Free to be ... Snowed in

As a thank-you gift for hosting her family, my old friend Kirsten sent my kids “Free to Be … You and Me” – both the CD (just songs) and the DVD. We watched it together yesterday, which should have been the last day of school before the holiday break but turned out to be a snow day. I think I enjoyed having a snow day as much as my kids did. Craig didn’t go to work yesterday because the roads were too treacherous, and we turned the day off of school into a family day of playing hooky. My six-year-old had a nasty cough, so even playing outside in the newly fallen snow seemed ill-advised. Instead of scurrying about, as we would have on a typical busy Friday just before a holiday, we lounged in our jammies, played board games, listened to Craig tune his guitar, and foraged for food in our near-empty cupboard (sodium-free lentil soup with crumbled Goldfish crackers, anyone?).

As enjoyable as the day was, the highlight for me was watching “Free to Be … You and Me” with my kids. I learned from reading the insert that the show was created in 1974, when I was four years old. My elementary school showed it during assemblies at least once a year between kindergarten and sixth grade. I knew most of it by heart. Craig claims to have never even heard of it [1]and, I could tell, had to restrain himself from mocking me when my eyes welled up during the opening scene. Of course, the production values are cheesy – it is 35 years old, after all – but the image really got to me: live-action, goofy little 70’s kids in their bell bottoms and stripes travel around and around on a merry-go-round, happily oblivious to the limits of their circular path, until they become animated cartoon figures, riding swift horses that leap off of the merry-go-round and race freely across the countryside.

The kids on horses were my favorite part of the show, but my children liked the talking baby puppets the most. They dissolved into giggles every time Mel Brooks’ voice came out of the little bald baby’s mouth. They were particularly amused when he insisted that he was a girl. “I want to be a cocktail waitress when I grow up. See! I’m a girl!” (Can Mel Brooks' voice sound anything other than sarcastic?) They also enjoyed the story of Atalanta, the fleet princess who refuses to marry unless a suitor beats her in a footrace, but meets her match in young John, who agrees that she should not marry until she travels the world, just as she wishes. My daughter seemed to enjoy the princess element of the story, and my son enjoyed the race scene.

Another scene that I found both entertaining and bizarre was the Michael Jackson song about growing up. He looks like he’s about fifteen in the video (which makes him about 50 years old now – this seems impossible to me). He also looks like a nice, normal kid with fashionably disheveled nappy hair and chocolate-brown skin. What happened to this kid to turn him into the bleached, emaciated recluse that he is today?

For that matter, what happened to Atalanta and those silly babies? The messages in the video (girls can be anything they want to be, it’s OK for boys to play with dolls and cry, everyone is equal and worthy of friendship no matter what they look like) are self-evident, but even now, after more than a third of a century, need reinforcement. Sure, there has been progress – a multiracial president-elect, a greater variety of powerful female role models for my daughter to look up to – but there are still powerful stereotypes that limit our potential and, if we’re not careful, our kids’ potential as individuals. Hollywood starlets are still starving themselves, and tough guys still (usually) finish first.

Watching the video with my kids reminded me of all of the resolutions that I had when I was younger, before I had kids, about the egalitarian Utopia that would be my home. I would work in a high-powered career (with, perhaps, a stay-at-home husband) and also be a perfect hands-on mother who raised her perfect children to be proud of their gender-neutral life choices and have lots of multicultural, socio-economically diverse friends. No Barbie dolls or toy guns in my home, thank you very much, and definitely no Disney movies.

This vision, I must report, is a far cry from the reality of my life. I worked in a “high-powered” job for the first two years of my son’s life, but have been pretty much a full-time stay-at-home mom since then. My kids have some degree of diversity among their friends, but it’s not quite what I imagined it would be. My daughter is crazy about both Disney princesses and Barbie dolls, and, while I have managed to stick to the no-toy-guns resolution, my son is quite adept at swordplay with his collection of light sabers.

I wonder how much my failure to stick to my guns is limiting my kids’ perspective, so that they fall back on the predictable choices when they imagine their futures. When somebody asks my son what he wants to be when he grows up, he says “Football player” – a running back for the Steelers, to be exact. Not a teacher or a fashion designer or a chef. A football player. When somebody asks my daughter, she says “I want to be a Mommy.” The first time she said this, I suppressed my dismay and patiently explained that she can be more than a mommy. “You can be a mommy and a doctor or a mommy and an astronaut or a mommy and an artist.” Upon hearing this, she considered for a moment and then “OK, Mommy and Artist.” The second time, her teacher asked her this question in my presence and again, without missing a beat, she answered “Mommy.” I again launched my counteroffensive but she immediately shut me down. She insisted, “No, just a Mommy.”

