At the park the other day, friends from Michaela’s childbirth class commented that they always see me with a child in my arms. One remarked that I must have great biceps. I laughed. Although I am trying to get in shape, I am not doing well with my efforts. Since children arrived, I’ve had a harder time exercising the way I once did.
Recently I remembered that I had a pair of 10 pound weights. I haven’t used them in years; in fact I remember wondering whether moving them from San Jose would be worth the work. The other day I took them out from their place and did a few sets of exercises with them.
Upper body strength has never been my forte. In high school I always worked with the smallest set of dumbells for my arms. I felt like a weakling (although not at 97 pounds). Yet even though it has been years since I last used these weights, I don’t feel sore. The reps I did felt fairly easy. I was surprised. Perhaps my friends were right. Perhaps carrying toddlers around for years has given me more muscle than I realized.
Who needs Charles Atlas when you have children?!
Has anyone seen Disney’s new film Ice Princess?
My kids have not yet seen a movie in the theater. Ice Princess looked like a good candidate for a first trip into the cinema. We are fans of skating and science: the idea of a high school girl studying physics and practicing skating seemed safe and a good fit for our family. I’ve shown the trailer to the girls a few times. They were hooked from the moment the main character put on her skates. Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen’s cameos also helped.
However, the more reviews I read, the more I wonder whether the focus of this film is Rosalynn Sumners or Larry Summers. Roz, as she was known to her fans, won the silver medal at the 1984 Olympics, as well as world and national titles. This ice skating princess of my generation came from Edmonds, near Seattle, endearing her to Northwest natives.
Larry Summers is the president of Harvard who found himself in hot water earlier this year after trying to explain the underrepresentation of tenured women in science and engineering: Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce.
Apparently the main character in Ice Princess is a high school senior headed to Harvard. She’s smart and uses her understanding of physics to study skating for a school project. Once she gets on the ice herself, practicing on the pond behind her home, she discovers her own talent and accelerates rapidly up the skating levels to everyone’s amazement. It’s the ugly duckling story with a sophisticated twist involving turns of the body and identity. The nerd becomes a graceful swan with the help of spins and sequins.
The first review I read was the Associated Press’s, released four days before the movie came to the cinema. The reviewer criticized the plot, calling the main character’s incredible ride to skating glory as ludicrous, farfetched, and superficial. My girls don’t understand yet the difficulty skating requires. They make comments as if they could spin like the stars: I fear that if they saw this film, they too might imagine they could accelerate into competitive status by practicing on a pond during spare time. Roz spent years working towards her goals. Ice Princesses must pay the price. Sure, it’s a fun fantasy. But I’m not sure this fantasy would be helpful for my family.
Another review I read mentioned Larry Summers. In the film, the girl has been accepted to Harvard where Summers is president in real life. Devin Faraci wrote: I thought that the movie was starting out as an inspiring “Girls Can Do Math Too†film, but it quickly turned into a “Ugly Duckling Becomes a Swan†movie
Apparently Ice Princess has to choose between school and skating. She has to pick between going to Harvard and going to nationals. From what I’ve read, it sounds like Ice Princess ends up fitting into Summers’ profile of females.
But like the reviewer, I don’t know why she has to choose. A number of skaters have gone to college and continued to train on the ice. Either/or is not necessary. I imagine Harvard would be happy to help a nationally competitive athlete. Ice Princess wouldn’t be the first. It’s a fake situation.
So the more I read, the more the movie sounds like cotton candy. Fluff that might taste sweet but could rot their teeth. I don’t want my girls to have unrealistic expectations. I don’t want them to think that they have to choose between school and skating. I don’t want them to think that they don’t have to apply themselves and train hard in order to receive rewards. The physics aspect appealed to me. But the rest of the movie sounds less appealing, despite the pretty princess.
I want my girls to work hard, at skating and at science. Perhaps I’m being too serious. Fun is fun. Maybe the movie would be like cotton candy, disappearing. But maybe it would also leave behind dangerous ideas of what transformation means, as this reviewer wrote: …the rebirth of the ugly duckling is always given lip service as an emotional and self esteem one but is always portrayed in the movie as a better haircut, contacts and make-up, making the whole thing end up superficial…
Besides, last week I spent money on equipment for tadpoles, the same amount we would spend on tickets to the movie. Watching eggs turn into frogs might be a better lesson on metamorphosis.
Or I wish I could take them to see Rod Kratchowill’s daughters skating at their own risk and passing figure skating tests. As he wrote Congratulations Lindsey, all that hard work pays off.. Yes, congratulations!
I wish my kids could watch other kids at the rink and get a good dose of reality as well as lessons in physics. Most skaters will not win tiaras or Olympic medals but those who work hard receive valuable, invisible yet beautiful prizes that will last long after the days of college and competitions.
[side note: What would I do if one of my daughters wanted to pursue figure skating or something similiar? As I’ve considered this question, I’ve realized how much science and education play a part of our family culture. We don’t have many artists or athletes in the family tree. Perhaps this history as well as my own passions play a part in my reaction to reviews of this film. I don’t know whether this will happen – one of our kids is already discussing pursuing something similiar to skating – but it’s a possibility. It could happen. It would be a way of life different from what I know, unfamiliar to me, yet one I would welcome if it was what my daughter should do.]
