November 2007

Editor's Note

Despite all of my experience as a mother and all the parenting advice I’ve read in connection with my work, my head often spins when faced with parenting decisions. When the kids were little and would holler in their cribs in the middle of the night, I’d lie in my bed waiting for a wise voice to whisper clear, decisive directions in my ear. Instead, I’d only hear my own completely contradictory voices ricocheting around in my head: “Go to yelling child immediately or she’ll feel abandoned her whole life.” “You must cover your ears with the pillow and let her cry so she learns to comfort herself.” Now with my last two kids in early adolescence, I still listen in vain for a voice that will tell me what to do. All this decision making is exhausting.

That’s probably why my new best friend is the tiny lady who lives in the satellite navigator I have in my car. In her lilting British accent, she shows me where to go with unfaltering certainty. Granted she has led me down a few dead ends, but she never equivocates or apologizes. When a direction is missed or doesn’t work out, she just pauses, then matter-of-factly says: “Recalculating” and cheerfully sends me off again with new directions. Following her orders is a blessed relief.

In early October my mother, my sister and I went on an overnight trip to Tacoma. We visited a museum, had a good dinner and stayed at a fancy hotel. In the morning we piled in my sister’s car and gave the address of my mom’s childhood home to our guiding mistress. She responded in seconds.

“Take a right, drive 8-point-2 miles. Take a left in point-9 miles. Take a left in 3-point-2 miles.” We wove in and out on unfamiliar streets. “Do addresses change after 90 years? Does this look familiar mom?” my sister, the driver, asked. “I really am not sure,” my mom responded quietly. With no idea where we were being taken, we could only lean back and enjoy the ride.

“Take a right and in 20 feet, arriving at destination on left.” We pulled up in front of the tidy, yellow bungalow and turned off the ignition.

“Is this it mom?”

Long silence. Tears.

“When I moved out of this house at 10 years old, I left with my parents but then I ran back inside, said good-bye to the house and cried,” my mother said.

“There across the street is the house where my best friend Sylvia lived. On summer nights she and her brothers and sisters weren’t allowed to play outside after dinner, and they were supposed to be in bed, but they’d lean out the windows and talk to all of us kids playing on the street.

“There was a woodshed in the backyard of the house over there. I was told never to go in the woodshed. Something happened there.

“My mother had her vegetable garden there in the backyard. There was a vacant lot next door and that tree. It wasn’t so big then. I’d sit under it when I was upset about something. It was a good life.”

I called home. My 11-year-old answered the phone and, upon hearing where I was, said, “Mom, I totally promise you. When you are an old grandma, I will do the same thing for you.”

I peered out the window of the backseat of the car at the beautiful tree, picturing a little girl finding solace there in 1923. From a vantage point as far away as the satellite that led us there, I looked down and saw myself sitting in the back seat of a car in 40 years with my daughter at the wheel. And my daughter, 82 years from now, staring at our house from inside a car.

My friend, the lady with the British voice, had led me right where I needed to go, to a stunning view of the big picture.

Ann Bergman, Editor/Publisher
abergman@seattleschild.com

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