Her teacher tried to make me feel better by pointing out that I should feel flattered -- my daughter thinks that being a mommy is the best job in the world. I can’t say I disagree. On a snowy day, with a cupboard filled only with canned soup, cuddled up on the sofa with two warm little flannel-jammied bodies, listening to the strum of a live guitar, I can honestly say that I wish for nothing more for myself. But I don’t want my own complacency to dictate my children’s futures. I want them to learn about all the vast possibilities the world holds for them, to jump off our comfortable suburban merry-go-round, knowing that they are always welcome to jump back on, and follow their own paths across the unrestricted terrain.

But I do wonder what motivation they will have to make that leap. If my daughter is a happy princess enjoying a comfortable ride in a luxury coach, she may not care that she's going in circles. She may never wonder what adventures lie beyond the merry-go-round. Of course, I want her, and my son, to be happy and comfortable (what parent wishes for difficult lives for their children?), but if it's too happy and comfortable, how will they learn how to stand up for themselves, or even how to define their true, authentic selves? Even though I know that, as their parent, it will be hard to watch, I hope that they confront some good solid obstacles as they grow up. Not the kind that could seriously mess them up, like, God forbid, getting really sick or being abused, but some not-too-harmful character-building challenges would be nice. Like only getting scholarships to Princeton when they have their hearts set on Harvard. Yes, that would work.

[1] To be fair, I spoke to two other friends who also claim to have never heard of it. In case you are one of the deprived few, here is a brief description from Wikipedia: “Free to Be… You and Me is a record album and illustrated songbook for children, first released in November 1972, and later in 1974 as a television special, featuring songs and stories from celebrities (credited as "Marlo Thomas and Friends"). Using poetry, songs, and sketches, the basic concept was to salute values such as individuality, tolerance, and happiness with one's identity; a major thematic message is that anyone, whether a boy or a girl, can achieve anything one wants.”

A letter to my kids, November 5, 2008

To my precious perfect children,

I would like you to understand, someday, when you are a little bit older, what an important day it is today. You are very lucky kids, for lots of reasons, but one of the best reasons to be a kid right now is that the first president that you will remember in your lifetime will Barack Hussein Obama. To me and daddy, and to your grandmas and grandpas, this is a very unusual name for a president to have. But, like a 70-degree November day, it’s not unusual to you. There are things in this world that you take for granted, and I hope you always will be able to. I want you to understand, though, why this day is so significant because I think it is important to be grateful for our blessings.

It is remarkable to me that you have friends who were born in China, India, and Poland. You have an aunt who was born in Mexico, a cousin who is Austrian, and a soon-to-be uncle who is a Syrian Kurd. Your world is filled with people with different colored skin and different ways of speaking. You both notice physical differences, but you point them out in ways that are entirely descriptive, with no shade of judgment attached to your observations. “The doctor had brown skin” you will say, or “The police officer is a lady.” What I would like you to understand is that there are still people alive who remember when women didn’t have the right to vote, or who heard their parents talk about life under slavery. Grandpa remembers having friends in high school who weren’t allowed to swim in the same pool as he was because they had brown skin. Can you imagine not being allowed to play with your friends who have different colored skin? What if I told you that Asher or Ella or Max wasn’t allowed to go to the beach or the playground with us? Can you imagine how Asher, Ella, and Max would feel? That is what life was like for your grandpas and grandmas and their friends when they were growing up.

When daddy and I were kids, in the places where we grew up, there were no specific rules against brown people going where white people went. But we didn’t really have friends or classmates who looked much different than we did. When we were kids, we didn’t have many teachers, doctors, or ministers who had brown skin or different-sounding names. This isn’t something that I will complain about; I don’t have the right to complain about it. I wasn’t the one being shut out of opportunities. Once I was old enough to make my own decisions, I could have sought out more opportunities to meet other kinds of people than those with whom I went to school or who lived in my neighborhood. You will not have to seek these opportunities. They will come to you. Your world will be a place of diversity and openness. You will have the opportunity to choose your friends and colleagues based on the content of their character, not on the color of their skin. Your lives will be, are being, enhanced by the incipient fruition of Dr. King’s dream.

