Rooted in real-life experience, this unique essay collection of passion, intimacy, work, religion, puberty, love and loss, and the struggle to be steadfast in times of enormous social change reads like a novel—full of lively characters, spirited dialogue, and a landscape that takes you from Iowa to the high country of Wyoming and Montana. As the chapters unfold, one focused on each child, Virginia Tranel and her husband search for the ideal place to raise the five daughters and five sons born to them between 1957 and 1978.
Tranel artfully weaves daily moments with world events as she reflects on how our culture affects our decisions. She offers candid observations on everything from her reproductive choices and feminism's influence on her thinking to sibling rivalries and her family's emotional response when an architect son emails firsthand reports of the horrors of September 11. Whether considering the issues intrinsic to marriage and child-raising, or questioning her own common sense, her insights are always provocative and deeply moving.
Rooted in real-life experience, this unique essay collection of passion, intimacy, work, religion, puberty, love and loss, and the struggle to be steadfast in times of enormous social change reads like a novel—full of lively characters, spirited dialogue, and a landscape that takes you from Iowa to the high country of Wyoming and Montana. As the chapters unfold, one focused on each child, Virginia Tranel and her husband search for the ideal place to raise the five daughters and five sons born to them between 1957 and 1978.
Tranel artfully weaves daily moments with world events as she reflects on how our culture affects our decisions. She offers candid observations on everything from her reproductive choices and feminism's influence on her thinking to sibling rivalries and her family's emotional response when an architect son emails firsthand reports of the horrors of September 11. Whether considering the issues intrinsic to marriage and child-raising, or questioning her own common sense, her insights are always provocative and deeply moving.
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Overview
Rooted in real-life experience, this unique essay collection of passion, intimacy, work, religion, puberty, love and loss, and the struggle to be steadfast in times of enormous social change reads like a novel—full of lively characters, spirited dialogue, and a landscape that takes you from Iowa to the high country of Wyoming and Montana. As the chapters unfold, one focused on each child, Virginia Tranel and her husband search for the ideal place to raise the five daughters and five sons born to them between 1957 and 1978.
Tranel artfully weaves daily moments with world events as she reflects on how our culture affects our decisions. She offers candid observations on everything from her reproductive choices and feminism's influence on her thinking to sibling rivalries and her family's emotional response when an architect son emails firsthand reports of the horrors of September 11. Whether considering the issues intrinsic to marriage and child-raising, or questioning her own common sense, her insights are always provocative and deeply moving.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307428066 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 12/18/2007 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| File size: | 461 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Binding Problem
Daniel
Traveling should be easy now. Our youngest child is three. No one is in diapers; everyone is capable of verbal communication, which complicates decision making but should preclude sudden eruptions on the upholstery. We're a happy, companionable family traveling from Ashland, Montana, to Houston, Texas, where my psychologist husband, Ned, will attend a conference on learning disabilities: eight children and two parents, sufficient numbers to justify our gas-guzzling Travelall in the midst of an oil embargo, plus enough clothes, equipment, and illusions to last twelve days. We're eager to get away from winter and Watergate's bad news and are looking forward to touring the Johnson Space Center, seeing the Gulf of Mexico, and, although no one has said it aloud, being unashamedly white for a while.
Two years have passed since we moved from Miles City, seventy miles north, to the house we built high on the hill above Ashland and the Tongue River. Our dining room windows frame the sunset over the Cheyenne reservation, the long-shadowed beauty of shale hills drenched in red and gold. Because we chose to live and work in this community, we enrolled our children in St. Labre Indian School rather than the public school where other white children go; we attend Sunday Mass at the mission church, a stone structure designed as a teepee buttressed with a Christian cross; at games, we sit on the Brave side of the bleachers and cheer against teams our children once played on; our kids invite school friends home for meals and weekends; this past Christmas season, Blake and Tony, two young Cheyenne brothers with no place to go, spent the holidays with us.
