Talk:A&E/Start
Out Takes
How might an energetic 3-year-old intuit the possibilities of life at the farm relative to lonely prospects set by his urban agenda? Lacking sufficient experience, I gave that question little forethought, and I took my time in working out an answer. For my parents, on the brink of 40, the prospect of moving to the farm came with expected continuities set in their well seasoned character and established patterns of activity. They had bought the farm for a song in a deeply depressed market 2 or 3 years before I was born.
Pre-war in New York, a dual-earning, professional couple with a 3-year-old child would be unusual requiring substantial child-care assistance then. And the asymmetry of their dual-earner status furthered their distinctiveness, for Their move was not one that fit the suburban model because the self-expectations of both left neither adaptable to the homemaker role. Both Margot and Joe would commute , leaving Robbie and Woz from 7 am to 7 pm in the place in the country. That's right: I saw this situation largely favorable; Woz did not. She had been incubating her nest egg near to her home in Hells Kitchen, a walk from Gramercy Place. But from rural Pennsylvania, she found catching the eye of a regular guy who would eagerly marry and make with her a home and family of their own an impossible dream.
When we moved to the farm, Margot and Joe had owned it for 5 years or so and used it as their place in the country. As their place in the country, it fit well with their urban aspirations and norms, and we were clearly moving to the country, not the suburbs, in going there full time. They might think their 3-year-old would have analogous expectations, playing around a red barn with a cow and some chickens, and initially many anticipated continuities. But to a surprising extent, children are natural phenomenologists and they take in what they see, quite distinct from the fantasies their imaginations might conjure and the routines normal in their prior circumstances. [**** I'm quite sure, in a somewhat different way for my parents, we need to step back a bit Margo and Joe had bought the farm But I am sure that by the time it became home, I was ready to turn active, exploring the farm and making it my turf!