Note: Between writing this draft and publishing it, my family welcomed another son into the world. As we stroll around the neighborhood with him in his bassinet and when his tiny hand instinctively holds my finger, I feel the echo of many of the ideas and feelings in this piece.
It was a typical Friday morning when my three-year-old son declared that he didn't want to bring his lovie, a trusty daily companion, to preschool. But his first declaration of independence was not the one that stopped me. It started with a question he asked every morning:
"Do you want to take our cargo bike to school?"
"No."
"Ok, so scooter?"
"No, I want to walk!"
As a new parent, I have heard numerous times that "the days are long but the years are short." I always retort that I have yet to feel any short years. But at that moment, maybe, just maybe I began to feel the phrase.
Before becoming a parent, I would have thought that a three-year-old declaring he wanted to walk to school would be pretty humdrum. Yet, I have become viscerally aware of the challenges of supporting childhood independence amid a broad social push for safety. For most families, the hardware of their neighborhood has been designed to make car travel easy at the cost of anything else. The built environment is a key governor of childhood independence.
I am fortunate to live in a place that is walkable and less hostile to pedestrians and children, which is hard to say of many contemporary neighborhoods. Our neighborhood streets predate traffic engineers and fire marshals, so cars are not the presumed default mode, able to subjugate everything else. Because of the street widths and block lengths, cars rarely travel more than 20 mph. There are so many pedestrians and bikes and hidden alleys that everyone is (almost) always cautious.
One of my favorite neighborhood vignettes is the morning rush of elementary-aged kids, along with a smattering of parents, flowing to the set of schools a few blocks from our house. Kids on scooters and bikes, others walking, and plenty of strollers for the littlest. There is always a short morning stretch in which these commuters seem to outnumber the cars.
That Friday morning I almost envied other parents whose neighborhoods decide for them that their children will be driven everywhere. Ours took that excuse away. Which left me watching another governor, my son's own capability, begin to give way. He knew the way to school. He knew to stop and wait at each of the four crosswalks. He knew to stay to the right when folks were oncoming. Now that he wanted to walk, he probably could technically get there alone. But I knew he wasn't ready. Plus I was definitely not interested in a visit from CPS.
Which brought forth a looming question: when would I allow my son to walk on his own? In this moment, two opposing parental voices rose in me:
"Watch him closely. Your job is to protect him at all costs."
"Let him go. Your job is to help him grow."
In both voices, I felt for the first time the years shortening.
Luckily I didn't have to make that decision that particular morning. As my son instinctively took my hand to walk out of the front door, time slowed back down.
|
