It is early but not that early. I roll over to greet my
husband and then remember he is away on a business trip. He is not there. I say
good morning to my phone. It greets me with its both incredibly satisfying yet
intensely irritating round of clicks and beeps as I sift through a range of
mostly useless information. Top stories on CNN, weather, TMZ, FB. I’m clearly
checking everything of vital national importance. At the same time not too far
down the hall, Ruby is just waking up. As she does, she hears the far away
sound of my AM click click clicking. “Mom, what is that sound?” And just like
that I’ve thrust her into this chaotic busy technologically savvy everyone’s
checking everyone’s connected world before her poor little two year old body
has had a chance to fully crank open her eyelids and greet the morning sun.
I feel like a jerk and a hypocrite. I always said I would
never be one of those people and here I was – checking my phone before I
checked on my husband or my kids or me. Was I still here? Who knew – but what
was the latest on Lindsay Lohan? Ridiculousness. I feel like people talk a lot lately
about how busy and noisy and hyper kids are today but the more I watch them, it’s
not the kids that are changing – it’s us, the alleged grown-ups. I tell them to
be quiet and listen and focus but on any given moment, am I modeling any of
those things for them? I mean I really find myself wondering, if I completely
fell off the grid and gave up a cell phone and the computer and forced myself
to actually sit down and make a phone call or write a letter and do so with
intention and thoughtfulness, my increasingly disturbing suspicion is that I
would be far more connected to what is real and what matters, and be able to
sort more appropriately in my brain what doesn’t.
Last year we rented a place in NJ when Phil took a new role
at his company. In NJ, the kids went to a small preschool at an even smaller synagogue.
On any given morning when you went to drop them off, the synagogue was quiet. There
were maybe a few congregants and workers shuffling around: lots of love, little
bustle. This year back in CT, we are at the JCC. And it is great. It’s a
completely different experience but they have lovely teachers and friends and
are truly having a great year. But on a whole different level, I can’t help but
think how much more busy and noisy their lives are just by being in the
bustling center every day. It’s a community center and it should be busy with
craft shows and classes and workouts and play and theatre and school and the café
and all of the stuff that draws a lot of people from a lot of places. And I look
at them running through the center and they seem so happy and busy and bustling
themselves.
But I worry that amid all of the bustle they are losing this
other part of themselves, the quiet part, the focused part, the part that can
open their eyes without requesting to play the cookie game app on the ipad and
watch Sesame Street at the same time before they’ve either peed or said good
morning to me or Phil. They are learning to multi-task at the tender ages of 2
and 4. Which I suspect most people would tell me is a good thing for them to
learn at an early age but I worry that they are increasingly losing the ability
to single task. To listen, to think and to be in one place, one thought or one
moment without interruption. Even more than that, I worry that I myself have
already lost that ability. I am losing the present for the many and the silly
and I am teaching them bad stuff. I can’t even do two things at once like play
superheros and check Facebook: I have to do at least three things at once including
play superheros, check Facebook, and silently berate myself for losing focus
and teaching bad habits. Without question, I am multi-tasking at its least
attractive level.
Ruby is going through my nightstand again. She comes across
a set of DVDs my father made for me of our old home movies. She requests to
watch one. I put it on and notice she looks worried. “Mommy it is not working.
There is no sound.” I explain that the old movies were literally just moving
pictures or images, no words to go with them. Nothing but the recorded tick
tick tick of the old reel. She looks puzzled, and then accepting. And for the
next 40 minutes she watches a movie largely of people she doesn’t know or may
not recognize. There is no sound. I am so impressed with her ability to stick
with it. I think more on all the business and noise on her life. It is not her
seeking it out or needing it. It is me.
And so I am resolving not too withdraw but attempt to do one
thing, whatever that one thing is, at any one time. It sounds relatively
simple, but has become remarkably hard for me to do. I am learning to make my
children wait more. I help one, then the other. Or perhaps even more shocking,
I might help myself first. When I am playing superheros and princesses, I
resolve to fully be in character in that moment. And when I am reading garbage
on TMZ, I intend to do only that and furtively enjoy it while I make innocuous
comments to Phil about the market that make him think I am reading something
more nutritionally sound.
Or maybe I just need to stop sleeping with my smartphone.
Baby steps Jenn….baby steps….
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