Put the phone down and look up at what you're missing!

 

Having spent so much time in airports and on airplanes the last few years, I’ve had a lot of time to watch parents and children all over the world. Sadly, the one thing they all seem to have in common, no matter where I am, no matter where they are, is distance.

The children, from preschoolers to teenagers, are almost always focused on tablets and iPads, watching a movie or playing a game. Beside them, their parents are hunched over the smartphones in their own hands scrolling through emails or Facebook posts. Occasionally one will speak to the other but for the most part they are lost in their personal entertainment. There is a brief flurry of activity as we board but once the seat belts are on everyone either goes back to their handheld toy or turns on the seat-back screen.

I find it all vaguely alarming.

I know how hard it is to control a child who is bored, miserable and trapped in some kind of adult environment. Keeping my own four happy—or at least keeping them from spinning out of control—was exhausting. I went to great lengths to be prepared. I kept storybooks and treats in my purse. I cajoled. I made threats. I held them in my lap and whispered made-up stories. I sometimes wore a necklace that had a tiny bottle of bubble solution on a silver chain and I would blow bubbles to amuse them.

When my son and daughters were small each of them participated in some kind of organized activity. Over the years there were ballet lessons, music lessons, art classes and a variety of sports. While they danced or tumbled or played the scales, I gossiped with the other mothers, flipped through a magazine or, when I didn’t have a little one in tow, read a book. But always with one eye on my child. My daughter just signed up her three-year-old daughter for a movement class and I tagged  along for the first one. We took our seat and watched her as she followed the other children and the group leaders. Looking on as she played, I was reminded of all the hours I spent watching my children.

I looked around at the parents—my daughter’s generation—seated in chairs around the room and I was dismayed to see exactly what I see in so many airports: Men and women bowed over phones, endlessly scrolling and texting. At least half of the parents who’d brought their kids were either looking at their phones or talking on them. My husband often takes her to the park and he tells me it’s the same there. Children play while parents stare at tiny screens.

Helicopter parents have been replaced by drones.

How will we ever teach our children to be present in their own lives and the lives of others if we take every opportunity to distract ourselves?

Sometimes, when my children were small and older women would see me struggling with a stormy toddler, they would smile and remind me to enjoy it. One day, they would say, I would look up and my children would be grown.

Now I am one of those older women and I find myself wanting to say the same thing every time I see a man or woman missing a moment with a child that will never come again.

One of these days, I want to say, you’ll wish you’d looked up.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap is the author of Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons. She can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Holiday reality isn't wrapped with ribbon and pretty paper

 

 This column appeared in The Spokesman-Review on December 5 2005, and is one of my most popular public radio audio essays. I think that's because it addresses something most of us learn sooner or later: Life, even when we wrap it in pretty paper and decorate it with bows and ribbon, isn't always pretty. CAM

My daughter came to me fighting back tears. She hovered at my side for a moment before drooping dramatically and bonelessly, the way girls do so well, onto the sofa beside me.

“What’s wrong,” I asked, warily because I never know what’s coming.

“I don’t know,” she said with a long sigh. “Christmas just isn’t the same anymore.”

It was my turn to heave a deep sigh. There were still Thanksgiving leftovers in the refrigerator, for goodness sake. It wasn’t even December.

I offered hugs and sympathy, and gave a little pep talk about how we see things differently as we age and it’s really up to us as individuals to make any day, not just the holidays, wonderful, but what I wanted to say was, “Oh yes it is. Christmas is exactly the same.”

The truth is the picture-perfect Christmas my child was pining for never really existed. It was the magic castle at the top of a fairytale beanstalk that I planted for her.

She was blissfully unaware of the times the checkbook wouldn’t balance or I was reduced to tears over a must-have toy that couldn’t be found anywhere in town.

She didn’t worry about the tree that died weeks before Christmas and stood in the living room like ornamented kindling.

It all looked perfect to her.

