On Amusement Parks and I-Phone Obsessed Parents

So I was a brave mama and took Em to Six Flags Great Escape this past Saturday. Despite the fact that we got a later start than I had hoped (thanks to a big old nail that made its way through our car tire), we had a really great time.

Sure, there were some stressful moments. Lunch, for instance, was a bit chaotic. Trying to balance our tray of food, the stroller, my bags, and Emmy as we searched for a vacant table was quite challenging, to say the least. Then, as soon as we sat down at a table, Em grabbed and squeezed a packet of honey mustard sauce, so that it exploded all over her legs (which she then rubbed into her skin like it was sun lotion). Also, most of the apple juice from Em’s juice box somehow ended up in my lap, which of course was lots of fun. And did I mention the grilled chicken on the sandwich I had ordered was room temperature? Pretty much salmonella on a bun – so I decided NOT to eat it (I’d kind of like to make it through the pregnancy without a bout of food poisoning).  To top it all off, the meal cost us the equivalent of a mortgage payment. You gotta love amusement park vendor pricing.

But aside from our less than stellar lunch experience, the afternoon at the park went really smoothly and was, dare I say, actually kind of relaxing? Em and I went on several tot-appropriate rides, including a boat ride on a swan, a train ride through the woods (both moved at a snail’s pace, but Em didn’t seem to mind or get bored), a journey in a miniature-sized antique car, and a few spins around a big ferris wheel (gotta admit, I got a little scared on this one, since there was absolutely no harness or belt-like apparatus keeping us in our ferris wheel pod, and me and my squirmy 21 month old were swooped WAYYY high up in the air).

Em had the most fun in the amusement park’s little water park areas, where water spurted up from the ground at random intervals, and sprayed out of other apparatus in sudden bursts. She ran around, getting soaking wet, clapping her hands and dancing. I love seeing my daughter totally overwhelmed with happiness. There is just nothing like it.

It was a great time, really.

But I have to get something off my chest. Something that really bugged me.

On multiple occasions, throughout the park, I saw parents of children choosing to immerse themselves in their i-phones or blackberrys, rather than concentrating on having fun with their kids.

 In one instance, we were standing in a line, waiting to ride in one of the little miniature-sized antique cars. In front of us was a five year old(?) kid and his mother. The kid was SO excited about the ride they were about to go on. He was talking and jumping up and down and wiggling with anticipation.  He was talking about which color car he hoped he was going to drive. He was telling his mom that he was going to be brave and ride in a mini-car all by himself. And his mom pretty much IGNORED him the entire time. She was, instead, totally engrossed in some i-phone app, or maybe posting to her twitter account or something.

 I thought for sure she would at least put the phone away once they got on the ride, but nope! She had her eyes glued to her phone throughout the length of the ride. In my humble opinion, it was ridiculous.

I wish I could say I only saw this kind of parental behavior once during our visit, but I saw it multiple times.

I think back to when I was a kid, when we would (on very rare occasion) go to an amusement park as a family. A huge part of the fun of visiting an amusement park was being able to share the excitement, the thrills, and yes, even the post-ride feelings of nausea, with my parents. I just can’t imagine it would be any fun for a kid to visit a park and have a parent who is not just unenthusiastic, but COMPLETELY disengaged from the amusement park experience while there. It really just makes me sad to think about.

The irony is that the mommies and daddies who are on their i-phones and blackberries at the amusement park are probably tweeting: So much fun @GreatEscape with my kid! #amusementpark. But if they actually just got OFF their phones and participated in the excitement with their kids, they might ACTUALLY have some fun.

Innocence

I didn’t sleep very well on Friday night. To be honest, I was up until 1 am, in bed, watching news coverage of the tragedy in Aurora (probably not the smartest thing for me to do).

These kinds of senseless killings definitely shake me to the core. It’s really hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that a young man can go SO COMPLETELY off his rocker that he is compelled to go on a killing spree, ending the lives of innocent people.

It freaks me out. A lot.

