They Did Everything Right

Last week, news broke in New York City that an 8 year-old boy had been abducted, then killed and dismembered, after getting lost only blocks away from the place he was to meet his parents that afternoon. His error: he asked the wrong person for directions. That man took advantage of the situation and it ended tragically.

I’d rather not recount all of the details. You can read them for yourself.

As a parent raising children in an urban area, I am already well-aware of the perceived dangers of city life. I know that many of my peers, with children of the same age, think I’m nuts for planting our family here. And I will admit that I sometimes question this decision, as well, counting the cost of all the extra work my husband I and I have to do to keep our family safe and healthy in the city.

But the more time I spend here (we’ve lived in Over-the-Rhine for over three years now and I worked here for the three years before then), the more I am convinced that although there are certain dangers inherent to urban life, many of the dangers inherent to childhood transcend location. No matter where you plant your family, you run the risk of encountering danger. The likelihood of my children being abducted, breaking an arm, drowning in a neighbor’s pool, or getting hit by a car does not significantly decrease the further we are from the city. In fact, depending on where you live, some dangers will increase while others decrease.

On the issue of child abductions, some basic statistics:

• Family members account for the majority of these reported cases (82 percent)
• Non-family abductions account for 12,000 of these reported cases (18 percent)
• Of non-family abductions, 37 percent are by a stranger

Link: http://kidsfightingchance.com/stats.php

In more tangible terms, for every 100 children abducted, 82 are taken by a family member. 18 are taken by a non-family member. And, of those 18, only 6-7 of them are taken by a stranger. Call me crazy, but this says to me that, if your child is ever the victim of abduction, there is 93% chance they are abducted by someone you already know. And, the people you know will be the people you know no matter where you live.

And this is just one example.

As an aside, consider this: as soon as summer hits, the news is littered with tragic stories of children drowning in a neighbor’s pool. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a single property within two miles of my home that has a backyard pool. And the two public pools within those two miles are surrounded by high security fences and manned by lifeguards when open for business. So, this childhood danger is actually greatly reduced by living in the city.

The most tragic thing about the boy killed in Brooklyn was not that he was abducted, or that he was killed, or that it happened only blocks away from his intended meeting place. The most tragic thing for me, as a parent, is knowing that his parents did everything right and it happened anyway.

The family lived in an insular Orthodox Jewish community, a community where you’d assume residents were safe and adults were trustworthy. The boy was a month shy of 9 years old and had been begging his parents to allow him to walk home from summer camp alone. This was the first time they’d allowed it and they even walked the route with him, to insure he knew exactly where to go. Somehow, he got lost anyway. And when he stopped to ask for directions, the man he asked happened to be the one person within who knows how many miles who would take advantage of the situation.

I think about my hometown, in the SW suburbs of Chicago. And I think about the twelve or so blocks between my childhood home and my middle school. I think about the millions of times I must have walked that mile when I was eleven years old. And I think about how “safe” it seemed, even though it involved crossing multiple lanes of traffic in a pedestrian un-friendly area.

And then I think about my friend Karen’s home, in Blue Island, IL, which was a far cry from my suburban neighborhood only seven miles away. And I think about riding our bikes around her neighborhood when we were probably no older than ten years old. I think about the first drug deal I ever witnessed. And I think about the stories she told. And I think about the first time I drove through Blue Island as an adult and thought: I can’t believe her parents let us wander around this neighborhood alone!

But now I think I understand.

I think about my neighborhood. I think about the ten blocks between my home and the public library and I think: My son already knows this route and he’s not even three years old. Of course, by the time he’s ten years old, I would assume he’s competent to take this walk alone, even if I wouldn't yet allow it at that point.

The truth is, a good parent knows their child well enough to know when they are ready to “face the world alone.” And the best they can do is trust that they’ve given their child every tool necessary to take care of themselves on that walk down the block, then the walk around the corner, then eventually the walk down to the library. And when something goes wrong, if something goes wrong, chances are that it was nothing the parents could have foreseen and that they did everything right.

This is why it’s tragic when something terrible happens to a child. Regardless of what normal, natural, everyday thing they were doing when the tragedy happened, there is only so much we can do to protect them. And it doesn’t matter where they live. At a certain point, we need to allow them the freedom to take steps out the door alone.

I fear for my son’s life at least a dozen times a day. And my daughter, who is still about three weeks away from being born, is already stressing me out. But I know that, as they grow, the best thing I can do is provide the tools they’ll need to navigate this city without me. And the tools they’ll need here are different than the tools they’d need if we lived in the suburbs, but they are no more or less important. And my neighborhood is no more or less “safe.” It’s just different. The dangers are different. The people are different. The streets and houses and stores are different. And my children will be different because of it. (Heck, that’s part of the reason we’re here.)

The sentiment spoken at the boy’s funeral is perfect for the situation:

“He got lost, he got lost,” he said... “There’s nothing to say, he got lost. God wanted it.”

