When they first moved into the house next door, I was dumbfounded. Seven children ranging in age from 10 months to twelve years. Home schooled! Both parents at home! Happy?!?!
And it got even scarier! The kids set up tents and forts around the house; reading, playing, sharing, laughing. What planet were THEY from? At night, they were all in by 7 and ligths were out by 8; that is after they gathered around the piano and sang together. While I dragged my sorry professional butt into my car at 5:30 in the morning, and out again at 10 each night, I muttered, "what did THEY do today..play...laugh...pray?" And what about the dad? Rarely seen, he seemed to poke his head out only once in a while.
When my wife and I would walk the dog at night, neighbors would nudge us into the shadows and whisper questions like, "What's up with the cult" and "What's the deal with the lady in the shoe?" and "How are the Von Trapps doing today?" And when our house was robbed one day, suspiciously around the time of their morning walk (exactly at 10 am, I might add), I wondered if they were the advance team for a gang of interstate pilferers. They just didn't make sense in my (and obviously, our neighbors') world.
As these kids built mud castles, squirted rainwater out of homemade water guns, built toys and gizmos, marvelled at the mangos on our tree, chased lizards, engaged with the world around them...and with each other, my kids, like many American teens, texted, tweeted, Facebooked and surfed the Net..all at the same time. And if we were lucky enough to stick to our family routine, we would make it to McDonald's on Wednesdays for the $.49 hamburger deal (not including fries).
I have met the aliens, and it is us...not the clan next door! I set out to memorize their names, all seven of them, and have extended a hand-across-the-lawn to the dad, who is studying in a local seminary, and who has interesting things to say. And I have said to the mom, that I love watching their kids, and that I admire the way that they play.
Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, still sings, "Where do the children play", and my answer is 'right at home and right next door.' Not on traveling teams, in high pressure tournaments, not in cyber space, and not cloistered in their dimly lit rooms...alone. I marvel at this merry band of awe-inspiring children who help me to remember what play really is about, and that awe and wonder and marvel are still alive in the world.
Psychologist and play-theorist/researcher Brian Sutton-Smith suggests that play, whether it be physical or mental, is an existential [and] separately motivated reality through which children transcend the bounds of their immediate world with all of its stuffy and bossy constraints. For Sutton-Smith, play is elemental to social and evolutionary survival, in that it allows children to practice and master roles and challenges they will someday confront. Maggie Jackson, in her volume, "Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age" laments that today's children (and adults) are overstimulated by multiple and competing demands for their precious and ever-dividing and divided attention. Richard Louv in his magnificent treatise, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder" says that it is lamentable that we have disconnected from nature-our playground, our classroom, our chapel.
Something is so wonderfully right with these kids next door, whose names I now know, and with whom I play whenever I can, and who write notes to my daughter, and who make me laugh, and give me hope, and teach me lessons anew. Where do the children PLAY? Right next door, and I am the better for it.
