So It Goes

Driving Lessons

AN ARTICLE IN YESTERDAY'S Washington Post confirmed for me something that I've been suspecting for the last few years: today's teens are not in as much of a rush to get their drivers licenses as they were when I turned 16.

"Federal data released Friday underscore a striking national shift," the article reported. "30.7 percent of 16-year-olds got their licenses in 2008, compared with 44.7 percent in 1988."

I've seen it myself. Fewer and fewer teens I've encountered seem in such a hurry these days to get their licenses. Maybe they're too busy with school or just overly comfortable with let someone else shuttle them around. Or maybe, 30 years ago, we who were turning driving age where still smitten by the American love affair with the car, a dominant feature of our our zeitgeist then. Maybe that love affair is cooling off.

Whatever the reason, my oldest daughter is not among those who would rather wait. She's 16 and a half and feels her time to take the wheel on her own is long overdue. Since she was 15, she has literally been counting the days until she could get her permit and then take the test for a full license.

In many ways, she's a lot more prepared for this moment than I am. The truth is, while I knew the day would come, it sort of jumped out at me. I realize now that I was doing all I could not to think about it. Probably much like those kids who are putting off learning to drive, I was happy to let adolescence last a few more years.

Oh, I see the benefits of her getting her license. We will have another driver in the house, which will take some of the burden off of my wife's shoulders (mostly during the week) and my own (mostly on the weekends), and she will win some of the independence she naturally craves. Also, before she moves farther from the nest, I will at least know that she's had a couple of years under our relatively close watch to perfect her driving skills.

But I have to say that teaching her to drive has not been the most enjoyable moment in my tenure as a parent. Not because of my daughter. She's been responsible and learned well; I'm confident she'll be fine on the road. (Hint: Someone told me a couple of years ago to start the lessons in a cemetery, where there are few cars and wide, usually well-kept roads. It was a great suggestion.) 

But it's very difficult to turn such a potentially dangerous task over to someone for the first time. And it's just as hard to sit back and hope it all works out. I confess to being a little too quick to bark out a command, issue a warning or, worst of all, occasionally grab for the wheel. In some instances, the admonishment was called for. But most of the time it just reflected my own anxiety with getting through such a trying, but inevitable passage in life -- for me and for her.

Also, like a lot of tasks we teach our children, I've realized that each of us has our own personal driving style. Some of us drive fast and closely behind other cars; others are more deferential and even hesitant. Some step on the gas when they see a yellow light, while others back off and stop. Some hold the wheel at 10 and 2 o'clock, and others hold it at 8 and 4 -- or with one hand on the top. This is why married couples shouldn't drive with one another too much; it can test their patience.

Like many other turning points in my child's life, this has been a lesson not just for her but for me, too. I have had to learn to trust, to let go, to take my foot off the imaginary brake pedal on the passenger side of the car and let her drive on to the next stage in her life, even as the stakes of failure have just gotten higher.

The truth is, I'm glad she's ready to get on with becoming a driver, soon than later. It's a step she needs to take, and so do I.

Jeff

The Long Path to Independence

WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST Michael Gerson published a piece in today's paper on the mixed feelings he has when his kids go off to summer overnight camp. I swear he took the ideas and the sentiments right out of my head. Alas, it is the action, not the thought, that really counts. Plus, he got to it first -- and wrote it better than I could have.

"The ultimate goal of camp," Gerson writes, "is the cultivation of independence -- for a child to be away from home and face problems without the assistance of parents. Children stand on the edge of a cliff, willing themselves to jump into the water below. Or manage a canoe during a thunderstorm on an overnight trip. Or ride an impossibly high zip line into the lake. In the process, they pass from taking external direction to accepting internal challenges: I will do this because I choose to do it -- because I want to test myself."

I'm certain that, independence, is one of the big reasons my kids love sleep-away camp. In addition to the intense relationships they form with other campers, a variation on the independence theme (they're weaning off the intense relationship they have with their parents).

Like Gerson, I find it difficult to watch them go off on their own. I worry if they will find their way without their parents at their sides, whether they will get hurt, whether I will miss out on something magical that I cannot record on the video camera.  But that's a natural parental impulse, isn't it?

I remember the first time I dropped off our oldest at day care when she was a toddler, and she just blended right in with all the other kids, stepping into her own world, not the one we had kept her in until then. It was tough, but I realized, that's what it's all about. She has her own world to shape and eventually inhabit, and it will unlikely not be the one I'm living in. It's a long road to full independence, but this was the place to start. Too much later and it would be a shock to her system.

