Okay, here's the thing. Here's the thing that those of us who are no longer kids, not yet old, and not presently dealing with disabilities need to understand:

Public space is not our space. Children, the elderly, and people with disabilities don't use parks, restaurants, stores, museums, and theaters at our indulgence, because it's not our space. It's everyone's space, and everyone has an equal claim on it.

Parents who take their kids to adult-oriented places --- myself very much included --- tend to overstate the case for our children. "My kid would never scream in a museum or throw food in a restaurant," we say. " My kid would never impose on other people, and if she did, I'd deal with it. When you're complaining about kids, you're complaining about other people's kids. Don't lump my kid in with them."

But here's my secret: My kid doesn't actually behave as well as I do in museums. Sometimes she whines. Sometimes she has to be reminded to to keep her voice down, or not to run. So yeah, when I take her to the Museum of Modern Art, we do impose on other patrons, at least a little.

And you know what? A little imposition on other patrons is okay. I'll apologize sincerely to anyone she disturbs, but I'm not going to apologize for her presence. Because MoMA is C2's space as much as it is mine.

My sister whines in public sometimes, too. Sometimes she gets overwhelmed and cries. Sometimes she raises her voice. (Running in museums is not an issue with her, I'm happy to say.) If we say that C2 shouldn't go to museums because she might whine or cry or raise her voice, then we have to say that my sister can't go either --- and one of the best days I ever spent with my sister was the day that we visited a MoMA exhibit of design for people with disabilities. MoMA is my sister's space as much as it is mine.

And if we say that people who might whine or cry or raise their voices shouldn't go to museums, then we're going to have to bar my grandmother, too --- if not now then very soon. My grandmother the artist. My grandmother who, when she was in college in Idaho six decades ago, read Dorothy Parker and hung a print of the Rouen cathedral on her wall. My grandmother, whose copies of the catalogues of the MoMA "High and Low" exhibit and the Peggy Guggenheim collection sit on my bookshelf.

MoMA is my grandmother's space far more than it is mine. She almost certainly will never again see the inside of it, but if she does, the rest of the people there will just have to suck it up. She's old, and being old isn't always pretty.

I was talking about all this on the phone with C1 a little while ago, talking about the fact that this way of looking at things is a lot less clean, a lot less comfortable than the "you're complaining about other people's kids, not mine" way. Talking about the question of disruptiveness, and how much is too much. And she reminded me what she tells C2 about riding her Big Wheel on the sidewalk --- that it's not enough to not bump into people, that you have to respect them. You can't ride so fast or so close that you scare them, or make them step out of your way. If you see that they're nervous, you have to slow down even more, and give them even more room. You have to minimize the disruption as much as you can.

Because C2 isn't a lone child zooming through a world of uniformly robust adults. When she's out on the street, she's riding next to other kids who might not be paying attention, and next to old people who might be really worried about falling and shattering a hip, and next to folks carrying heavy and fragile packages, and so on and on. The duty to minimize disruption isn't a duty that the young and the old and those with disabilities have to the robust adults among us, it's a reciprocal duty that each of us, whatever our condition, has to each of our neighbors, whatever their condition.

Each of us has an obligation to refrain from whining too long or too loudly in museums. But each of us also has an obligation to accept the company of others good-naturedly, and to respond with grace when disruptions inevitably occur.


Update: Oh, and one other thing. Children, the elderly, and people with disabilities aren't the only people who occasionally cause disruption in public spaces through no fault of their own. Anyone can be seized by a coughing fit at the ballet.

Tags: aging, disability, essays, parenting, politics