Many responded, commenting on and linking to the post I wrote quoting a study on family lifestyles Families: living apart while living together. In addition to the excellent comments added to the post, I discovered others who had remarked on their own blogs.
I liked the questions posted by Kevin Briody
All the buzz in the tech world today is around the increasingly “social†nature of our software, our photo sharing, our online conversations. Millions of blogs have been created, with thousands more each day – people sharing their lives, stories, and ramblings with a largely unseen and impersonal readership. I know I take time at home to be a part of this social interaction…but with all this, are we simply transferring what was the substance of our home life and relationships online? As we go digital, groove with social networks, are we forgetting to take the time out to be with the people that matter most, face to face?
Good point. Are we tuning in through technology to others around the world so much that we are tuning out around those who share our home? I know I’ve been distracted at times from what is most important.
dave lucas, Steven Noels and Master Maq all linked and commented on the article also.
As if to provide a practical example of local lifestyles, Wednesday’s Bainbridge Review featured a column by Bainbridge Buzz editor Cathy Nickum in which she wondered about the role of fathers in family lives. She pointed out that the island is in effect emasculated – my words, not hers – when many fathers work in Seattle for 12 to 14 hours a day, leaving moms to function alone as single parents. Summarizing her column: 1) fathers are “absentee” on Bainbridge 2) why is it a surprise then that teen boys are drawn to risky behaviors? 3) American work life is demanding and draining of parents. Cathy is continuing the conversation in a post on Bainbridge Buzz, asking for comments: Dad-less on Bainbridge.
Ted and I tried the daddy-commute-to-Seattle lifestyle for the first year we lived here while he worked at a startup. Some days he didn’t see Abigail at all. We didn’t like it. Since then he’s tried to work from home. We’re grateful that now he has a great situation where he can work remote for his San Francisco employer. Many of our neighbors also have concocted creative solutions to the work dilemma. Some commute to the city for the day. But some consult from home. Some commute occasionally to other states. Some work swing shift. Some work on Bainbridge. Although many moms also work off the island, I suspect it is statistically more often the father who is absent. Cathy Nickum’s column, once again, highlights another aspect of island life that helps isolate us and lead to loneliness, one we should examine, discuss and see how we can change.
Her column appeared on the editorial page beside the main opinion piece critiquing an advertisement for a condo development our community (I believe it is this one but I can’t see the video at this time). The writers of the editorial mock the tranquil scenes painted in a promotional video contrasting the romantic images with the reality of soccer mom driving mania and a collapse at the end of the day.
The editorial made me smile but it also made me wonder. The juxtaposition of Cathy Nickum’s column with the opinion critique created a confused image of this place we call home. If it is so miserable here, why does anyone stay? And why in the midst of affluence and beauty are we so unhappy? Why do people move here? What are the images for our island and how do they differ from reality?
Another article from the Review came to mind, one that I quoted in a post titled ” …you are only as sick as your secrets…”
On the Bainbridge Buzz site, reading the new segment added to a fiction story added more fuel to my fire: the main character and her friend discuss depression and its solutions, including someone’s $1000 a month therapy. Fiction it may be, but I imagine it is also based in fact. I can’t quote from the site but the dialogue between the two characters reveals what we believe, how tired and worn out we are from the way we live. On the island, we may be materially rich, relatively, but we are emotionally poor.
Driving up Madison Avenue (yes that is its name) yesterday I saw a sign asking When was the last time you had fun?. I happened to be following behind an expensive SUV. All the juxtapositions, the combination of the situation on the street at that moment and the writings I’d read earlier in the day upset me. Here we are, relatively rich, among the wealthiest people in one of the wealthiest nations, yet we have to wonder when we are having fun. Something must be really wrong here. Either that or island simply illustrates the adage that money can’t buy happiness.
In today’s column, the Review staff distinguish between lifestyle and community in their dissection of the marketing of Bainbridge: You buy into lifestyle. You grow into community. Okay, true. Why do people move to the island? For the lifestyle. That’s one of the main reasons why we moved here. After surviving Silicon Valley’s surf, Ted and I were longing for a different kind of community. Seattle, especially the eastside, seemed all too familiar with its frenzy but the island offered its rural character combined with the fantasy (illusion?) of a slower pace of life for families.
Why should people stay on the island? For the community. But what kind of community are we offering? A quote from the Seattle Times article on family lifestyle stood out to me:
“People just don’t come together very frequently in our society,” Ochs said. “They might say they want community, but they don’t seek it.”
We say we want community but it is rare when we make the sacrifices to create it, even in our own homes it seems. I’m wrestling with this myself at the moment, determining priorities and seeking to simplify. Island living provides a tangible example of how we are separated from each other within our own families: dads work in the city; moms survive as chaffeurs and shoppers; kids overdose on extracurriculars and drugs.