And ours, too. The fact is, both parents and children move inexorably along a path toward independence. As Gerson writes, "At first, the absence of children at camp seems like a reminder of married life before children arrived -- a time of dates, movies and unmonitored friskiness. But soon it dawns that the absence of children is not a reminder but a preview -- the glimpse of a time when children no longer come home. In an empty house, it quickly becomes clear how much of a couple's conversation weaves around their children -- how much of their own lives has become an investment in the lives they produced."

They key, I suppose, is to recognize this is happening, to let it be -- slowly and gradually -- and to get a life of my own. 

Jeff

(Another) Blessing to a Bat Mitzvah

YESTERDAY AFTERNOON, another of my daughters became bat mitzvah. Here is the blessing I gave her.

"In the parasha you’re reading today (Parashat Vayera, which begins at Genesis 18), angels appear three times: first, in the form of what seem to be three men delivering a message from God that Avraham and Sarah will improbably have a child; second, as God’s eyes and ears on the ground, trying to find enough good people to save Sodom and Gomorrah; and, third, as Isaac’s rescuer, who, on behalf of God, steps in just before Avraham sacrifices his only son.

"There are many kinds of angels –- or melachim –- in the Torah, but most have the same attributes of the angels we read about in this parasha; they have the qualities of both God and humans. They straddle two worlds –- the “real” world that we mortals inhabit and a godly world, about which we can only speculate.

"At this moment in your life, as you become a bat mitzvah, one part of you is still firmly planted in the world of childhood; the other is stepping into adulthood. As you stand in these two worlds, you are a melacha of sorts.

"I don’t believe that one suddenly becomes an adult as soon as she utters some ancient words from a scroll of parchment. It doesn’t happen like that. For some, that process takes a long time; there are plenty of people, well past the age of 13, who still have both feet stuck in childhood. For others, it happens too quickly and absolutely, and they have long left their childhood selves behind.

"The best case scenario, I think, is to keep a part of you in worlds of both adulthood and childhood. To hold on to the curiosity, energy and exuberance of childhood; and to embrace the responsibilities and opportunities of adulthood.

"In so many ways, you occupy those two worlds without any apparent effort or self consciousness, at least as far as I can tell. It seems to come naturally to you.

"I saw this about two months ago when I was dropping you off for your first day as an assistant in a first-grade class here at the Adat Shalom torah school. As you looked into the classroom, you lit up and said, 'Oh my God, they have Play-Doh!'

"Almost as soon as I said, 'It’s not for you,' you turned to a crying boy, who was tightly holding onto his mother’s leg, terrified to let go and walk into the room without her.

"You bent over and asked the boy, 'Do you want to go with me into the classroom? We can play with the Play-Do.' Much to his mother’s relief, he looked up at you, stopped crying immediately and took your hand, and the two of you walked in the room together.

"I try not to read too much into snapshots in time. But that moment, which lasted no more than about 15 seconds, was a quick flash of what I’ve seen you do over and over: pivot seamlessly between two worlds and lead others across the threshold. A true shalicha, or emissary.

"I don’t doubt that some of that impulse comes from being a middle child. It could be that birth order has a lot to do with shaping you in this way. 

"However you acquired it, you have been the shalicha of knowledge when you taught special needs kids and of friendship between the many different communities of people you have come to know. You shuttle easily and enthusiastically among your many different interests: sports, music, school subjects, theater, camp and family.

"So my wish for you is that you continue to play that role of shalicha that seems to come so naturally to you. It will serve you well as you go on in life and explore and inhabit so many different and wonderful worlds. And, like a melacha, an angel, may you serve the world well, too."

Jeff

Blessing to a Bat Mitzvah

THIS PAST WEEKEND, MY DAUGHTER BECAME A BAT MITZVAH, and it was a great time for our whole family. Here's the blessing I gave her. (Many thanks to my rabbi, who gasped when he saw it was about twice this length, and personally cut it down, saving me from myself. If only I could get him to edit my blog postings on a regular basis...)

There are questions that every bar and bat mitzvah is entitled to ask, questions like: "Why am I doing this? What am I doing here? What is the point of all this?" 

Naturally enough, you’ve asked those questions, and they’re fair questions.

With all due respect to the wisdom of the great sages around us, I don’t think anyone is more prepared to answer them than you. You’ll answer them on your own terms, through your own journey. The rest of us can only support you along the way.

And the answers will reveal themselves to you over time –- maybe tomorrow, next week, in a year or 5 or 10 or even 50 years. 

Your parasha, Re’eh (Deuteronomy 11:26 - 16:17), can help you along. In it, Moses offers a stark and rather ominous choice between life and death –- between embracing idol worship, on the one hand, and Adonai, or God, on the other. 

It's part of his epic farewell speech, in which he sounds much like a parent reminding his children of all they must do as they head off into life without him.

