Slow What Movement?
Do supporters of the Slow Food, Slow City, and All-Things-Slow Movements have kids? I picture beret-capped couples, taking a siesta at a centuries-old, locally-owned café somewhere in Europe, swapping copies of Walden and Leaves of Grass, gesticulating silently and emphatically at favorite passages (note: Slow Sentence movement initiated - see previous).
In our family's life, slow rises only with the moon. It is that space between evening activities and bedtime. Time slows from sixty-frames-a-second to two. Parent voices elongate and deepen: "Gabe-ree-all... get your pjs on." "Han-nah... it's time to sleep, not play." The kids, previously running and rolling with abandon, shuffle from activity-to-activity. Whining is given no quarter, but quiet civil disobedience is exercised. Gabriel takes a renewed interest in singing to his sister. Hannah spontaneously demonstrates a position learned in physical therapy, suggesting a late-night, verge-of-a-mobility-breakthrough moment.
Delay, feint, smile, comply, delay. The cycle can be endless.
Like sheepherders, we corral our kids to bed (which, by the way, does not guarantee sleep or general stay-in-bed compliance), and we parents settle in to the nearby office for Me-Time. We remain alert, waiting for Gabriel to pop in ("Just wanted to see how you are doing, Dad.") or for Hannah to call, cry, yank her ventilator off (she knows well that alarms beeping = parental attention), or decanulate (also an attention getter).
Sometimes, however, when all runs smoothly, both kids fall asleep simultaneously. Listening to the tick-tick of clocks and the ventilator next door, we relax for a moment: sipping coffee (or tea) at our imaginary cafés as we search the internet, save our favorite hyperlinks, and put off, for a moment, the responsibilities stacked up against us.
-- Dad
