FAMILY MATTERS
Childhood too early for daughter to be marking time

By Michael C. DeMattos

My daughter has a Barbie calendar that hangs on the side of her dresser. On it she has marked all the important dates that she needs to keep track of.

In October there is Halloween, her Brownie meeting, ballet practice and a costume-fitting. She has marked her swim lessons and some family activities, but there are other things that I find humorous. Such as the birthday party for one of her stuffed animals.

On most evenings she Xes out the day that was and looks to what the next day will hold.

I worry about this.

Unlike the calendar I keep, most of her activities are enjoyable. There are Brownie meetings, but I am confident that they are fun. I dread meetings, though I usually enjoy the people I meet with.

She has practice schedules for ballet and swimming, but this is still more play than discipline.

My practice is more discipline than fun. I lift weights and ride the stationary bike, but if given my druthers, I would druther not.

She has parties to attend, some real and others imagined. I have been at parties and imagined myself elsewhere.

I worry about her. She looks and acts so much like her mother and father, who in turn look and act like so many others. We tick off minutes, hours and days like the closing moments of a football game. We are multitaskers who can download mail, schedule an appointment, play a video game and connect to the Internet on our little cellular phone while sitting comfortably in our car.

Is this the world I want for my daughter? No. Do I have a choice? I wonder. I am not convinced that our little conveniences and obsession with time management improve our quality of life.

It may be that this is just her personality. Maybe she is like my wife and has a heightened sense of order. When she gets older, maybe she'll keep all of her paper money face up in descending order and her closet will be arranged by type of outfit (blouses to the left and dresses to the right) and by color.

But maybe she is like me, a societal misfit who must keep track of time or get left behind. When she is older, maybe she will look at her calendar each and every day and still miss appointments. She will find herself habitually late. Like me, she will fight the tide of compartmentalized living.

My daughter has a Barbie calendar that hangs on the side of her dresser where she marks important dates. Whether she gets this from her father, mother or society as a whole doesn't really matter.

She ticks off the days as they come to a close and looks forward to the next in eager anticipation. I hope this is always so. I also hope that she keeps some of the boxes on her calendar empty, remembering that a full calendar is not the same as a full life.

Sometimes it is the empty spaces that matter most.

Family therapist Michael C. DeMattos of Kane'ohe has a master's degree in social work.