I used to be very plugged in. Up to date. On top — of world events, popular culture, hot debates, best books. There have been times in my life and in my career when I’ve read seven newspapers a day. Later it became about websites and blogs, subscriber sites, email blasts, piles and piles of content and responses. Hard news and soft. Come Oscar time, I’d have seen every movie. I watched all the best TV shows, followed favorite columnists, and plugged myself into at least a dozen daily personal blogs. The Internet and I came of age at the same time so my career has never been without it, and I’ve spent my entire adult life feeling like isolation is impossible, and enjoying that fact.
My first maternity leave was 12 weeks long – hardly enough time to cancel a newspaper subscription, much less unplug myself. But when my current little lamprey came along, I began a 12-month maternity leave, committing myself to spending every minute of every day with my new infant and her big sister, with no spouse or childcare. And the real world retreated very quickly to something I’d once heard about but don’t remember.
Eight months into this life, I am not ashamed to say I am very, very unplugged. With a tight budget and free time nonexistent, I have lost complete track of anything that is not spoken about on public radio while I’m washing the sippy cups. I have no cable or satellite television, no newspaper subscriptions, and no time for surfing. I still answer the phone and read email, but I can’t be bothered to open URLs or listen to the podcast a friend sent me. I’ve walked past newspaper boxes with some envy – I used to love idling the day away with the Sunday paper, sections spread out around the house beneath teacups and toast crumbs. But while the elder child can be rendered almost senseless and certainly undemanding with an ancient Dora video, the 8-month old is impervious to the temptations of TV, and no newspaper will ever be read while she’s awake.
I do feel tugged by the news I’m missing. I know there’s a revolution in Egypt – I found out Mubarak stepped down a few hours ago, only one hour after it happened, when I turned on the TV for my croupy kid. But I don’t know what Tahrir square looks like. For me, this revolution, a Facebook uprising, has happened on the radio, that 1950’s technology that is blessedly hands-free, no Bluetooth required.
Being unplugged at midlife – just when some are beginning to feel either obsolete or out-of-touch anyway – should be scary but is actually kind of restful. I know leaving the workforce to take care of children, even for as little as 12 months, is risky for women. (It is less risky in Canada, where 12-month parental leaves are the norm.) Still, I hear snippets about corporate deals and political developments and I know I will need to catch up on all of it in the first week I’m back at work – is that even possible? Am I handicapping myself career-wise by laying on the carpet and trading raspberries with my baby instead of sneaking away to read news sites and trade gossip with coworkers still on the job?
On some level, I know I will never catch up. I lived in Australia for three years and when I came back, no matter how many times people tried to explain it to me, I was never able to figure out who Anna Nicole Smith was. Proof, if ever it was needed, that being unplugged is no bad thing. In retreating from the virtual world, I’ve come to the realization that many, many things that many, many people care about don’t matter at all to our actual lives. That somehow we’ve become addicted to talking and reading about things that don’t actually mean anything.
So, for the most part, I am embracing the quiet. I haven’t seen a movie in a year. I have no idea what is on television, who won the Super Bowl, or what’s on Oprah’s O-list. I’ve never seen Mad Men. I still read lots of novels, but only those on the library’s Best Bets shelf beside the checkout, grabbable as we go sailing past with our Maisy’s ABC video and our 3-D Dinosaurs. I don’t miss news from Washington, much. In our house, a tea party is just that, an actual TEA party, with cups and saucers and every piece of plastic food known to Toys R Us.
This withdrawal from the big world has been, strangely, the opposite of isolating. I have a lot of mom friends these days – the women I meet at playgroups, outside ballet class, in Singing Circle, at the playground. Most are career women at home for a year, like me, with a little baby and older child. We all miss adult interaction and conversation that goes beyond things like “Mommy, what sound does blue make?” I haven’t had this many casual friends since university. We meet at each other’s house and mostly talk, stereotypically, understandably, about our kids. About where the best indoor playgrounds are and which pools are warm and why none of us are ashamed, after all, about taking our kids to McDonalds. I’ve yet to discuss politics or economics with any of them. But I know what their kids are afraid of, and what they are afraid of about their kids, and how hard everyone is trying to balance all of it while having fun along the way. It is said this baby and toddler time is made up of the longest days and the shortest years, and everyone I talk to seems to know this, even through our fatigue and the fog of irritation that accompanies life with a 3 year old.
More than anything, I know this recess from the outside world is all the more valuable because it is fleeting. I got a 35 year mortgage when I was 37 years old – the math isn’t pretty. I will soon have to plug myself back in, rejoin the rat race, and have many, many clever and fun conversations about things that don’t matter much at all. And that’s a good thing, too. Because I don’t know what sound blue makes, and I already talk more about dinosaurs, diapers and Dora than anyone needs to know.