Escape

Escape can be a beautiful and wonderful thing.  Escape takes us to a world where life's everyday stresses, large or small, are absent.  Even when life is grand, a world of riches can be found in escape.  As a kid, we escaped into a fort or up a tree with a book. We escaped with sports, with dress-up and make-believe, or by putting on puppet shows, or taking the family video recorder and shooting stories we wrote.  We escaped by throwing ourselves into the musical bubble of piano practice or ballet class or band rehearsal.   

And then we grew up.

In some industries, as in theatre and film, we're fortunate enough to continue to play every day and escape into alternate realities without anyone telling us to grow up and act like an adult.  No matter what's going on in our lives, the lights come up on stage and we're absorbed into a different world with different characters' problems for a few hours.  No break-ups, no health problems, no carpet-beetle infestations eating our closets (not that I have first-hand experience with that last one or anything...).  But for many adults, "escape" becomes a wish, a word uttered when talking about a planned vacation, or the need to move to a different city or different job, rather than something to indulge in daily.  As the responsibilities of adulthood and the burden of reality become greater, I think we too frequently stop giving ourselves permission to play.  And isn't that just when we need escape more than ever?

Today I saw a little girl clinging to her escape, ignoring the reality around her, which seemed to be headed into far rockier terrain than that in which any child should live.  As I settled into my seat on the Long Island Rail Road, I watched the following interaction take place among a father, mother, and two little girls -- one perhaps two, asleep on her mother's lap, and the other around five, awake on her dad's lap, staring out the window.

Wife/Mother, gesticulating histrionically, voice reeking with condescension, disgust, and derision, loud enough for the whole car to hear, to her husband as if chastising a child: "It's your fault.  I'm just going to sit back.  You said the train that's pulling in."

Husband (quietly): "There were two trains pulling in."

Wife (very slowly, the way people speak to old people whom they apparently think are not only deaf but don't speak English either): "Either you're going to take the ownership or you're not going to take the ownership."

Husband: [muffled, clearly trying not to have this fight then and there]

5 seconds of silence

Wife (adding new levels of condescension that I didn't know existed): "Oh, so you're not going to take the ownership?  You don't want to take ownership for your mistakes?"

Husband: [muffled]

15 seconds of silence

Wife: "I'm not giving you credit for this."

….Umm, if they're on the wrong train, get up and get on the right one. If they're on the right train, who cares who "gets credit" for it?

There was some more criticizing, blaming, and condescending that went unanswered, and then she exasperatedly sighed and told the daughter on her lap to wake up as we were pulling out of the station, at least 15 minutes away from our first stop.  Yes, heaven forbid your daughter sleeps on a train and misses you publicly filleting her dad.  Wouldn't want that.

Dad: "She can sleep."

Mom (snapping loudly): "I want her to wake up. This isn't fun. That's reality. She should get used to it."

And so the mom woke her daughter, only to snap at her for being restless and squirmy once awake, which then in turn made the girl irritable, which gave the mother another reason to shoot vitriolic venom at the girls' dad, in front of them, in public, as she consciously chose to bring the sleeping daughter into this hate-filled "reality" of their relationship.

....But then there was the older daughter on the dad's lap, who seemed to know the secret to escaping her mom's reality.  Dressed in a well-loved Elsa "Frozen" costume that appeared to be worn far too frequently for the washing machine to keep up with it, along with a bunny rabbit hat that looked about as shabby as the Velveteen Rabbit must have, she clutched an Elsa cup in one hand, running her thumb back and forth over an engraved snowflake, clutched her dad's shirt in the other, and fixedly stared out the window, mesmerized by the scenery whizzing past, ignoring the reality around her.

Hold on to that world of escape, kid.  Life's about to get rocky.