Before children, I never would see the movie if I’d read the book (I preferred my interpretation over some director’s) and certainly would never see the movie instead of reading the book. But times have changed. So the following post is on the movie version of Revolutionary Road (starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio), which was a very worthy way to spend two hours but I’m just going come right out and admit that I probably won’t ever get around to reading the book, well-written as it may be.

In the movie, April and Larry Wheeler, parents to two children, watch their marriage and bohemian aspirations turn to dust amid the stifling conformity of suburban life in the ’50s. Artfully acted, it’s a stark reminder of how much things have changed for women, and by extension, men.

April finds herself increasingly restless and unhappy with the lack of an outlet for her wanderlust. Resentments grow between April and her equally trapped husband, who took a dead-end job to support his family. Desperate to escape, she proposes relocating the whole family to Paris. I won’t spoil the rest.

I’ve always been keenly aware that I’m only two generations removed from that reality. The first, really, to have grown up believing all opportunities were open to me.

But for all that has changed, there’s elements to April’s predicament that feel familiar. I remember as an angsty teenager exiled in suburbia feeling that there must be more than so much bland uniformity. Many of my friends’ homes had the same floor plan as mine. None was rich, none was poor. It was only through books that I became aware of the broader, more eclectic world out there.

What if like April, I never would have gone on to see that bigger world and instead it would have remained a mythological place of my imagining, growing every year more magical and alluring by comparison to my mundane reality? How would I feel about my kids? My responsibilities? The lack of fabulousness and glamour in folding clothes late into the night?

Instead, I got to have adventures, which were at times thrilling and at times overrated. Now that my life has moved on to another phase, I feel no regrets, no anxieties about the more avant-guarde existance I could be living. Making muffins with the kiddos is a perfectly grand way to spend an afternoon.

I see this among many mothers of my generation. Those that stay home don’t lack for fulfillment knowing childhood is fleeting and that they are its keeper. Those that go to work get to preserve something of their old lives along side their equally rewarding mommy selves (though the manual is yet unwritten on how to strike a perfect balance between the two). Most of my contemporaries seem quite comfortable in their skin, happily planted where wisdom and wonder meet. In that sense, April seems an intriguing by unfortunate relic of a bygone era.

I recently saw “The Changling” on DVD. No matter what you think of Clint Eastwood or Angelina Jolie (odd she’s in full make-up when she wakes up in the movie’s opening scene), this movie will send a chill straight through the heart of any parent. The movie tells the mostly true story of Christine Collins, a single mom whose 9-year-old son, Walter, was abducted in 1928. In the movie, she reluctantly leaves Walter home alone when she is called into work on her day off. 

My children are young so there’s no question about leaving them alone, but I’ve nonetheless thought a lot about the topic. It was for my generation that the term “latchkey kid” was coined (is that even used any more?), and I recall coming home from the first grade and being home alone at times for a couple hours until my mom came home.

In hindsight, that was probably too young but back then it wasn’t seen as especially unusual. When a neighbor found me on the curb on a winter evening because I was afraid the Hulk was in my house, she gave me cocoa and called my mom. Today, she would probably call child protective services. But I also have terribly fond memories of exploring unsupervised with my younger brother the small lake near our house in Loveland. We built our own raft with a neighbor kid and paddled the shores picking cattails. I was 7 or 8 then.

The Colorado Department of Human Services says there is no hard and fast rule on how old kids should be to be left on their own but 12 is the guideline. Because we live in a (relatively) small town, do people have a more liberal take on this guideline? What are the dangers and how real are they? For reasons of safety, has the Huckleberry Finn childhood become a thing of the past? (See more on this topic at the NYTimes “Motherlode”).

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On this Earth Day I can’t help but think about my first encounter as a young child with the concept of environmentalism. Of course I didn’t know that’s what it was when I watched the animated film version of Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” on TV back in the ’70s. (I recently re-watched it online with my son and was chagrined to observe that it was, in my estimation, overly influenced by the aesthetic of the era and had not aged nearly as well as the original Grinch movie). The tale remains the finest I know for instilling in children the concept that our planet’s resources are precious and finite. The obligation to be a good steward of the environment never weighed so heavily on me as it did after having children. It can be overwhelming and disheartening to contemplate the enormity of the task of trying to not only stop the degradation of our planet, but to improve its condition. But for my children’s sake, I know resignation is not an option. Because, as The Lorax teaches us, “unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

One fun and delicious way to make a difference is to involve your children in growing their own food. I recently wrote about the proliferation of community gardens in the Durango area.  Food activist Michael Pollan, author of “In Defese of Food,” wrote in an article today that, thanks to the World War II victory gardens, “by the time the war ended, home gardeners were producing 40 percent of the United States’ produce.” Imagine what a difference it would make if we could replicate that today. Besides, what is more fun to young children than digging in the dirt?

To learn more about community gardens in the area, contact the The Garden Project of Southwest Colorado. And the La Plata County Extension Office is great resource for backyard gardeners.