Still, the morning sun glares on our pale skin. Each day our children walk down the hill to school and learn more about the meaning of prejudice. One afternoon, our eight-year-old daughter, Monica, wide-eyed and breathless, was chased home by jeering Indian boys. Hey, white girl, watch out. We're gonna get you. During preseason football practice, our oldest son, Dan, lived with the team in a dorm. Rest remedied the brutal physical regimen of two practices a day but not the emotional strain of constant confrontation. He learned to be vigilant and tried to avoid fistfights with verbal tactics.
Reality is taking a toll on the romantic illusions that brought us here. Disturbing daily sights deepen the ache of isolation: a woman sprawled drunk at noon on the sidewalk in front of the bar; a young girl tucking a pinch of tobacco inside her lower lip; a man living in an abandoned car near a tangle of bushes by the river. A few days after we moved into our home, a group of giggling people emboldened by alcohol knocked on our front door to announce their hunger. Did we have food? I invited them in and opened the refrigerator to the woman. She searched the shelves, found cold boiled potatoes, and sliced them for sandwiches. A skinny, pockmarked man squatted on the floor next to Monica and joined her in a game of jacks. Another morning, a lone man drove out of his way to our house to ask if we had a little money for gas.
The issue isn't racial. What we're concerned about is exposing our children to a reality too grim for them to process. All children, not just ours, need time to make sense of their own lives before they can understand the predicaments of others. And teenagers need a circle of peers with whom they can entrust their dreams. Dan's sole confidant is Rick, a smart Cheyenne kid who plays the guitar and sings Jim Croce songs and is committed, as are many of the talented young, to spending his life here, helping his people.
This trip is supposed to be a vacation from coping. It's even supposed to be fun. But the car cruising so merrily down the road through the Crow Indian reservation is a cage on wheels, vibrating with punching, crying, bickering, all to the beat of hard rock. The driver of the vehicle is sixteen-year-old Dan, bright-eyed with a brand-new driver's license and bushy-headed with an Afro hairstyle. Intelligent, too, skilled and trustworthy. Furthermore, argued his father this morning, this highway driving will be good experience for him.
Risking a carful of people, though, is not a good experience for me. The blaring radio is rattling my confidence. I'm two weeks pregnant and still without symptoms (unless the dim-wittedness that lured me into this car is hormonal) and demoted to the "way back," the third seat where the youngest children ride, happily wrestling, playing reckless games of Slap Jack, looking out for things beginning with C that, when spotted, grant the observer the right to pinch someone. Hard. Preferably an unsuspecting napper. I glare at the untamed hair and the head bobbing to the rhythm of "Born to Be Wild." Is he noticing the gauges that tell facts about oil and brakes and gas? When he glances at the road, does he actually see it? Or has he escaped into the teenage never-never land of noise?
"Car!" someone shouts.
"Stop it!" I shout louder, meaning this car, this trip, and maybe even the direction of our lives. But certainly, the radio.
It takes three more shouts before my husband, the window passenger in the front seat, turns his head. "What?" Ned repeats my message to Dan, whose disgruntlement bristles in the rearview mirror.
"Huh? Down?" Dan's eyes round in disbelief. "Off? All the way off? Aw, Mom, c'mon. Be reasonable. It's Steppenwolf."
I gesture toward three-year-old Jennie, whose head is flopped at a forty-five-degree angle as she sleeps open-mouthed against Elizabeth's shoulder, then mime my words to facilitate lip reading. "Off. Or I drive."
Dan looks to his dad for an ally. Ned responds by reaching across Mike, in the center seat, and pressing the radio's off button.
"Jeez," Dan grumbles. "You guys spoil everything."
Mike, who'll be fifteen in a week and has planned our return trip to include a sentimental stop in Kansas, where he was born, unfolds a map at arm's length. "Over there is where Custer and the Indians fought." He frowns. "Actually, it wasn't really a fight. It was a massacre. Depending on how you look at it."
