The Broth and the Bear
2004-11-01,

I had something of a revelation regarding Hil this morning-- in the shower, actually, to be clich�. If this thought were a book, its title would be The Berenstain Bears and Too Many Parents.

Let me say at the outset that this is not to say that anyone should be ousted in the role of parent. It's just that there's an inherent problem with having, for all intents and purposes, four parents. Well, really, there are many inherent problems, but 99 percent of them can be overcome easily with cooperation. But one thing that's hard to fix is this:

Family time. It's a basic concept, where a child or children spend time directly with their parents, doing whatever that a family might do together. For a budding preteen, this is balanced out by the need to be social with peers. Easily enough accomplished when one has one family. But it gets exponentially harder when one has two families to spend time with, because it automatically halves the peer group time. This is growing into an issue for our dear girl, and one I'm not sure how to remedy. She gets very little contact with her friends on the weekend both because she's out of town for a good chunk of it and because our Saturdays are the one time that we as a family in Medina have a chance to do anything all together without worrying about bedtimes or homework. Unfortunately, Saturday also becomes the only full-on meaningful time she has to be a socialite in any form other than phone calls or school. So what to do?

Maybe we just need to give her some room to grow up a little more. Letting go is hard, even if it's only a little bit.

Meanwhile, I realized that today is the one-year anniversary of 'Buying the Bear'. What an expedient hear it's been. New job, tons of paperwork, and in my fifth stage production. If you'd asked me then about the chances of being in 5 shows in a year, I'd have laughed heartily.

Happy anniversary, denim bear. By this time next year, you should be well drooled-on.

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