In effect, Moses is saying: 

“Guys, we’ve been through a lot together, through hard times, doubts and arguments. Even after 40 years of searching, we’re not yet where God promised we would be. 

“But along the way, we have built solid foundations for a truly great civilization, one that can sustain us, influence many others and shape the world for millennia to come. If we stick with this, we can create a glorious body of laws, literature, art, music, scholarship, culture. This could be big. 

“We’ve come this far, at a heavy price, and there’s so much ahead. How can we walk away now? Please, hold on. Please, stick with it.”

If Moses were standing here today –- and through his ancient contributions, he is in a way –- he might add:

“Nice work.  We’ve accomplished so much, often against impossible odds. But the job of completing this civilization is far from over, if it ever can be finished. And we cannot spare a person to help us finish it.”

As in today’s parasha, you too face a choice –- whether and how to contribute to and shape the future of a magnificent 4,000-year-old project.

You’re living in a place and time, unlike almost any in history, which gives Jews the fullest freedoms to be part of this project and to express themselves as Jews. And, just the same, we have the fullest freedom as ever to walk away from it altogether. 

Figure out for yourself just how you will contribute –- again, on your terms, in your way –- whether it’s through your love of music, your writing talent, your love of literature, your skill with all kinds of crafts and cooking or even your love of animals.

Whatever your contribution, just remember:  We’ve come this far, paid a heavy price to get here, and there’s so much ahead. How can we walk away now? Please, hold on. This could be big -- and you could be a big part of it.

Daddy

Just Being a Kid

EARLIER THIS WEEK on the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page, Joseph Epstein, one of America's best and most delightful literary essayists and one of my college writing professors (and, as no loyal former student should fail to mention, the author of a recently published collection of essays called Friendship: An Expose), argues that parents today spend too much time catering to the needs of our kids, who seem too anxious to fill their time to the brim with overly meaningful pursuits.

"I feel a slight sadness when I contemplate their energy, their too-early-in-life resume-building, all devoted to a path of success set out for them by others," he writes. "If they perform well in school, have lots of extracurricular activities, work weekends at homes for battered husbands, they might just have a shot at one of the country's 10 or 12 hot colleges. And once they get there, with more stellar classroom performance, more extracurricular activities, weekend work now with orphaned hummingbirds, the right internship junior year might just turn up. Which can't hurt when it comes to that tricky application to law or business (less nowadays medical) school, after which . . . "

This is a topic that my wife and I discuss often, and we try to calibrate our kids' activities in a way that their lives will not look the way Epstein sketches it above. We've decided that, outside of their regular education, while there are some basics that we want them to get (learn a musical instrument, lots of reading, a sport or something that will get them moving around, Jewish education), we think that breathing room and down time are valuable too, if only to save us from all the driving that goes along with it.

As Epstein points out, that requires real restraint in a culture right now that stresses that successful kids (especially the ambitious middle class variety) should be doing everything. When our oldest was finishing kindergarten, a parent of one of her classmates approached us to see if we wanted to put her on the same soccer team with her daughter and their other friends. "I don't want to press you or anything," she said, "but if you don't get her in now, it will be very hard for her to break into a team later on because these teams tend to stick together for years." And we had to make our minds up in a day or two.

She was probably right about that part about breaking in later. But to hear this woman tell it, this was major step in our daughter's social development, and we didn't want to miss it. The trouble was, our daughter wasn't interested in soccer, so we figured we'd take our chances that sitting out this critical opportunity might not mean the beginning of the end of her soccer career and her ticket to a Rhodes Scholarship or a Nobel Prize.

Okay, I'm being a little smug about it, but we've encountered quite a lot of that attitude out there that says that if you don't have your kids take advantage of every possible special enrichment opportunity, she will, alas, go to a "second-tier" college and eventually live a life of quiet desperation. It's hard not to let this kind of thinking sweep you away, and many people let it drive them -- and their kids, of course -- nuts.

But while some kids also willingly to play that game, some just want to experience what it's like to be kids while they can. Last week, over the morning papers, my 11 year old suddenly said that she was glad she wasn't Freddi Adu, the young phenom for the DC United pro soccer team who was signed three years ago at the age of 14.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because he's missing out on being a kid," she said. Though she's a person of good perspective from whom I come to expect insights like this, it's surprising even from her, a budding soccer player. Would even she not find it a little cool, if beyond her realistic reach, to be living such a glamorous life as Freddi Adu.

But, as Joseph Epstein says and as we all ought to know if we just step off the hamster wheel of life  and think about it, racking up all the trappings of meritocracy (though in Freddie's case, he probably had no where else to play) isn't always a recipe for success and sometimes can lead to a big letdown.