How you look at it depends, of course, on your ability to see. "Would you mind lowering the map, Mike?" I ask cheerfully. "It's blocking the windshield." My reputation as a wet blanket has been escalating ever since we pulled out of our driveway. Fifty miles ago. Which means one thousand six hundred and fifty miles to go. Why am I here? I wonder for the jillionth time. To know, love, and serve God and be happy with him in heaven comes the rote catechism reply, but it won't do. This is an existential challenge. Am I a self-determining agent responsible for the authenticity of my choices? Or an unconscious accessory to an ordained plan? My track record is incriminating. It began in Dubuque, Iowa, on a frigid January morning in 1957.
My wedding veil drifts over my face as, on my father's arm, I float down the aisle of St. Columbkille's Church in a gown of peau de soie, walking toward him, the dark-haired, restless man I don't know. At least, not in the biblical sense. I mask my eagerness by looking to the left of the altar where that other Virgin gazes back, a serene, blue-mantled statue inviting me with open arms into her mystery. My dad hands me over to Ned, an age-old property transaction, but I'm blissfully unaware. The nuptial Mass, celebrated by Ned's older brother, a priest, the binding vows to love through sickness and health until death do we part, the blessings and music blur by. And then I'm kneeling alone at Mary's feet to pray, a bridal custom I connect vaguely to virgins and vessels and acquiescence. But a prudent move, too, given Mary's role in Catholic tradition as mediatrix of all grace, a kind of funnel for God's blessings, a religious version of the maxim "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." As the mother of God, surely her hand has power. So does her left foot, deftly restraining a coiled snake, mythology's symbol of male fertility reincarnated as Christianity's tempter. Unaware of the serpent's former reputation, I stare into the blunt eyes and recall my seven-year-old self, veiled for my First Communion, kneeling in this same church before this same Virgin for whom I was named. I thank her for guiding me from veil to veil.
As we exit the church, friends bolster our fertility with a deluge of rice. The reception is a pleasant nuisance of well-wishers and cake and photographs. At last, I'm sitting beside Ned in the royal blue Chevy sedan he bought last week for $150. In the backseat are all of our possessions, packed for the two-thousand-mile trip to Pullman, Washington, where he'll begin work on a doctorate degree in psychology at the state university and I'll work in the accounting department at a job utterly unrelated to my interests or my college degree in English. My parents wave to us from the front porch. My mother dabs her eyes and says something to my dad, probably one of the proverbs she uses to explain idiosyncrasies and provide moral direction. "Birds of a feather flock together," she said to my brother when he brought home a friend whose character she questioned. "An idle mind is the devil's workshop," she told my sister when she found her daydreaming over her dusting assignment. "Familiarity breeds contempt," she warned when I went steady for the first time. Today, she might be saying, "They're young and haven't learned how life's corners must be turned."
"Still wet behind the ears," I imagine my dad responding as he puts an arm around her shoulder and swipes at his own eyes with the other hand. They shiver on the porch and eye the sign friends have tied to the bumper of our car. Trailing down the road behind us are three scrawled words: hot springs tonight!--code words for the longing of couples of that culture who'd lived out the lyrics "Love and marriage, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage." Simply imagining the joy of consummation made brides blush and grooms sing a different tune: "Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night, tonight there will be no morning star."
Two right turns and we're on our way, naive newlyweds in a blue sedan streaking down the snowy highway like bold strokes on a white canvas. For all we know, those right turns were wrong, and, like artist Robert Motherwell, who claimed to begin each canvas with a series of mistakes, everything ahead of us would be a matter of correction.
"How far did you go the first night?" I once asked a newly married friend, meaning miles on the map. Her cheeks flamed. She stuttered, then smiled. "Well...we went, well, all the way...of course."
All the way across Iowa's hibernating cornfields we honeymoon. All the way across the blanketed wheat fields and sand hills of Nebraska. All the way across Wyoming's snow-swept rangeland, as white as my cast-off bridal gown. In Idaho, we climb into the pure, driven snow of White Bird Hill, where snowflakes swirl like a bridal veil, blinding us to the turns and twists in the road ahead. We put our faith in a mysterious blinking light tunneling north and follow a snowplow all the way to our destination--Pullman, Washington, a quaint town erupting from a sea of wheat. We open the door to an apartment rented over the telephone, three dingy rooms in an old house perched on a steep slope across Main Street from Washington State University.
