season of play

Back when I began spawning small humans, we purchased a playpen. (That's Jeff and Rachel, circa 1987.) Ahem...a playyard. Because that’s what manufacturers had begun calling them by the enlightened 1980s. (Well, maybe other people had trouble penning their small-fry, but I didn’t, so I didn’t ever keep with the times and break the habit of calling it a playpen.)

Not that my babies were ever content to while away more than a few minutes at a time in an enclosure full of the most tempting diversions you could scrounge up to buy yourself a moment, but I did employ the thing. And the whole notion popped back to mind when, recently, I suddenly visualized myself as, once again, the guardian of a playpen.

In the visual analogy that sprang uninvited into my cranium, my house is the playpen. My Soobie Outback is our stroller, and Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or The Fresh Market (plus a half dozen recurring lunch venues) are our outings in the park.

I used to imagine that if I were imprisoned for some reason, I would find a way to take advantage of it. (this is, of course, assuming a low-intensity form of incarceration, in which I had access to books and other learning materials.) Essentially now this is what I am doing. I am determined to stay active, body and mind, but I think the playpen metaphor does a better job at capturing the nature of our day to day existence, apart from the fact that the toddler is winding down, not up.

Sometimes I think I should be feeling pretty mellow because--in many respects--this is a fairly easy job. We have not reached the levels of stress that dog many of my cohorts in caregiving whose AD spouses are incontinent and/or belligerent. (hoping we can skip the latter, the former will be inevitable, eventually.) We are comfortable and well-fed. I deal with deteriorating building infrastructure as it arises, and rarely go berserk from excessive demands.

I must confess though, that the obscure nature of the end-game, and the relative isolation of being “home with the kid” play a bit of havoc with my mood and motivation. People need to interact--it’s a sort of “self-winding” feature of humans. A certain level of requirement keeps us stepping, and when the demands sink to too quiet...too alone, even all the Rosetta Stone and elliptical trainers in the world lose a little of their sparkle.

In fairness, there is room for malcontentedness all around. Demanding careers can feel like indentured servitude, undoubtedly. My position is not hugely more undesirable than many of the other options, and I am a strong proponent of positivity.

I believe that I am, at present, somewhat fogged as a result of finding myself--caregiver-wise--in the narrow channel between relative mobility and the need for sitters.

Classically, we caregivers deploy whatever help resources we have access to reluctantly and late. Sooner more than later I will need to work out what kind of helper(s) I need and how to engage them. What I am afraid of is that I will have no idea what to do with myself outside of the playpen.