During visits with their divorced father at Christmas-time, I would take my two youngest children to Pittsburgh, Penn., to visit my mother. “Grammy Ike” had a computer with games on it, and my son, Chris, would beeline to it; Lauren liked to sit and talk to her grandmother, who would often be peeling, cooking and frying something. One summer in Pittsburgh, we explored my childhood. I drove them past the homes that I could remember, and then, down into the “hollow” where my brother, sister and I played. Chris had become interested in all things wild and woodsy, and I wanted him to see the creeks and “wilderness” I had explored as a child.
Panther Hollow is a wooded area near the sprawling green campus of the University of Pittsburgh. Saturday mornings, my brother, sister and I would walk from our house to the Carnegie Library. I was about 8 years old, my brother 7, and my sister, 6. We loved the library. I cannot remember “stern librarians” hushing us, but I remember the tunnel that granted access to the Carnegie Museum; when we tired of reading, we tumbled down the hallway and into the museum, which had free admission. If my brother could change our joyful trajectory, we would go into Panther Hollow and visit Carnegie Science Center’s Buhl Planetarium. Jerri loved the flowers; I cannot remember if my sister, Jaci, did as well, but I was indifferent. We were kids in a park, playing. That summer, as I walked along a creek with my two young ones, regaling them with tales of those days, Chris asked, “How old were you?”
There was an almost audible “SKRRT!” as the narrative needle slid off the conversation. I looked at my 8-year-old son, and thought of the distance from my old home to the place we stood. I didn’t want to say that I had been his age: I could not imagine allowing him to venture that distance, alone.
I saw a social media post about a man watching the movie “Goonies” with his 8-year-old son. When the kids in the movie are about to enter a danger zone, his son asked, “Where are their parents?” Clint Edwards’ May, 2016 Washington Post column referenced a 2009 article by Michael Chabon about “The Wilderness of Childhood.” The point made by both was that children have less freedom to explore, to wander outside, knocking on doors until someone comes out to play. We pre-arrange all of their interactions; “the wilderness of childhood” is lost to them. My daughter commented that the article made her question “how (she was) doing things,” saying that there is “always room for improvement and change.”
A Maryland couple set the “twit-sphere” ablaze for letting their 10-and-6-year-old children walk home from a park, alone. An angry “net-mob” was horrified that parents could show such irresponsibility. Our society is longer-lived because of our heightened awareness of health and environmental safety issues, but I think that it is fair to question whether we have allowed our fears to trample the imaginations of our young, and stifled their quests to be “young and wild, and free.” The unsupervised moments of my childhood were not all danger-free: I once broke my foot and hobbled the two miles home in spectacular pain. But there is always danger: my son broke his collarbone when he tumbled down the basement steps and landed at my feet. I suggest that we just consider letting our children grow and explore, not in a completely unfettered way, but with a loving tether that is long enough to allow invention and imagination.