I know that the media is going to try and explain James Holmes’ to me, and will come up with a thousand different theories about his possible motives. But despite all of the professional explanations and shared “expertise,” in my heart it still won’t make any sense, or give me comfort in a “oh. Now I get it,” kind of a way. Because it is all terribly complicated, and there are some things that are just soulfully inexplicable.

While I was watching the news, Emmy was in bed with me, totally submerged in a deep slumber. Her face was perfectly peaceful, so blissfully unaware of the craziness in this world. I kept looking away from the t.v. set to watch Em sleep, and then turning from her sleeping face back to the horrors on the television.

My daughter is blessed with the innocence of a twenty-one month old. Her world is made up of stuffed animals that talk in funny voices, rides on dada’s shoulders, and happy music that encourages her to clap her hands and dance in circles. She has no reason to worry, because mama and dada are here for her, and will kiss her boo-boos, guide her away from danger, and hug her whenever she feels scared.

But how long do we have before the innocence fades? How many years before Em comes home from school, or from one of her friends’ houses, with a story about a mean person who did bad things? How long before she starts asking questions about things she hears adults talking about, or news stories she overhears?

I wish I could keep my daughter in a little bubble of innocence. I wish I could make it so that she would never have to experience adult-sized fear or sadness or anxiety.  I really wish I could somehow give her a life in a world that has no such thing as senseless killings.

But of course I can’t. All I can do, as a mama, is be there for Em when she realizes that the world is not all rainbows and Elmo. All I can do is hold Em’s hand as her scope starts widening, and she starts taking in the totality of the world around her. All I can do is listen to her, and talk to her, and try to explain things to her, but also let her know that sometimes things happen in the world that are simply inexplicable.

P.S. One of my high school friends, Ben Coccio, directed what I think is a stellar film, Zero Day, about two high school students planning an attack on their school (directed in the wake of the atrocity in Columbine). The film does a phenomenal job showing the multidimensionality and complexity of the situation, and is totally disturbing in a very sensitive, very amazing way. I would highly recommend it to everyone.

Can I Trade Dreams With You?

So last night I had another one of my crazy pants pregnancy dream nights, where I basically felt submerged in a David Lynchian world for the eight hours I was in bed. Now normally, I wouldn’t mind being stuck in a wonderworld of red velvet curtains and ambient noise-music, but the dreams I was having were just NO GOOD.

The dream I remember the most (you know, the kind of dream that just sticks to you like glue, even after you wake, and you go around the whole next day in a foggy, “did-that-really-happen” headspace) was about my husband leaving me, and taking Em with him, and it was SO freaking sad that I woke myself up crying. I remember during part of the dream I was at my grandparents’ former house in Long Island (only it wasn’t QUITE my grandparents’ home, because the staircase was a lot more twisty/scary), and I kept trying to call C (who had already left me heartbroken) on these various cell phones I was finding all around the house. None of the cell phones would work correctly! Each button I pressed came out a different number or a letter, which made it totally impossible for me to ever reach C. Then I heard my grandmother talking on the phone in a different room in a quiet tone.  When I found her (after an unnecessarily long search), I asked who she was speaking to and she said she was talking to Emmy. I basically lunged at the phone, grabbing it out of my grandmother’s hands, but when I put it to my ear, I could only hear a dial tone. At that moment I was overwhelmed with this complete feeling of dread, like I had lost my husband and daughter forever. That’s when I woke myself up in a fit of tears.

Yuck! I mean, seriously, brain. Can’t you be a little more kind to me? I’ve only got, like, four hours per night of good sleep these days, between Emmy’s waking, and my constantly needing to get up to pee, and adjusting my blankets to accommodate my ever-changing body temperature. It would be nice if you would just throw me a bone and let me have dreams about pastel ponies and balloon rides and enormous bowls of cereal.

So, folks, did you have a particularly good dream last night that you might be willing to trade with me? I’m hoping you might be able to give my brain some less disturbing thoughts to work with tonight, during my four good hours of sleep. J