It's been one of those
weeks. You know, the one where stress gets followed by bad news gets
followed by worse? This week, I heard that one of my best friends was
being referred for advanced cancer screening. Each subsequent test
fails to rule out cancer, so we move on to the next test. Her son and my
youngest are only weeks apart. Then I learned of the death of a very
dear relative. He was in his 90s, but he was very loved. And I learn
that his wife's best friend, another family friend, is losing her
daughter to cancer. Next, an email from another friend. She's cutting
down on her obligations due to what looks like a third recurrence of
lung cancer.
I put my kids in kayaks before their 2nd birthday. That's
the rule in my house. You can not go two years without sitting in a
kayak. This is why: When you're in a kayak, when you're down in the
hull with a paddle in your hands, there is no way not to be part of
nature. Half your body is below the water line. Every ripple in the
water will move you. Every stroke of your paddle will tie you in.
You're not racing above the water as you do with sail. You're in it.
You have no motor to pollute the water with diesel and heavy metals,
you use no resources other than the strength of your own arms and back.
You're as silent as the deer poised on the shoreline, and the
shorebirds skimming the waves. Which means that you move at the pace of
the natural world, and can hear the natural world, and smell the natural
world, and feel the natural world. With your face, your arms, your
legs, your back. It's you, and the wind and the water and the birds
and the turtles and the snake who darts across the shallows.
I want my children to
grow up feeling a part of that. Feeling a part of the world that
existed long before humans began twisting it to suit their needs. I was at a community meeting recently, and a high school girl gave a speech about the importance, to her, of a particular community natural open space. She said that when she got to spend time in that place, when she was small, she got to be whoever she wanted to be. She could be riding with Pocahontas or exploring with Marco Polo. She said that she's always had great extracurricular activities - soccer, or art classes, or gymnastics, and she's glad of them all. But that the best times have been the unscripted times, running around in nature, letting her imagination run free.
This is what I fear: that the changes we've wrought
through 200 years of growth, industrialization, resource exploitation
and pollution are killing the people I love before they've lived their
90+ years. That 2 year old Andy will grow up without his mother, or Dan
will lose the wife that he adores, because we've filled our world with
poison and called it fire retardent, low cal sugar substitutes, and
conveniently packaged snacks. That the incessant feel of asphalt and
concrete under our children's feet will make them forget that they
evolved to walk on soil, grass, and rock. That the "21st century
learner" our schools keep talking about will be so well tuned in to
technology that they believe having a photograph of a beautiful lake or a
polar bear as their laptop screen wallpaper is in some way enough to
counter the fact that they never see that lake, and we're driving the
polar bears to
extinction.
So I put my kids in kayaks before they're two. And I give
them live frogs to hold gently and put back where they were found,
instead of decorating my bathroom with cute little colorful frogs made
in China. Because real matters, and anything else is lip service. I feed them as much as I can on organic and whole foods, and when my brown thumb cooperates, on vegetables from our garden. I serve meals on ceramic plates and give them
real water glasses and real utensils, because children's dishes and
forks made of plastic just ensure that we are feeding our children
plastic until we deem them old enough not to - horror - break a plate.
I'd rather they break a plate or 20 - in 7 years and two kids we've
broken maybe 3 - then hear my kid has cancer before they're 30. I
keep them out of soft fleece jammies because our nation in its wisdom
has mandated that all childrens' soft fleece jammies come presaturated
with fire retardents. And I balance the reading and math and screen time with great doses of "go outside and run around," or "here's a shovel, make mud pies."
And I hope they learn, these 21st Century learners of
mine, that we can't survive on asphalt alone, and that to keep our
world, we need to know it, and care for it. And that nature is real,
and it is beautiful, and it is powerful, and is going to teach us many
lessons this century that require respect, and careful thought, and a
lot of advance planning.
That is why I keep, as often as possible, a kid in my kayak. And while we're out there, and I'm paddling, and my kid is in the forward hatch, (or standing on the deck of the Santa Maria, or climbing the rigging to watch for pirate ships on the horizon, or rowing to beat of a native drum) I make sure to spend some of that time silent, letting their imaginations run free.
Yours are lucky kids indeed, to have such a mom. You are made of the 'right stuff', Rebecca!
ReplyDeleteClive, Thank you for such kind words. I know that I'm incredibly lucky, really, to live where I live and have the opportunities I do. My whole family has so much to be grateful for.
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