In some ways the holiday season is a beautiful but empty package. We’re driven by the belief that we can create this one perfect day, or season, and the warmth generated by it will carry us through the rest of the year. We spend, bake and shop. We decorate around worry, unhappiness and dissatisfaction pretending they aren’t there.

As my daughter rested her head on my shoulder, I recalled a conversation with a friend. We met for coffee, and she told me she was getting a divorce. “The thing is, the marriage has been over a long time” she told me, slowly stirring the lukewarm coffee in her cup. “But every year I’d make this gut-wrenching decision to leave and then I’d think about the holidays, and I just couldn’t do it.”

It was bad enough to know she was ruining her children’s lives, but the holidays, too? That was too much.

Facing the truth that the divorce would tarnish every Christmas, and every other special occasion the family would celebrate in the future, she surrendered. It was that important to her.

Year after year she put on another perfect Christmas for a family that was broken but just didn’t know it.

Finally, no amount of scotch tape and silk ribbon could keep it all together. The marriage fell apart, she left – in the summer – and the family learned how to do things, how to do everything, differently.

It wasn’t pretty or perfect, and it wasn’t easy, but it eventually worked. She told me later, after she had remarried and reconciled with the child who had struggled the most with the situation, that if she hadn’t been so focused on making perfect memories for her children she might have made better decisions about a lot of things.

As I petted and consoled my daughter I tried to tell her what we so often gloss over this time of year: the truth.

Nothing shines quite as bright in real life as it does in our memory.

Growing up is hard because it means our eyes are opened to what a gift box won’t cover. We make peace with what was and what is and, eventually, move on to caring more about making the ones we love happy.

What I wanted to tell my child, but I’m not sure I got across, is that the real gift of any season is learning to find a way to see the magic in the holidays – in every day – even when you know better.

Grounded by Love

My granddaughter walked through the door and ran up to me. 

“You’re not on a plane anymore!” she said as she wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her tightly.

“No. I’m here with you.”

She's growing and she's hungry these days. The first thing she wanted was a snack: Carrots. 

“More carrots, Nana!”

While she ate she chattered, swinging her legs, wrapping her feet around the cared legs of her old oak “youth” chair. I stood at the kitchen counter peeling carrots and cutting them into toddler-friendly slices.

After she’d eaten her fill of vegetables and hummus, she asked to take a walk. The day had been cloudy and cool and already the light was beginning to fade. We put on our jackets and she asked to take her balloon along. The shiny orange Jack-O-Lantern was a gift from one of her aunts and she wears it like jewelry.

I tied the end of the ribbon that trails from the mylar balloon around her right wrist, to keep it from floating away as we walked. She also wanted her “flower,” a plastic tie-hanger that surfaced after a closet clean-out. 

The object, white plastic ‘“spokes” that hold and separate a man’s ties, is curved at the end to fit over a closet rod. When held upside down, it looks exactly like a daisy. But you’d never know this, of course, without seeing it through a toddler’s eyes. 

So, ornamented with the pumpkin balloon, holding the plastic “flower,” we stepped out into the chilly late-afternoon air. 

She automatically turned toward the park, heading for the playground we visit most afternoons, but I knew our light jackets wouldn’t be enough as the temperature dropped. So I steered us in the opposite direction, down the street and deeper into the neighborhood.

She slipped her hand into mine and I tucked my sleeve over us like a glove. As we walked she chattered the way small children do. She stopped to look at the maple leaves collaged across the sidewalk, exclaiming at the yellows and reds. A dog barked and she stopped to look around, trying to pinpoint the “Boof.”

At the corner, intimidated by the ribbon of headlights threading up and down the hill, she stopped and pressed closer to me.

“Too many cars!” she said and tightened her grip on my hand.

We waited for a break in the home-from-work traffic and crossed the street. The next block is canopied by tall sycamore trees, a tunnel of gold this time of year, and the lawns and sidewalks are littered with fallen leaves. Some homeowners had cleared their sidewalks but others hadn’t yet caught up and in places the leaves were ankle-deep. I waded in and kicked my way through. This startled her. She stopped, again, and looked down at her feet. Then she did the same thing, pushing the leaves ahead with each step.

