Been to an aerial forest park recently? Our family got to go to one last weekend, and the whole experience made me want to give thanks all over again. Swinging around on those harnesses was both refreshingly different from putting myself through the paces of daily life on the ground and also surprisingly similar to managing regular co-existence with a bunch of other individuals who happen to be my spouse and my children.
Take the quality of balance, for instance. Many of the bridges (described in the pamphlet as “various configurations of cable, wood, rope and zip lines”) that go from tree to tree demanded putting one foot after another on very narrow 
surfaces. Even though I went on the easiest course and was also chatting in a carefree way with my friend through the whole journey, sometimes the road ahead looked pretty daunting – until I remembered that I was all strapped in and could not possibly let myself be that much of a wimp. My sons quickly ascended to the hardest and highest of the courses, where at one point they were treated to a series of hanging ropes with tiny wooden circles for their feet, little things that provided just about zero stability. They had to rely on upper body strength and work really hard to stay balanced.
True enough, sitting down at a large table with your nearest and dearest for a Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t require exactly the same kind of physical attentiveness. But how about the need to respect each individual’s particular temperament and not push one’s own agenda, whatever it may be, too far? Sometimes, living in such close proximity to others, I make the mistake of thinking that their needs are identical to mine: I’m really sure that my husband would be better off with a sweater on, for instance, because I’m feeling chilly. This doesn’t usually go over so well.
If your family has a mix of extroverts and introverts, as mine does, balancing communal time with personal quiet time is pretty crucial. The coming together and the letting go occur almost concurrently, especially if you happen to be the parent of teenagers and young adults. In so many words, they say, “Please step aside NOW so I can make my way without your instructions, and don’t expect to find out much about my life; are you still there in case I want to bounce something off you or get some quick cash?”
Last Tuesday, The New York Times ran a special issue of ScienceTimes devoted to the sprawling subject of Families — a bit of a departure for this section — and I read it from cover to cover. Not surprisingly, statistics bear out that we’re in the heart of a kind of revolution: saying that the typical American family has “changed” is an understatement because the multiplicity of ways people choose to live together just keeps driving the bus.
And within each family itself, there is a kind of natural pulling in different directions. In her article “Wanting Marriage and Pursuit of Happiness” Natalie Angier writes about the inherent tension between our desire to form intimate bonds and our desire to strike out on our own. “It’s the great American paradox. We value marriage as ‘the center of civilized society,’ ….At the same time, we value our liberty, the pursuit of personal happiness and the right to leave a bad marriage behind.” Let’s hope that in more cases than not, the drive towards independence is satisfied by healthy portions of each spouse doing his or her own thing while still drawing on the connection between the two as well as plenty of shared times – all ingredients in the soup of happiness.
As I go back a few days to swinging in between trees, it’s easy to observe that each one of us wants some combination of security and freedom. We like to use our own creative juices to take some risks, so long as we know that we will in fact reach that other platform. Even though every participant at the aerial forest park faces the challenges alone to some degree, generally people come to the place in groups, anticipating that the benefits will come mostly from a spirit of mutual support. We want to do our own thing, make our own choices, and we like to be cheered on, too. The whole operation, in a way, is a depiction of how harmonious family life can look.
When the Thanksgiving weekend came to an end, I was surprised to find that, despite the barbs tossed my way by children who will go un-named, I really learned a lot about where they’re at these days, what they’re facing, how they feel about things. It was about as rich a feast, really, as the dishes on the table, smacking as it did of real life.
Soon the snow will start to fall around here, and the paths in the woods are bound to be lovely. Some of them will be wide enough for two or three people to go on, side by side; others will require more of a single file approach. Back in the house, too, there will be a mix of flopping down on couches and chairs at the same time and pulling away for privacy. This, I’m pretty sure, is something that will never change in the American family.
Jack
Well thought and articulated Polly!
Love the family pix!!