We close the door behind us with a sigh. We've escaped the Korean War, the leaden winters and sticky summers of the Midwest, the obligation to plant roots in soil we consider unsuited to our fantasies. Ever since the college summers when Ned followed the wheat harvest through Nebraska and Montana, he's imagined his future on a sunny hilltop in the West. And now his dream and his name are mine.
While I yawn over tedious forms at my desk, Ned studies the behavioral patterns of rats and mice for insights into human conduct. My drowsiness is not entirely boredom. Somewhere in the Hot Springs of our honeymoon fantasy, probably in the real place of Rock Springs, Wyoming, our first child has been conceived.
One afternoon, as I'm walking home from that dreary desk, two dogs romping in an empty lot catch my eye. They sniff and growl and paw. They dance and skitter. The male rears up on his hind legs and thrusts toward her. She pauses, then sidesteps and drops him on all fours. Again and again, the anxious male tries to mount her; again and again, the jittery bitch leaps away. Finally, she surrenders to his pursuit, slides to a stop, and receives him. I walk faster, feeling found out, besmirched, unable to deny the essential similarity of the mating dance. But I know, too, the enormous difference between this animal frenzy and human lovemaking, an act that can, indeed, help create the ingredients of a loving relationship: trust, consideration, patience, and hope. I run the three blocks to our apartment, trying to outdistance the Victorian attitudes I meant to leave in Iowa's fenced fields. I'll need this animal instinct, along with Dr. Spock, to care for my first child.
"Hell, that's impossible," says my dad, when I call home to report our good news. His quick calculating has left him six days short of nine months and as astonished as the Virgin Mary before the angel Gabriel. Or perhaps what he finds impossible is imagining me, his strong-willed youngest child, as a mother. A vagabond mother, moreover, traveling cross-country again that summer according to her husband's career demands. A willing, eager vessel for a child destined to be a vagabond, too--conceived in Wyoming, quickening in Deadwood, South Dakota, waking me with middle-of-the-night heartburn in Savannah, Illinois, thumping my ribs at Craters of the Moon National Park in Idaho in September as we drive back to Washington State for another school year. A month before my October 20 due date, we settle into married student housing, a converted army barracks where our upstairs apartment has an extra bedroom and all of our neighbors have children.
Elizabeth shifts under Jennie's weight, scowls at the front seat, and jolts my consciousness with a question. "When do I get to drive? Or do the boys get to sit in the front seat for this entire trip?"
"You're only thirteen. And we've only been on the road for an hour. We'll switch places every two hours." I'm impressed at my impromptu diplomacy. The trouble is, no one in the front seat is paying any attention.
"Danny drove when he was thirteen."
"The tractor, maybe. Six miles an hour around the field."
"Oh, huh! Sure. Mom, you know better than that. He drove the pickup when he was eleven. And the car. Dad let him drive whenever he wanted. Just because he's a boy."
I exhale impatience. "He didn't drive on the highway with the whole family in the car."
Reading Group Guide
“An unusual and absorbing memoir. . . . Intelligent and candid, crafted in fine prose. “ —Kirkus Reviews
This Reading Group Guide—consisting of an introduction, discussion questions*, suggestions for further reading, and author biography—is intended to enhance your group’s discussion of Ten Circles Upon the Pond, Virginia Tranel’s insightful and provocative memoir about life, kids, and the true meaning of home.
1. Although the essays in this collection are arranged in birth order of the children, this is the only chronology imposed on the book. Why do you think Tranel chose this structure—circling around people and events and back and forth in time—instead of a linear presentation? What effect does this achieve? How might a chronological structure change the reader’s experience?
2. Ten Circles Upon the Pond is part memoir and part reflection on how our culture affects our choices and shapes the relationship between parents and children. How does Tranel develop these themes? What specific cultural issue were you aware of in each essay, and how did it affect the parent/child relationship? What are the main cultural influences confronting parents today, both positive and negative? Is parenting different today than in Tranel’s generation? What insights into parenting did you gain from reading these essays?