“We are kicking leaves!” she shouted. “We kick the leaves!”

We walked another block and then crossed to the other side of the street and turned back toward my house. Again and again we plowed through leaves when we found them and she laughed out loud each time.

We crossed the busy street again, not so threatening now that the rush was over, and, what with one interesting thing after another, it took another quarter of an hour to walk the last block home. 

 I was, I realized, in that shining second, as happy as I have ever been. I’d been given the gift of uncomplicated time with a small child, something I’ve missed since my own have grown up and away. 

 I have always been a little afraid of the secret part of me that is not unlike the balloon tied to my granddaughter's wrist. I could have floated away, drifting from one adventure to another, but my children were my ballast. In becoming a mother I chose to tie myself to them and that grounded me. And now, when I am free again, able to fly if I want to, I find myself making the same choice again.

We walked up the front steps, past the pumpkin on the stoop, and through the front door. Still holding hands we stepped into the warmth of the house. That must have triggered something in her memory because she turned to me again.

“You’re not on a plane anymore,” she said with a smile.

“No. I’m here with you,” I replied, smiling down at her. 

And of all the wonderful places I have ever been, of all the places I would like to go, none is, or could ever be, as fine as where I was at that moment.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Rediscovering the Pleasures of Solo Travel

When I was younger I thought nothing of getting on a plane or train or hopping in my car and heading off to somewhere I'd never been before. And I never minded going alone. But after I married, and then started a family, those solo trips were few and far between. Oh, I got away occasionally, but for the most part, we traveled as a family.

It wasn't until my children grew up and started leaving the nest, and my time was once again my own, that I felt comfortable taking off on my solitary adventures again. And I've discovered I'm in good company.

Maybe it was the influence of Eat, Pray, Love or simply a reflection of some other social marker, but it seems  the number of women who are choosing to travel alone is increasing. And I don't mean college students or gap-year wanderers.

I keep meeting and hearing from women who, like me, have worked hard and raised a family and are now enjoying the freedom of an empty nest.

Travel is a gift we can give ourselves, and solo travel is especially rewarding. It gives me time to think and time to write. In fact, I've written about the unique guilt and rewards of being a  traveling mother.

I like to think by not being afraid to strike out and go somewhere on my own, I'm an example of independence to my daughters. In this week's Home Planet column at The Spokesman-Review, I wrote about being a woman who sometimes goes it alone and I shared a list of a few of the things I've learned along the way.

Read Tips for Women Who Travel Alone and tell me what you would add to the list.

Chocolate souvenirs

In a box in the basement, there are four baskets. Easter baskets. Each of my children has had their own basket since their first Easter. Always filled on Easter Morning with the usual fare: chocolate bunnies, Peeps, stuffed animals, trinkets and treasures.

The children are grown now. Well, almost. The only one left at home is the "baby" and she is 15.
I don't stay up late stuffing plastic eggs to be hunted the next day. I don't buy stuffed animals. No one wakes up at dawn ready to go outside to hunt for the basket left by the Easter Bunny. No one relishes the idea of chocolate before breakfast because for all I know they eat chocolate for breakfast - or cold pizza and leftover beer - every day. They are on their own, after all.

Last year I filled a big basket with all kinds of chocolate and candies and then let my children pick what they wanted to take away with them when they returned to their own homes or went back to school. I decided to do it again this year.

I woke up this morning to find my son asleep on the sofa. He'd slipped in in the wee hours without saying a word. While he slept around the corner of the doorway, I pressed a pot of coffee and filled the basket with chocolate eggs, gummies, licorice, toffee and milk chocolate bars from Iceland. It was all hand-carried on the plane and tenderly transported home.