"What I would like to do is to remind them of all the geniuses who didn't do well in school," Epstein writes, "Tolstoy, Henry James, Paul Valery -- and all the other successful men and women whose attendance at merely OK colleges didn't slow them down in the least (Warren Buffet comes to mind), and still others (Bill Gates, for one) who chose to drop out of putatively superior schools (in his case, Harvard) because they were bored midnight blue by what went on in class. But they wouldn't believe me. In their hearts they know that the meritocracy is merciless, and hardest of all on those it would at first seem to favor."

Jeff

On Father's Day: Patience

AFTER MY FIRST CHILD WAS BORN, I became fascinated with what I now know is called “work-life balance” -– how parents fit all their responsibilities into their lives. Devoting enough time to my career was, well, a full-time job, but I wanted also to spend as much time as I could on parenting. Other personal pursuits, like playing music or sports, travel or involvement in community activities, didn’t seem to fit and would therefore take a back seat.

Some of the people I met in the work world had successful and demanding careers, sat on the boards of nonprofits, exercised frequently or played in regular pick up games, traveled -- and had young kids. I couldn’t manage all this into my waking hours, and was was determined to find out –- especially from other fathers –- how to do it all, without sacrificing any of these elements of life. Over a year or two, I informally "interviewed" dozens of other fathers about how they did it (though most did not realize it). This included many who, like me, couldn’t figure out how to fit it all in.

It took me a while to figure this out, but I found almost no one really had it all. Some would give off the illusion that they did. Many, I think, were kidding themselves more than the rest of us. They would talk in great detail about their children’s development and the choices they were making for them for school and whatnot. And then they would go off and spend what seemed to be large amounts of time away from the kids, either on their careers or on their other personal pursuits.

I’m thinking of one guy in particular who was a prominent lawyer, community activist and top amateur tennis player. I remember visiting him at his home once, where he spent almost the entire time I was there on the phone with some work issue while he threw a ball back and forth with his toddler son, at least when the son didn’t get bored and wander into another room. This guy always had a cell phone stuck to his ear when I met him in the work world, so I can only assume that the scene I witnessed at his home was fairly typical.

I realized that doing and having it all was illusory for most mere mortal fathers like me. Shortly after he announced that he was stepping down as President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich wrote about this in a Nov. 8, 1996, Op-Ed article in the New York Times entitled "My Family Leave Act." He had made a big deal at the time about how being Secretary of Labor was interfering with his role as father, and that he (like everyone else stepping out of a big job in public life) wanted to spend more time with his family. In Reich’s case, it appeared to be genuine, unlike, say, Michael Jordan, who used “spending more time with my family” as a primary reason for his first retirement from the Chicago Bulls. That was right before he went off to play a whole season of minor league baseball.

In the Op-Ed, Reich said that in his own experience there are those fathers who devote most of their time and energy to their careers, often (though not always) to the detriment of their relationship with and well being of their children. And there are those, Reich observed, who spend most of their time and energy on raising their children, often (though not always) to the detriment of their careers. There are exceptions to both typologies, of course, but my own anecdotal “research” suggests that Reich is right. (He didn't mean this judgmentally, and neither do I by including it here. For some, these are carefully made choices, fully conscious of the potential drawbacks and not necessarily linked to bad outcomes.)

But there is a third category, and my guess is that most of us fit into it. That’s of the fathers who try mightily to give as much as they can to both career and family. The best outcome we can expect in that situation, said Reich, is that we never quite accomplish everything we’d like to in either sphere. We can accomplish a lot, even as we're giving a little less to each than we'd like. This is Reich’s definition of the best we can expect of work-life balance, and I think it’s right on:

"There's no way of getting work and family into better balance. You're inevitably shortchanging one or the other, or both. You're never able to do enough of what you truly value.

"Don't tell me to improve my time-management skills. I've done that, and I'm scheduled to the teeth. Teenage boys don't need you on schedule. A spouse doesn't share intimacies on command. Work doesn't always present new opportunities or crises just when you block out time for them. Throw in a boss who has a good idea every two minutes and you can forget the schedule for good."

When I finally understood this, I felt a sense of relief, that maybe I wasn’t failing –- or at least not succeeding –- in either area. And I’ve noticed that as my kids have gotten older and a little more self sufficient, I’ve been able to add some of those other personal activities to my schedule without sacrificing (I hope) my relationship with my kids.

So on this Father’s Day, I wish patience to all fathers who are trying to figure out the riddle of parenthood (as I did and still do). We can have most of what we want, but maybe not all at once. Work life balance is not something that happens in one day after you’ve read a self-help book on the subject. It’s a long-term proposition.

Jeff

Click HERE for a link to a great New Yorker cartoon about fatherhood.