criminal activity, she finally threw up her hands and said, “Well, I did the best I could.” In the end, I guess that’s all any of us can do.