It’s been interesting to watch the main topic of  the past two Sunday magazine sections of the New York Times and the Boston Globe: blogging and monitoring our kids’ technology. These are both issues I think about a lot. In my students, I have for several years seen the evidence building that, as Sherry Turkle of MIT points out, our youth have a new interpretation of intimacy. I am paraphrasing her words in June 8th Globe article, but she points out that today’s youth do not associate privacy with intimacy: they create intimacy in public space through cellphone and internet use. My students –and many bloggers — have a tendency to overshare about intensely personal matters in their writing and then are utterly unprepared for what they have created. In many cases, what I would consider diary writing, or therapeutic writing, is exactly what is presented for public consumption. As evidenced the blogger whose life was essentially turned upside down as chronicled in last week’s Times,  all this distance communication creates a false sense of security. Readers assume things about a writer, there is no way around that. And the more opaque you are, the more they assume they know you. And then when readers comment on that, the writer feels corned or defensive and blasts back a response . . . and all of a sudden you’ve got an addictive circle of commentary on commentary on commentary. It reminds me of grad school when the circle of commentary on literary critics’ commentary on great works of literature seemed endless and exasperating.

I am a great believer that good writing involves selecting one’s details carefully, but apparently that does not apply in the current blogosphere. What we used to share with our best friend huddled on the phone or behind the lockers, young people are publishing. 

Is this good or bad, loss or gain? Or are those kinds of qualifiers useless now? I don’t know anymore, I feel like those 50’s parents that said Elvis was evil. But I do find myself asking: is it time for me and my methodology to move along?

Sunday evening, the older kids were out with friends, Col went to bed early, and Tom and I found ourselves in a most strange situation: we were alone and not exhausted. Glorious. We poured some wine, threw a nice steak on the barbeque and sat on the patio reading the paper and watching the night fall. By the time Dex and Neve came home, we were thoroughly relaxed, and after a little chat about their canoeing experience, off we all went to bed. I recall sighing with satisfaction as I lay down; we were coming out of the baby cave just in time for the summer, so things wouldn’t be so intense.

As soon as Tom peeled back the covers to get into bed, Colin began screaming. Full-out panicked screaming. Within three minutes we had him out of the crib, had assessed croup symptoms and had the shower steam building up. But as I held  him, I noticed that this didn’t sound like regular croup; he was truly struggling to breathe. Just like this winter, all the times this winter when he couldn’t stop wheezing and I ended up in my pediatrician’s office strapping a mask to his face. But tonight he was absolutely terrified, his little eyes bugging out of his head as he clutched me in desperation.

“Tom,” I said. “I don’t like this.”

At 3 am, after an ambulance ride from our local hospital to Children’s, various treatments and a lot of screaming, I watched as Colin slept, passed out on Tom’s shoulder. Their chests rose and fell in different rhythms, equipment was jabbing into Colin’s leg and Tom’s snoring was world class, but it didn’t matter. Colin had felt safe and comfortable enough, finally, to fall asleep. 

How could Tom sleep? My neck was pulled tight, but I couldn’t relax my shoulders. I paced up and down the hall but kept getting in the way –if you have never been to Children’s emergency ward at night, it is inconcievably busy. As a child seized in the next room,  I sat against the wall, rocking back and forth, remembering how much I owed Children’s and how much I hated going there.  

But I held it together; why, I don’t know. Training, I guess. I held it together as we made our way home before dawn, questions reeling. As Tom put Colin in his crib, I made coffee and the kids’ sandwiches for school.  I unloaded the dishwasher and filled out a permission slip. 

But when Neve came into the kitchen, looked at me and said, “What’s wrong?” I fell apart. I hugged her to me and cried, which only succeeded in making her cry. Later, I got to thinking how appropriate it was that it was she, the child that had been so sick, who had taken me to that hospital so many times, was the only one I’d let see me scared.