How can we build relationships? How can we fix families? How can we create community? I believe it begins at home. And I believe it begins with counting the cost.
Modern work is intense. But we have choices. We can try to choose other careers or jobs. Like the American office, we can downsize. We can choose to live with less. We can choose alternative lifestyles including homeschooling or working at home/consulting to help find more time for family. Conformity isn’t the only option.
We don’t have to send our kids to expensive exclusive schools. Or to numerous activities. We can do and spend less so we have more for what matters most.
The other day I started scolding myself: my oldest daughter is almost seven and she hasn’t yet tried aikido. What kind of mom was I? Neglectful. Then I stopped and counted, realizing that she has tried four different sports, each one for at least one season. I don’t believe we need to pursue every possibility as parents. I’ve never tried aikido and I turned out fine. Yet this attitude of activities and abundance, acceleration and achievement is strong and contagious.
Here on the island, many of us may have paid a high price for our houses. We may have paid a high price for our cars. And I fear we are paying a higher price to pay these high prices.
Life is the most costly commodity we have. I want to spend my time wisely. Sure, I like my house. I like my garden. I could enjoy spending my days decorating and planting, pursuing perfection. But when I die, will it matter what kind of yard I had? Will people say she had such nice tulips in the springtime? Will they comment on my choice of colors in my home?
Will my kids care that they had piano lessons or karate? Will it matter the activities where I took them? The way I was stressed and sleepless, yelling and criticizing them for my own mistakes, running late to yet another stop on the Leung family Express route? Or will it be the attitude I had, the way I held them and hugged them, the moment I took for a cuddle or kiss, the kind word I whispered, the quiet time spent reading books to each other on the sofa?
I only live once. I want to give what I have to others, to my children especially while they are at home, to my husband, to my family and friends and neighbors. Love is the legacy I want to leave behind.
So how can my kids inherit love? When we have fun together. When Ted and I take time to be with them and others. Fun should be our daily drug of choice.
On the page in the paper besides Cathy’s column and the opinion piece was an article written by the executive director of the Boys and Girls club, Jennifer Wood, exhorting parents to set aside time for the family this Monday March 28 for Ready, Set, Relax Family Night
For reasons we adults rationalize, kids and parents are often too tired to make time for fun.
On this night teachers don’t assign homework and no after-school activities are held, so that families can spend more time together. Local businesses host, offering games and fun in the freedom. I hope this is only the beginning. To quote Wood:
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a child never had to say “I miss my parents” again?
From an article in today’s Seattle Times American families’ plight: Lives structured to a fault
Scientists at UCLA have spent the past four years observing 32 Los Angeles families in a study of how working America somehow gets it done. Day after day.
[…]
In 1,600 hours of digital video, scientists captured moments of unfiltered joy — but also of sorrow, anger and frustration.
The UCLA study isn’t ranking families from best to worst. Instead, scientists are asking how families are coping.
In a word, barely.
For the study’s director, Elinor Ochs, a linguistic anthropologist, the most worrisome trend is how indifferently people treat each other, especially when they reunite at the day’s end.
With a mouse click, she summons footage from the project’s vast archive. Some of it is hard to watch.
The article mentioned four trends in American families. Excerpts below each point.
Working moms
Researchers say now there are three jobs in the American family — two careers plus parenting — and only two people to accomplish them.
In short, home life is beginning to imitate the downsized American office.
It means parents and children live virtually apart at least five days a week. They reunite for a few hours at night, sleep and separate again the next morning. In this study, at least one parent was likely to be up and gone before the children awoke.
No time-outs (no leisure time)
Kim’s remark raises a second trend emerging from the UCLA data — little time for dreaming.
Ochs laments how few people have any unstructured time. In just one of the 32 families did the father — a freelance film animator — make a habit of taking an evening stroll with his son and daughter. Hand in hand, they dodged vacant lots and broken glass in Culver City while chasing fireflies and making up stories.
Drowning in trappings
Archaeologist Jeanne Arnold planned to treat each house in the study like a dig site, cataloging and mapping family belongings as artifacts. But there was too much stuff. Instead, her staff took photographs. Thousands of them.
For Arnold, who is accustomed to examining bits of bone and pottery, modern households are overwhelming. How much stuff do people own? So much that only two families have room to park their cars in the garage.
Face time
Researchers say schedules and clutter butt heads to create the fourth family trend: flux.
Using computers, scientists mapped the location of each family member throughout the home every 10 minutes. Originally, they planned to conduct this electronic roll call every 20 or 30 minutes. But they found themselves chasing their subjects from room to room as they orbited one another, hardly pausing.
Ochs says families gathered in the same room just 16 percent of the time. In five homes, the entire family was never in the same room while scientists were observing. Not once.
Conclusion:
“People just don’t come together very frequently in our society,” Ochs said. “They might say they want community, but they don’t seek it.”
You can’t believe everything you read or extrapolate from it: 32 families do not make a nation. But this article does make me wonder what is happening to American families. Are we becoming a country of people who live apart from each other, even when under the same roof?
