Ever have one of those brilliant thoughts when you’re out walking or in the grocery store mindlessly tossing things into your cart or waiting in line to pick the kids up from school or driving home from work?  For me, it happens all the time.  I go, “OMG! I’m brilliant!” and just KNOW it’s so brilliant that OF COURSE I’ll remember it, I mean who would be unable to remember this great idea that will:

1. Save everyone at least an hour a day.
2. Save hundreds of dollars, nay, thousands of dollars. Maybe every DAY, this is so brilliant.
3. Save marriages.  Save LIVES.
4. Get you elected President (after Obama has a go, or maybe even two), or better yet, elected God. No, make that GoddESS. Yeah, Goddess. Has a nice ring to it. You could get t-shirts made…

And then, when you get home, after dealing with dog vomit and homework and dinner and maybe a little TV with a glass of wine and a snuggle on the couch, that brilliant idea just vanishes, POOF, into thin air and reality sets in.

Me too. Except THIS idea is so brill that all that Real Life could not prevent me from presenting it here to you now (get ready): Dads should raise the kids. Let Moms work.
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Despite having spent 12 years of my life with an airline pilot and traveling all over the world, I can count the number of my first-class flights on just two fingers. One. Two. That’s right, as a member of the traveling class of airline employees and families of airline employees we had to show comportment and respect to the passengers paying full price (that’s you), which meant No Kids in First Class. And because I always had anywhere between one and three kids with me, I sat in back in steerage. With the kids. And with everyone else’s kids. Your kids, my kids, conspiring to drive other passengers crazy.

Just for fun, let’s talk a moment about Things Kids Do On Planes:
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I get most of my news from social media.  I’m sure this says something shallow about me, but yeah.  Twitter and Facebook are my sources for What’s Going On In The World (yes, I subscribe to 20,000 feeds in Google Reader but honestly, that’s a LOT of daily pressure that the “mark all as read” button does a lot to relieve).

I do more than just read the 75,000 tweets and the 60 Facebook updates — that’s PER HOUR, folks — that come my way.  Nope, like the good little hunter-gatherer that I am, I also think about what I read.  Put together connections.  Notice trends.  It makes me feel I don’t actually need to step outside my door, because, HELLO, all this action going on via the shiny bright rectangle of a Macbook I stare at 16 hours a day, that’s real life.

[Please insert a huge dose of "this is irony or something" right here.]

So what’s this week’s trend?  I’m so glad you asked.  Bad parenting.
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I was leaving the grocery store last night, walking back home through the parking lot, when I heard it.

“Please, mama!” the anguished voice tore at my soul. It could almost have been any of my own kids, it was so familiar. Pleading. Frightened. My heart stopped. I had to look. I was 99.9999% sure it wasn’t any of my kids, but a mother’s heart goes so easily into Protective Mode. Someone needed his mama.

I scanned the parking lot and saw a white pickup. Mom and Dad inside, window rolled down. Outside the driver’s door stood a thin boy, anxiously hopping a little, maybe ten years old.

“Bye,” Dad said flatly from within the truck’s cab. He looked away. “We’re leaving.”

My jaw dropped.
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A hundred or so years ago, this wouldn’t even have been a question. Children, if they had a separate room at all, shared it with whatever other children were in the family, regardless of age or gender.

When my older son turned about 9, he started bathing alone instead of with his sister, then 5. That seemed about right to me, and he led the way with the decision. They still shared a room (bunk beds rule!). One of my favorite things then was to overhear their early-morning whisperings via the baby monitor still in their room to alert me to the late-night stylings of Night Terror Boy or Hypochondriac Girl. (I had yet another kid in my bed then so it wasn’t like I was getting off scot-free anyway.)

A year later, we moved, everything changed, and Boy and Girl got their own rooms. 
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I was walking my usual 3-mile hike through the forest yesterday, thinking about how much my kids love nature.  Serena (9) loves to gallop alongside me on the trail; usually she’s a mule named Daisy who helps me over streams, but not always.  She loves nature because it’s an extension of who she is.  Nathaniel (13) strides along, lost in thought.  He loves nature because of the peace he feels in it, and the connection among all things.  And Eric (5) just loves being outside, loving nature simply because it’s part of his world.

I love that my kids have a love for something I hold such a deep connection to myself.  I feel lucky to have passed this along to them.  Their love for the world around them will help them as adults, and may shape their eventual gifts to the world at large.

I thought about this as I walked, so glad I had passed on the Most Important Thing to my kids.

And then —
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We’ve all faced this dilemma: it’s bedtime for your only child, age 10, when he says, “Mom! I need [fill in the blank] for school tomorrow.” You don’t have any [fill in the blank] in the house, your spouse isn’t home, it’s past 9 pm, so what do you do?

Maybe this is a bad example. Some of us would say, “too bad, so sad” and be done with it. Some of us are never alone with our kids in the evening, being blessed with partners who are actually home and who actually help with parenting stuff. And what stores open past 9?

Having spent years married to an airline pilot who was regularly away for days at a time, and then years after that as a single mom of three kids (plus years before that as a single mom of one), this kind of thing happened to me a lot.  Not so much the last-minute Mom-I-need-it requests, but the dilemma of needing to leave kids at home came up a LOT. And mostly, I didn’t. It was pretty much out of the question.

What worked (or didn’t) for me is probably different than what works for you. But here are my general rule(s) of thumb:
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Maybe this is an unfair question.  After all, we all love our kids.  I’m not questioning that.  But what if you could turn back the hands of time for a do-over.  Would you still have kids?  And if you would, is there anything else you would change?

I have regrets.  Things I wish I did differently.  Smarter.  With more forethought.  It’s the old “knowing what I know now” thing.  Let me explain:
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This is my reality. Two of my four kids are computer literate. They have both joined Facebook. And they have both friended me.

I decided long ago to treat Facebook and other social media outlets like slightly more-fun versions of a resume, meaning, no, uh, language more “colorful” than occasional outdated surferism exclamations of “Dude!” and “Awesome!” and no TMI overly-revealing stories abut drinking binges or losing my panties in an elevator or photos of my piercings and tats (seriously, are you falling for any of this?).

But I was not prepared for the kid thing.
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Yesterday I got some advice: act like my 9 year-old daughter for a day. All day, channeling Serena.

Um. I’m not sure I can do it. She’s very different from me. When she’s hurt, you know it (so does the whole neighborhood). Me, I keep mine inside, or I try to. After all, how many of us are comfortable showing our inner pain in front of our kids?

And when Serena’s happy, you know that, too. Her whole body bounces, her eyes shoot sparkling diamonds, and the very air reverberates with her happiness. Me, happy? Hahaha. (I blog it).
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