the good life

I really ought to be sleeping right now, but there's a new white ibook in the room I'm in. Yes, I'm a guest somewhere in wealthy Jewish suburbia. It's a world where each kid's bedroom has computers, tv and other gadgets.

Yes, they have all sorts of material stuff, but there are things they don't have. Those things can't be bought. They're of another age and world. Most kids have no idea of what they're missing.

When I was growing up, in the middle of the previous century, in upwardly mobile, lower middle class, struggling for some, Bell Park Gardens, we had something money can't buy. It's better than a fancy laptop or a large flat tv screen.

Even when I was a very little girl, not yet in school, I could play outside with my friends and walk to a friend's house without an escort. Before my age was double-digits, I could take a public bus. When I was much too young for a drivers licence, I could ride my bike miles. My friend Louise, who lived in "Old Bayside," when I lived in Great Neck, met at a halfway point. The bicycle path along the highway to the Throgs Neck Bridge. We rode our bikes to "the end." Then we bought ice cream and sat outside eating it. Then we got back on our bikes and rode home.

In my day we didn't need a grownup with us every minute outside. We played in the big lot, at that time undeveloped, across from PS 46. We had the freedom to be independent and creative. TV was black and white. In our minds, we saw color. Life wasn't dull, not at all.

I tried to give my kids that sort of life. It's getting harder and harder. Funny, I had to go very far to do it, to Israel, to a yishuv, to Shiloh.