3. In chapter eight, Tranel is in Madrid observing two Spanish women on the street. One is a young professional woman on her way to work, the other, a cleaning woman leaning on her broom watching, as if comparing her own circumstances. Her daydreaming sets off Tranel’s. “What might I have been?,” she asks herself [p. 252]. Does Tranel regret any decisions in her life? Does her ruminating set off questions for you and the choices you have made? What aspect of her life do you find most appealing? Least appealing?
4. Did reading these essays make you feel intimately acquainted with Tranel’s family? Were there some members you knew better than others? Why?
5. In chapter five, Tranel writes that her husband’s “child-care methods differ from [hers]” [p. 143]. She then refers to a Mayan adage advising a mother to hold the baby close so he knows the world is his and a father to take the child to the highest hill and show him how broad his world can be. What do you think of this division of roles? Compare these ideas to contemporary expectations of fathers.
6. In the first chapter, Tranel asks herself if she is a self-determining agent responsible for the authenticity of her choices or an unconscious accessory to an ordained plan. How would you answer this question—for her, and for yourself? Do the essays reveal any serious aspirations beyond mothering on her part?
7. How did the strong Catholic influence in the author’s upbringing affect her adult life? How did the roles and rules she was taught manifest themselves in her mothering? In what ways did feminism influence the life she had created for herself as a wife and mother? Did the circumstances of her life—the demands of family, the isolation—allow her to develop her own interests and abilities? Did you perceive any effect from her long-term commitment to mothering on her character and personality?
8. Motherhood is fertile ground for writers. Poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were unsettled by the challenges of raising children. Erma Bombeck and Jean Kerr focused more on the humor and complexity of bringing up kids. Where would you place Tranel’s book on this spectrum?
9. In chapter five, Tranel’s five-year-old daughter tells her during an outing, “I’ve never been alone with you before” [p. 145]. The remark stuns her and triggers concern that she hasn’t given her middle daughters enough attention. Does Tranel show favoritism toward any of her children, or does she do her best to treat them all equally? What are the positive and negative aspects of life as a large family?
10. How does the title express the theme of the book? How would you characterize the tone of Ten Circles Upon the Pond? What is the book’s lasting effect on the reader?
11. Although the book is nonfiction, there are many traditional fiction techniques used—scenes, dialogue, storytelling. Some critics think contemporary essayists limit themselves too much to the tools of fiction, and fail to exploit the permissions of the essay—to think out loud, to draw conclusions, to disturb us with ideas and opinions. Instead of being bold and brash, essayists are too modest and too cute and too afraid to presume that they speak for others. How does Ten Circles Upon the Pond exemplify these traits? Does Tranel borrow techniques from both fiction and nonfiction writing?
12. An underlying theme of Ten Circles Upon the Pond is the search for home. Do you think it’s practical—or even a good idea—to try to preserve childhood innocence by finding a sheltered place to raise a family? The author weaves her strong desire to find a utopian retreat from the ills of the world through many of the chapters, but she presents an equally strong opinion about the need to commit, to plunge into the stream of life. How does she reconcile these conflicting desires?
Interviews
A Conversation with Virginia Tranel author of TEN CIRCLES UPON THE POND: REFLECTIONS OF A PRODIGAL MOTHER
Q: You express some concern about exposing any child to a "reality too grim for them to process." The alternative for you seems to have been raising your children in a rural, almost secluded environment. Do you ever feel that your children grew up too sheltered?
A: Sheltering is different from overprotection. To me, sheltering means trying to provide children with the right experiences at the right time, experiences that are appropriate to their emotional and chronological age—opening up to the world gradually, as they're able to understand and process it emotionally. Why vaccinate them against physical diseases and then expose them to social pathology they're too young to understand or do anything about? It's tempting to think that if we socialize our children early and give them enough information, they'll be prepared for adult life. But a sophisticated veneer is not maturity. Emotions can't be hurried. Children need to have experiences that nurture a sense of wonder and hope; they need time and space to discover what they care about and are willing to work for. Growing up happens from the inside out.
