Neither too big nor too small, this family is just right
don’t remember where I read it, but I
recently encountered an article that
discussed a new and disturbing
phenomenon: People are getting depressed
by reading old friends’ Facebook pages and
comparing their own lives to the evidence of
“Bigger, Happier Lives” in cyberspace. I’ve
been thinking about that study a lot, as
seemingly everyone I knew in high school is
having a second or third child. Bright faced
babies and grinning parents festoon my
news feed daily in silent, delighted
accusation, as though pointing right at me
and asking, “Why didn’t you get on that,
already? Betty has a baby brother, and so
does Amalia, and so does Iris - Do you care
nothing for Ramona’s desire for siblings and
her joy in life?
It’s not that we don’t know other families
with only children — we do. It’s just that all
of the other parents of singletons we know
are unapologetic and unconflicted about
their choice, whereas Ramona’s father
Marshall and I were on the fence for a long
time before looking at our finances, ages
(we’re both pushing respective decades that
are not thirty in my case and not forty in
his), and the state of our house (we will one
day fix the giant hole in the den ceiling the
plumber had to cut to reach the ancient line
to the toilet), and deciding that the better
part of valor would be to raise one kid
really, really well and maybe foster when we
feel like we’re on top of that task. Raising
Ramona is daunting enough for us, a pair of
late bloomers who started this whole
parenting project later in the game.
And we have some workarounds,
primarily in the form of Ramona’s pseudo
sibling, young Jascha down the street, the
precocious and sweet 6-year-old boy who is
son to Eric and Jill, a musician and a natural
health practitioner. We swap sleepovers
(which include little sleep, natch) and child
care, and we eat dinner together a lot, and
we commiserate on navigating the next
squally age and how to respond to gems
like, “You’re the worst mommy ever and I’m
not eating dinner and I’m not going to bed
ever\” But most of the time, both children
err on the side of delightful, and I don’t
have much to complain about. This Saturday
I
Melissa Favara
M elissa Favara
teaches E n g lish in
Vancouver a nd lives
a n d writes in North
Portland, where she
parents Ram ona, age
5, hosts a bi-monthly
reading series, a nd
counts her husband
a n d her city as the
two great loves o f her
life.
was, therefore, typical.
We had a late morning inspiration to take
Ramona and our faithful dog Vera Katz (she
was the runt of her litter, female, and the
alpha pup, so the mayor’s moniker was a
fitting tribute) to Sandy River Delta Park off
1-84. The park is 1,400 acres of forest,
meadow, and access to the Sandy and
Columbia rivers, and it’s all designated off-
leash after the parking lot. It’s our favorite
place to give both our human and canine
girls exercise, fresh air, and a dip among
scores of other likeminded people and swell,
exuberant dogs. We had the last minute
foresight to invite Eric and Jascha (Jill was
off at work) along for a pre-back-to-school
romp.
Note to those of you single child families
contemplating taking up hiking with the kid:
always bring a second child, even if you have
to borrow one. It puts off the moment when
your child hurls herself bodily onto the trail
and refuses to take another step by at least
an hour, and transforms your experience
from being that of nudging your kid to catch
up every 90 seconds or so into having to up
your own pace as the pair of them, in this
case Ramona and her honorary brother,
race ahead for the first hour in pursuit of
blackberries and other people’s cute dogs.
And if you choose Sandy River Delta Park,
and you’re lucky to have a perfect Portland
late summer day with sun and drifting
clouds and 78 degrees and a slight breeze,
you may get to quiet your mind and sit on a
log, swinging your binoculars between the
equally compelling sights of the family of
three osprey wheeling just overhead and the
two friends, their shorts rolled up all the
way to their bottoms, wading, hand in hand,
on a sand bar too far away to hear what they
are discussing with such animation. (Ro
later told me it was a mutual interest in
acquiring glow-in-the-dark pajamas.) A hike
like that, with great friends, on a great day,
with the not-quite-siblings getting along like
gangbusters and sharing truly family-like
time is precisely the kind of thing one posts
about on Facebook for the approbation of
those long-lost peers who might check your
status update and feel that they themselves
may have misspent their own Saturdays.
And that’s the thing: I could have posted
that-heck, if someone else had, I’d have
been jealous. Here’s what I would have left
out of my status update, probably, in no
particular order:
Exhibit A, in which Ramona became
convinced that Jascha had been dealt a
larger share of the dates I ’d packed and
proclaimed, “You only love Jascha and you
don’t love me because you always give him
more!”
Exhibit B, in which Ramona and Jascha
trailed behind a bend as we walked the
Sandy’s riverbank, emerging shoeless.
Jascha was carrying his shoes, Ro wasn’t. I
spent an hour searching in scrub and
puddles, and no trace. She made the rest of
the hike alternating between padding along
in my socks and awkwardly perching on my
husband’s sore shoulders.
Exhibit C, in which a husband not to be
named suggested a slightly less traveled
path to hook up with the main artery back
to the parking lot, which gradually narrowed
and became the obviously-not-an-official-path
path through scratchy weeds and
intermittent blackberry bramble just feet to
the right of a steep cliff, and which
ultimately spit out a crowd of hikers who
were, respectively, apologetic, cross,
sunburned, scratched, and thirsty (note:
bring more water than you think you’ll
need).
It’s an oldie, but a goodie: “Don’t
compare your insides to other people’s
outsides.” That face we prepare to meet the
faces that we meet — or post online — it’s an
edited version, and you only see the perfect
moments. Family, and living in a family,
single-child, friend-family, or otherwise, is
complicated and messy, and our decisions
are influenced by a thousand factors not
visible to the naked eye. The decision we’ve
made to breed no more is imperfect, but it’s
the best one for us. Our hike was imperfect,
but the overall takeaway as we drove back to
Portland to barbecue together was that we’d
had fun and were glad to be together. That
nagging doubt about having a second kid
aside, that’s pretty much our story.
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LENDER
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