To me, there is great significance in the basket on the table today. It marks the changes in the way we live. They make their way home to me and I welcome them with souvenirs of places I wandered off to while they were gone.

I got a call from a friend the other night. One of those late-night calls women make when they have a moment to themselves.

She was alone in a quiet house full of sleeping children and a husband who was softly snoring in front of the television. She was desperately tired. After all, she’d spent the day caring for her three small children. She’d packed lunches, driven the morning carpool, played with the toddler who was still home all day, shuttled to after-school activities, made dinner, helped with homework, refereed baths, read a bed-time story, fetched one more glass of water and finally, finally, turned out the light.

Then, when she could have gone straight to bed to catch up on some much-needed sleep, she did what mothers do all the time. She got busy.

Sitting at the kitchen table, surrounded by her boxes of beads and stones and all the tools and findings she uses to make the beautiful necklaces and earrings she gives as gifts to friends and family, she let her mind wander as her fingers worked. She felt the tension slip away. For a few minutes she wasn’t Mommy. She was herself again. That’s when she picked up the phone to call me.

While we talked, I thought back to my life when my children were still small. I spent the day doing all the things stay-at-home mothers do. At night I spent hours answering a powerful creative urge.

This seems to happen to many of us when our children are born. We get crafty.
I see young mothers experiencing this all the time. Women who were once busy professionals with pressured careers now sew baby dresses or construct elaborate scrapbooks and photo albums. They revel in this new side of themselves, gathering with others who are experiencing the same delight in handcrafting.

I think it has something to do with the way we change after the babies come along. Suddenly, we are no longer the carefree women we were before. Our minds are never still. We’re listening, watching, weighing and evaluating. We fret. We forecast the future and regret the past. Mothering is all-consuming. There are few moments when our children aren’t foremost in our thoughts.

Creativity is a way to slip out of the confines of being the responsible party. It is a way to open and explore the child who still lives within us.

My days were consumed by the work and worry of four young children. Goodness knows, I had plenty to keep me busy. But every night, even when I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open, I sat down to create. Like my friend, I went through my beading phase. I strung freshwater pears into ropes, adding antique charms and other found objects to make one-of-a-kind necklaces and earrings. I sold these to a boutique in the area and soon began to notice my work on women at the children’s schools and around town. That spurred me on to stay up later and make more.

After that, I spent long hours making hats, steaming and blocking the fabric, stitching silk roses and velvet leaves onto the felt and straw. These went to the same boutique. Again, I began to see my hats on women at the mall or at church.

Later, I polished and cut old silverware and bent the handles into earrings, rings, key rings and necklaces. These went to local gift shops and to antiques and craft shows.
I took black-and-white photographs of children and families and then delicately hand-tinted the photos, adding small touches of color to give the portraits a vintage look.

I packaged gift trays using and vintage china, silver and lace and shipped them across the country to be opened by grateful strangers.

I smocked dresses and rompers for my daughters and my son, sometimes finding myself nodding over my needle.

Most of this was done at night. When I should have been sleeping. When I should have been too tired to do anything more than close my eyes and rest up for the coming day.

But, like my friend, like so many women, I crafted into the wee hours. I made things with my hands. Letting my mind play while my fingers worked.

After a while I realized that my newfound passion for crafting was nothing new. I was just one more in a long history. Middle-class Victorian women, gifted with time by the household innovations of the industrial revolution, wove accessories from the hair of loved ones or painted delicate watercolors.

I tinted photographs and strung tiny pearls. Now, I write. I still sit down and write late into the night the way my friend works with chunky gemstones and glass beads.

Some mothers sew. They crochet or knit. They bake. They refinish furniture. The commonality, just as it always has been, is the desire to create. To construct and produce and, each in our own way, to provide proof beyond our most precious
contribution - the children that own us so completely - that we were here. That deep inside there was a spark, a gift, a source of happiness that was completely handmade.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap is a freelance columnist for The Spokesman-Review. Her audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and public radio stations across the country. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com.