May 16th, 2007

A Serial Play Dater

By 2002 it had been 14 years since I was ‘fresh off the boat’ from Australia. Halloween was my favorite holiday, I ate pancakes with bacon, hosted a dog party, TiVo’d the Super Bowl, even registered for gifts. I was employed, acclimatized and smugly assimilated.

Any of life’s puzzling issues were conveniently attributed to a small town upbringing and my not-so-small town California life. Then came the journey to new-parent land. No passport required.

This land came with confounding limitations, and a whole new vocabulary. With time, I learnt to embrace ‘tummy-time,’ ‘Ferberizing,’ even ‘transitional objects,’ and ‘time-out.’ It was the social mores, in particular the enigmatic ‘play date,’ that stumped me.

Continue… »

By Robyn Murphy