My husband and I chose a rural setting as the best place to give our children what we considered important. For the most part, that served us well, although the 21-year age span from oldest to youngest became a complicating factor—a good setting for a 4-year-old could feel constricting to a 16-year-old. Ironically, during the four years we lived adjacent to the Northern Cheyenne Indian reservation, when we were mostisolated, our children were exposed to the grimmest realities—the effects of defeat and poverty on the Native American people. Isolation, we learned, is not synonymous with sheltering—or even conducive to it—for any child.
Q: Fate vs. free will is a theme that resonates throughout the book. "Am I a self-determining agent responsible for the authenticity of my choices?" you ask yourself at one point, "or an unconscious accessory to an ordained plan?" Have you come to any personal conclusions regarding this question?
A: I think our lives are a mix of fate and free will. We're shaped by our geography, history and culture, and influenced by circumstances and events over which we have no control. In that sense, we are "unconscious accessories." But we also have the unique human ability to reflect and imagine and reason. We can observe our behavior and begin to glimpse our motives. We have cognitive and empathic abilities that help us decide how to respond to the situations we encounter. The difficulties and suffering in our lives create an opportunity to learn more about our fears and hopes. We can distract ourselves from these anxieties, or we can try to bring our thoughts and emotions into harmony so that we can act with maximum freedom. That's the choice, and choice is the source of our human dignity.
Q: What skills as a parent do you feel are innate as opposed to acquired?
A: I think there's an instinct—assuming parents are psychologically healthy—
to care for a child, to try to keep that child contented and safe—holding, feeding, cooing, babbling, swaying, rocking, all of those behaviors seem to be instinctive parental responses to a child. I think a mother's physical connection heightens her instincts—the rhythm of her body is affected by her child—her milk lets down when her baby cries, she becomes more vigilant about the surroundings. Women often express surprise at the fierce love they feel for a newborn. A father's instincts seem directed more toward protecting and providing for the mother-baby dyad, and then later on, toward urging his child to try his abilities. I'm not sure this is instinctual, but I do notice a fatherly tendency to tolerate, even encourage, activities that a mother might consider premature or too risky.
But instinct applies to the child, too—and unlike other animals, human babies can't be turned out at an early age to fend for themselves. They don't know instinctively what's useful and harmful for them—which means one generation must teach another. Here's where the potential for damage exists and therefore, the need for acquired skills. If we're going to enjoy our children and do a reasonably competent job of rearing them, we need to know how they develop and learn. Simply phrasing something differently, or responding in one way rather than another can make it easier for everyone involved. I wish I'd had an overview—Erikson's developmental stages, for example—of what I was trying to accomplish—it's so easy to get mired in the mundane and lose perspective. But the most important thing is to respect and love our children—that's the cushion for our inevitable mistakes and failings and it can't be replaced by skill or technique.
Q: Rebellion has long been accepted a normal response to parental figures. Yet, you and your husband seem to have followed in the tracks of your own upbringing and your children for the most part have done the same. What do you attribute this to?
A: Maybe good will is the underlying force. Rebellion is really a search for individuation and identity—if parents encourage children all along to try things, to "go for it," that search isn't so likely to become a hostile encounter between generations. The goal is to empower our children, to be on their side, not struggling against them. My parents weren't savvy about childrearing techniques and that had some fallout for me, but essentially, they were "on my side" and I knew it. They saw a good education as a tool to a freer, more satisfying life and they worked to provide that for me. And for whatever reason—his training as a psychologist, his own upbringing—my husband's first response to our children was usually "yes"—even when the request struck me as deserving of an indignant "no." Usually, that "yes" did need qualifying, but it opened up communication instead of erecting a barrier. That was an important lesson for me because as a kid, I typically had to slog through the "nos" before getting a reluctant "well, okay" which always drained away a certain amount of enthusiasm and self-confidence. Those "nos" usually pertained to my parents' fears. But if we wish to communicate more hope than fear to our kids, I think the "yes" approach is the better choice—and it also tempers the need to rebel.
