Independence Day (not)

One side note - you know I'm looking for a job...so the first one I see this morning is this:

BORING MILL OPERATORS - Strong candidate needed to operate BORING mills and multi planers, 4ft. rotary table tops and 7ft. floor type BORING mills.

While the job itself sounds perfectly respectable, I couldn't tell people what I do and have the first word be BORING. Like telling people I'm a STUPID MOM, FAT DESIGNER......

O.K. - what I really wanted to say is that I am thinking a lot about my children's alleged independence. As you know, I was not an abandoned child but I grew up in the '60's basically, so I lived my childhood with crazy abandon. The moments were thrilling, the memories are delightful. I remember packing lunches "to-go" (imagine that - I think we called it PICNIC), almost always a peanut butter & jelly or fluffernutter sandwich on bright-white bread into a paper bag and my brother and I were off. We rode our bikes as far away as we could go, we dug tunnels connecting the back yards in the neighborhood (the Great Escape inspired activity of choice), we hiked and rock-climbed (turns out those rocks were someone's back yard), we skated on ponds, we roller skated down steep hills with the skates that had keys and would be re-called now, and would walk a mile with pockets full of change to buy candy (LOTS of CANDY). My Mom would not see us until dinner time and not because she was amiss in her parenting style but because this is what every kid was doing.

I have no idea what little kids were doing in the '70's or '80's. Skye was born in '89 and everything after that is kind of a BLUR but I know one thing - my kids have never been allowed to just wander, nor say "bye" at breakfast and return around dinner time.

One thing that makes it totally different for us, certainly, is that, because of Kier's autism, we have had to bolt all our doors from the inside and hide the keys; he has a history of "escaping" and terrifying us as we do our blood-hound routine with the police.....he has found keys that we hide, ended up in people's beds, barefoot in restaurants, "taking" bikes from open garages, in the basement of our old house. Anyway, as you can imagine, this has proven to be somewhat stifling for our 4 other kids who have always had to ask to be let out to play in the front yard (or backyard until we had it fenced like a fortress - although Kier has also climbed over 6 ft. privacy fences in his day). I think of my children as declawed indoor cats who look outside at the birds and tune in to some primal instinct but just haven't connected with what it is.......however, even if it weren't such an extreme case, I sense that they would "log on" before they'd dig a tunnel.

Nevertheless, Atticus (almost 10) - who has Aspergers (close in many ways but higher functioning than Kier's severe autism) is getting restless and has just recently wanted to "wander", to be free, to just "go" and we know this is healthy since he has been very vocal about never wanting to grow up before now. We helped him orchestrate his first adventure about a week ago. He was going to walk to the park alone, play for awhile then come home. We rehearsed with him every detail of his plan before he left: cross at the light.....wait till you see the cars actually STOP...don't talk to anyone, don't change your plan and go somewhere else, don't stay long, don't go over by the water. It was huge for us and huge for him; he's left with Montserrat or Antigone before but never alone (although he walks home from school each day......with groups of other kids). Honestly, we believed he'd do fine but we were in hyper-alert mode, waiting for his return about an hour later. I asked him if he'd had fun and he said "not really". On the one hand, I knew it was the abandon that I'd enjoyed that he was really looking for...the instinct to just be gone without limits, no plan.....and to just "show up" later, while on the other hand, I could see that he was relieved to be home. He has started to do quick trips to get "something" at Trader Joe's or a pharmacy with candy that's super close and this seems to be easing the wanderlust and making him feel more free.

Skye (almost 20) moved out last fall - to an apartment complex close to our house. He has not, however, actually hung out or slept at his apartment more than a handful of times but comes "home" instead. At first I assumed he just missed the high speed internet, Kier, or the dog, but as the months have zoomed by I'm thinking it's something more and it makes me think about the basic conflict between dependence and independence and I so easily see how - at least for my kids - it needs to move slowly. I'm thinking possibly a tunnel from one side of the yard to the other, with high speed internet and a small fridge?

Ruby