Loudon Wainwright was playing yesterday morning as I drove to work (via CD, since my radio station is in the middle of an interminable pledge drive) and he was singing about kids in a car asking when they were going to get there and being told to look out the window. It struck me that I'd like nothing better than to have time to look out the window, any window - of a car, of my office, at home, on a train. Although having a driver drive me the 12 minute commute to work seems a bit extravagent, it would give me a few minutes of peace to just be. Maybe I would even ask him (yes, that's sexist) to take the long way (17 minutes) so that I'd get some extra contemplation time.

It struck me that the reason I crave time to not do anything except look out a window is not just that my life is crazy-busy, but also that I have things to think about - an interior life - that is often neglected, rich in fantasy (mostly the kind that I'd like to write someday), and interesting enough to hold my attention for an extended period of time. I don't think children (especially children young enough to believe that you're always 15 minutes from anywhere when you're in a car) generally have this type of interior life - everything for them is about the exterior, about interacting with their environment, about dashing forward into the future in gigantic leaps, about eating up their world in enormous gulps. And frankly, admit it, they usually have the attention span of gnats with ADD (not unlike some adults I know). I don't remember starting to spend time thinking or even daydreaming very actively until I started reading books that caused my mind to open to the possibility of places completely unlike those I was surrounded by. So, next time you're in a car with a small child, and you're about to tell them to look out the window when they become antsy, maybe you should try telling them a story instead and listening for that click as their young brains expand to incorporate the tale you've just spun for them.