Hergest Ridge

Rid yourself of all forks and knives you have brought for this newest piece, for it’s not one to complement Swift’s Modest Proposal. No recipes, no tips, no cooking temperatures.

At age eight I took my six year old sister’s hand and left our home located in the middle of a city that once was Poland’s capital. Father had come home drunk, and home sweet home became purgatory. Things may have gone well if he fell asleep, the very unpleasant alternative best left to imagination.

With a few coins in hand we left to find mother.

To this day, much of the city is well preserved in my mind. The streets, where they connect, and which parts of the city they lead to have been firmly impressed in the mind of a child with a vivid imagination - a child that stacked white, large bricks in the shapes of the then emerging computers, and drew on them keyboards, screens, and buttons with labels to mark their importance.

Despite knowing much of the city, the trip to the small, home style fast food booth owned by my uncle and aunt at the entrance to the black market was out of reach. It’s one thing to remember the streets visually, another when it comes to their names and the public transport routes. The routes consisted of buses and street cars with schedules as mysterious as father’s regular and unpredictable behaviour.

My sister behaved better than she did in the company of an adult, leaving me to hold her hand and ask the bus drivers for directions. “We need to get to the black market. Will your bus take us there?”

No direct transit route connected the stop at the corner of our cobble stone street to the black market. The operators gave information on the best options, which routes we should take, and where we need to switch to another. The money for the trip was either enough, or pity chipped in to make up the difference.

Some two decades later, the mother of a nine year old Izzy leaves him at the New York subway with a metro card, a subway map, and $20.

Later she writes in her column “Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them.”

Just like my sister and I navigated without incident the public transit to find our mother, Izzy, left by his mother arrived home on time, proud, confident, and a step closer to the kind of independence he will later require to begin a life as a capable and responsible adult.

I can imagine the face of Izzy’s mother upon his arrival home, for I’ve seen that of my mother when we finally arrived at the fast food booth. Later, we sat in the back of it on crates, ate fries and drank pop, while I told the story of how and why we had come.

The best lesson a child can learn is one of self sufficiency, for there are many more scenarios than anyone can imagine and prepare for. With self sufficiency, you needn’t imagine them all for your child to come through the day unscathed.

If you want to leave a comment or question for Izzy’s mother, or interact with the many parents looking for a healthy balance between safety and self sufficiency, visit Free Range Kids.