B-Rant

- submitted by K. Dukess on 04/24/2008

  

It's Spring: Payback Time in Suburbia

By Karen Dukess 

There have been days in the past 10 years when I have second-guessed my decision to live in the suburbs. Like when I've called my sister in the city and heard about an afternoon that included taking her son to see an acrobatic/capoeira/hip-hop fusion performance in Brooklyn and grabbing a quick snack at an Ethiopian café on the way home. Or the day I realized that my children, by virtue of being Jewish, are providing the desired diversity in our monochromatic neighborhood school.

But every year, there comes a time when I am viscerally reminded why I took a pass on urban culture and bought a house in the ‘burbs. It's that first unofficial day of spring, when the temperature is surprisingly balmy and my boys start to shake off their long winter hibernation.

I watch them voluntarily get off the computer to go outside to play (that supposedly lost art to the children of our age) and I think this is what it's all about. This is why I gave up monthly rent for a monthly mortgage, traded in street musicians for leaf blowers and walked away from the subway and into a minivan.

This is what I gave my children - the freedom to go a little feral, to run outside barefoot, to go in and out and in and out a million times, the door banging behind them, to grab a baseball mitt, a pogo stick, a Frisbee, a snack.

Here, my boys have the freedom to go outside to play with nary a phone call, adult negotiation, appointment diary, scheduled class or organized practice. Out on our street, they romp with kids as young as four and as old as 14, and they even play with girls - the very same creatures they wouldn't dare speak to upon passing in the school hallway. In impromptu games of Manhunt or Hide-and-Go-Seek Tag that traverse a series of lawns and require jumping over hedges, they can pick their own teams, make their own rules, and weather the storms of the inevitable scuffs and hurt feelings without parental involvement.

Yes, there are many days when it's hard to know which is better - this kind of freedom or the greater diversity of race, age, religion, culture, political persuasion, economic bracket and body piercing they would get in the city.

But when the ice cream truck comes by and my kids jump up with wide eyes and scramble frantically for their allowance money as if this is the first time this miracle of ice cream on wheels has occurred, I find myself thinking that they will have plenty of time later in life for urban culture and ethnic food. For lemonade stands and ding-dong ditch, the time is now.

Karen Dukess, Editorial Director of Burbia, has been a newspaper and magazine reporter, editor, and publisher in Florida, New York and Russia. She's now semi-settled in the 'burbs of New York with her husband and two sons....read more rants