I am so happy for you, and for me, and for all of us. So I celebrated today in a quiet way. I took a walk to the lake. The sun is shining and it’s still 70 degrees, just like it was yesterday, which is very unusual for November in northern Illinois. You haven’t lived through enough Novembers in Chicago to know that it shouldn’t be 70 degrees. I am choosing to view the weather optimistically today – I am choosing hope – and seeing it as a divine sign that we are at the dawn of a bright and shining new era rather than as evidence of global warming. The older I get the more I believe that the world presents us with signs and benchmarks, hints that we are on the right track or the wrong track. We just need to be open and alert to them, ask God to help us understand them, and trust our instincts.

On a typical day, I would have gone running, but I’m not crazy about running –it’s more a chore than recreation for me - and I want to enjoy this day as much as possible. As I was walking through the fallen leaves, I still saw some Obama yard signs, but all the other political signs were gone. One of the Obama signs had a yellow happy face Mylar balloon tied to it. This sight made me laugh and peer into the house with the sign in front of it, hoping to make contact with its owner to share a thumbs-up or a fist bump. It also made me cry a little bit.

I am a happy crier- I cry more easily from elation than from sadness - and I have been welling up on and off all day today. Oprah made me sob this morning with her “Hope Won” tee shirt and her exuberance. I don’t usually watch Oprah, but I saw her crying on TV last night while she watched Barack Obama give his acceptance speech at the rally in Grant Park and I made a point of watching her show today because I knew she would be celebrating. I was envious when a CNN anchorwoman spoke today about her neighborhood in New York City, where neighbors previously unknown to each other spontaneously came outside for a celebration when the victory was announced last night. Lake Bluff is no New York, but your dad and I did get to celebrate with some of our friends at an election party, where we hugged and cried and watched spellbound as Obama made his acceptance speech. As is typical of me, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the moment. I felt a little numb, and I couldn’t quite believe the election was over. It takes me awhile to process happiness, so today is when the happiness is really taking hold.

Watching Oprah today made me think about the class she taught when I was in business school. She taught at Northwestern for two years, in between tapings of her show. Everyone, of course, wanted to take her class, even though we made fun of ourselves for being so frivolous. I was one of the lucky ones who got in. We had guest speakers every week, most of whom were A-list celebrities in the worlds of business and politics. Coretta Scott King was one of these guests. I wish I could remember exactly what she said, but I do remember the sense of calm confidence she exuded, and how much more impressed everyone in the class was by her than by the Fortune 500 CEOs who also spoke. One of my proudest possessions is the final paper that I wrote for that class, on which Oprah herself wrote margin comments and an “A”. I am a sucker for smart celebrities. My other proudest possession is a pair of t-shirts signed by the entire lineup of Wilco, whose songs make me swoon, and my favorite brush with fame was my encounter with Maya Angelou (you’ll learn who she is soon enough). I couldn’t care less about Paris Hilton or Brad Pitt, but I stutter and blush in the presence of eloquence (ironic, isn't it?).

I learned from Oprah’s class the best leaders are visionary, inclusive, and empowering to the people around them, with the highest expectations of themselves and others. I believe that this describes our new president-elect. Barack’s campaign inspired people to take ownership and feel like a part of history, to feel as if those of us who supported him had some control over our country’s future. Our destiny would no longer be dictated by a small group of shadowy, powerful men, which is the way it’s been for the last eight years, since before either of you was born. Daddy and I, your grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, we were all inspired to knock on doors, make phone calls, and donate money and supplies to the campaign, and we all feel like we played a small part in moving history forward. This makes Obama’s victory even sweeter for us. We feel proud, not just of our country and our city, where Obama learned to be a civic leader, but of ourselves.

I am happy for you that you will be able to take some things for granted. You will see yourselves as citizens of the world, not only citizens of our country. And, you will have, I hope, many reasons to be proud of your country. Your native worldviews will be inclusive, not exclusive or divisive. As you grow, though, I hope that you will be vigilant and critical of the signs of divisiveness that has characterized our world in the past. I want you to learn about history so that you can avoid its mistakes. And I want you to always behave in a way that makes you proud of yourselves, because real pride can only come from inside of yourself, from doing what you know is right, not from what you see when you look in the mirror.