Below is the text of my monthly “Editor’s Letter” in the new issue of Washingtonian.
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It seems fitting that local novelist Louis Bayard has tackled parenting as a key theme of his new book, a fictional account of Theodore Roosevelt’s expedition into the Amazon with his son Kermit. Being a parent remains, to a certain extent, life’s ultimate mystery. As Bayard explains to Washingtonian books editor Bethanne Patrick in a Q&A on page 46, “I’m obsessed with the way we’re all mirrors of our parents.”
In the context of parenting, “obsession” doesn’t seem too strong a word. In fact, in many ways parenting seems to be our national obsession right now—leaning in, leaning out, tiger moms, helicopter parents. The subject fills bookshelves, op-ed columns, and TV debates. We have so many theories about what works and what doesn’t—yet precious little hard evidence about how to ensure that our kids turn out to be healthy, productive, self-sufficient members of society.
Beyond the Q&A with Bayard, four articles in this issue share a parenting theme—each with a very different viewpoint, including a story written by a son about his father and another by a mother about her children.
Journalist Michael Graff (no relation, by the way) has penned a lyrical essay that explores his dad’s early life while it tries to understand the older man’s aging, weakening condition (page 58). Graff went to great heights (jumping out of an airplane at 13,000 feet) to understand what made his skydiving father tick and how he had shaped Michael and his brother, in ways very different from how his own dad had influenced him.
Regular contributor Patrick Hruby tells the story of Woodbridge mother Julie Kroll (page 78), who disappeared from the scene of a car accident in Dale City, leaving her young daughter behind at the scene. It’s a heartbreaking tale about wrestling with the struggles of parenting and the hidden epidemic of suburban alcoholism. I’ll bet many readers know of a mother like Kroll, one who walks a daily tightrope holding her life together, balancing myriad challenges—right up until the day when she can’t do it anymore.
Meanwhile, Laura Moser’s essay on the vagaries of the DC Schools lottery, the stress on parents, and the absurdity of the educational choices it forces on students (page 52) will ring true to every parent—even, or perhaps especially, in the suburbs—and how we all wish the “best” for our kids, often without knowing how to deliver it to them. Moser captures the anxiety that comes from not knowing whether your child will be doomed to an underperforming school despite your best efforts. DC really is a lottery: You can win big—or lose.
The subject of how children mirror parents is particularly evident in a photo essay, by photographer Christopher Lane and writer Mary Yarrison (page 66), about raising baby whooping cranes at Maryland’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. There, scientists don bizarre-looking costumes to ensure that the baby birds raised in captivity never acclimate to being around humans. Raised from hatchlings, the cranes are flown to Wisconsin and eventually migrate south to Florida. Then one day, without any prompting, they leave the protective cloak of the wildlife refuge and head into the world. It’s a scary moment for them—and for their handlers at the US Fish & Wildlife Service—and one every parent can relate to.
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