Q: There is an ongoing need for you to defend the choice—to friends, new acquaintances and your children- to have a large family. At the end of the book you describe yourself as a woman who "cringed beneath the cultural glare and the tight-lipped judgments on her rampaging fertility." Why do you think that so many people find it difficult to accept your decision?
A: I think some people sincerely worry about overpopulating the world and out of a sense of responsibility, have limited the size of their own families—and there we are, using up more than our share of resources—like a big SUV parked in the middle of two spaces. Also, there's a cluster of traits connected to large families that puts people off—poverty, lack of education, a kind of laxity. Also, some people perceive a large family not as individuals, but as a monolith, unyielding and threatening. Others are confounded by the sheer numbers—why, how, what are they thinking—and the first reaction to what we don't understand seems to be mistrust.
But there are also people who recognize—or imagine—the positive aspects of a large family. The resource of siblings, having a community you'll always belong to, songs around the piano at Christmastime, someone to care for you in old age. We show each other possibilities. If someone climbs a mountain, I know it can be done and if I attach value to it, seeing someone else do it might leave me feeling wistful, even a bit envious.
Also, I may be too sensitive about what people think; plenty of people tell me the real issue is responsibility—if your children turn out okay, then you're forgiven for having more than your share. But daughters and sons are never finished. And it seems risky to be smug about your parental accomplishments.
Q: You've raised five boys and five girls. What would you say are the major differences between them?
A: There are all the obvious ones, based on physical differences: boys have bigger muscles and like to use them; they're louder and more active and aggressive. Girls are more concerned about relationships; they're more verbal and sensitive to the comforts of others, both physical and aesthetic. All generalizations, of course, with exceptions at every turn.
That said, I think the larger differences may be based on personality and birth order more than on gender. Boy or girl, an oldest child in a large family develops certain traits. The middle child, another way of coping; and the youngest, still another. Although we did assign a few tasks according to gender, for the most part our children were free to participate in any or all activities—and often, they functioned as a group, so it was difficult to know who was making more noise or stirring up trouble—girls or boys. But I am glad for the combination because I think it enriches their interactions and their lives. And mine, too.
Q: Every few years brings a new theory on how best to raise children. How much attention do you think parents should give to those ideas?
A: I would neither write them off nor take them for gospel—assess them and decide how they fit with your personality and goals, with what you know about children in general and your own child in particular. We have more knowledge about child development now, including neurodevelopment, how various childhood experiences influence brain development and subsequent functioning. It would be foolish to ignore that. Also, our lives and culture change. Today's parents are dealing with internet porn and daily violence in the headlines; they need information and skills to deal with that. Knowledge is always helpful, it seems to me—but as a supplement to, not a substitute for, love and common sense.
Q: How has your family reacted to this book so far?
A: They've been cheerleaders, fans, editors, and eager readers. At times, a particular piece has called up emotions too recent for an objective response. For example, on 9/11, I was in the midst of the chapter on Ben; there was no way I could continue to write about a son working as an architect in New York City without integrating that tragedy. But it took a while before I could write it and another while before he could read and respond to it. Our youngest child, Adrienne, now in her first year of law school, asked recently if she could file an amendment on her behavior as a 20-year-old that figured into the essay on her. But all of them realize that the essays aren't so much biographies of them as they are stories about the cultural issues that Ned and I faced raising a large family during those years of enormous social change.
Q: Do you see yourself writing another book anytime soon?
A: I like to have a project going. Writing feels to me like a friend waiting in the other room for my company. I did finish one novel and I'd started a second when I decided to turn to the essays. I'd been thinking about these family stories for a long time and they were very important to me. In the winter of 2000, I felt a desire to go to work on them. Recently, I've been looking at the novel I set aside, assessing whether or not to pick up where I left off or to begin a new project.