As a person of faith myself, I can understand what he means. For others, it’s a difficult thing to take in. But the sentiment is something we can all appreciate because it’s true: when something like this happens, there is often a simple explanation for how it happened. In this case, “he got lost.” I’ve been lost before. And you probably have, too. And it happens in the city and in the suburbs and on the hiking trail and in a foreign city. And sometimes you stop to ask the wrong person for directions and you end up more lost than you were before. Or sometimes it ends in tragedy.

Often times, there's simply nothing you should have done differently.

I hope that little boy's parents know that.

Just Your Typical CityKin

Our friend and neighbor over at CityKin just posted a great summary of a typical weekend for a family living in downtown Cincinnati.

Visit it here and then scroll through the rest of his blog for proof that the city really is a great place to live as a family.

On a personal note: It was great to finally meet this neighbors in person while walking home from dinner Friday night. (I met Mrs. CityKin briefly, a year ago, when I answered their providential call on the blog for someone interested in taking their used cloth diapers.) And many thanks to CityKin's wonderful children who sent my son home with two glow-in-the-dark bracelets when we left. He wore them to bed that night and I could see them still glowing early in the morning.

Ahh... the beauty of the pedestrian life and the friends you meet along the way...

Urban Revitalization

A few weeks ago, I represented my organization by sitting on a panel for a Give Back Cincinnati "Sounding Session." The topic was urban revitalization. I was supposed to be representing the nonprofit perspective on what it takes to revitalize a community, what stands in the way, and how an individual can help the cause in their community. I may have had a few things to say as a "professional," but I actually walked away with more personal reflection than anything else. In fact, I've been thinking about the topic ever since.

A few thoughts on the issue:

- One of the biggest deterrents to urban revitalization is both the transient nature of many would-be urban dwellers and a city's neglect of amenities that would encourage long-term commitment from residents. Because of the rapid life changes that many residents will go through (college graduation, first jobs, marriage, first child, third child, retirement, etc.), they feel the need to move to a different neighborhood every five years to accommodate those changes. Whether it is the sheer absence of single-family residences, a lack of greenspace and natural areas, parking issues, or safety concerns, most families would not consider living in the same location where they rented their first college apartment. And most residents are simply unwilling to commit to staying put in a community where they are not certain they will be comfortable in 25 years. I believe that the issue here is as much imagined as it is realistic, which leads me to my next point...

- Perceived issues are sometimes more a deterrent than real issues. For example, people may believe it's impractical to live in downtown Cincinnati because "there is no place to buy groceries," but they are wrong in their assumption. And even if they were correct, it would be no more difficult to drive from their downtown home to the nearest large grocery store than it would be for them to drive from their Mason home to the nearest grocery store. In fact, it might be nearer to them and take less time. Another example is the popular notion of how "terrible" the schools are. Not only is this an improper assumption, but it is irrelevant given that in Cincinnati parents can send their children to the public school of their choice, anywhere in the city. All it takes is some ingenuity and effort on the part of the parents and their children can have the same quality education as a child who lives next door to Fairview German School or Walnut Hills High School. (And don't even get me started on the ridiculous notion that once a couple decides to have a child, it is time for them to move to a new subdivision on the outskirts of town, where all the families live. UGH!)

- Poor housing and real estate stock is a serious deterrent to revitalization. There is often a shortage of single-family homes in urban areas and, even where there are homes, parking is an issue. In addition, most parents want a backyard for their children and would even settle for a small, fenced courtyard if given the option. But, concrete reigns supreme instead. In many lower-income areas, beautiful single-family residences have been chopped into poorly-maintained and tastelessly-renovated multi-family buildings (Cincinnati's Avondale neighborhood is a prime example of this). In addition, many vacant buildings cannot be developed because they are owned by absentee landlords who are either slumlords or speculators.

- Quality and diversity of commerce is important for the revitalization of a community. One common theme that I heard at the Sounding Session was that residents and visitors want to see and support businesses that can only be found there, in that community. Sometimes we call these "Mom and Pop" businesses and they are sometimes the best thing drawing people and money to an area. I will add to this, though, that the mere presence of these businesses is not enough. Residents must continue to support them financially on a regular basis. (See the 3/50 Project website for more a comprehensive writing on this issue.)

- No one person, family, or business can revitalize a community alone. In order for a community to experience real renewal, it must be a cooperative task between neighbors, friends, and organizations. In my exercises in community organizing for work, I have seen that the issue of cooperation (or lack-there-off) can really make or break a community. First, those in control of community resources (money, real estate, connections, etc.) must consider the shared vision of those in the entire community or either watch their single vision die or become an unwelcome guest. Now, add to this every person's need for deep and authentic relationships. This makes it simply impossible for one entity to accomplish anything great alone, unless they have the support of those around them. I have all sorts of crazy ideas related to this issue, but I won't go into it now.


All in all, this entire issue of "revitalization" is huge and impossible to conquer in one conversation or one blog post. In fact, most people who dedicate their lives to seeing their community revitalized may not witness the fruits of their effort in their lifetime. This is, indeed, big work. And this issue quickly becomes a battle of ideologies, ethics, culture, and politics, which so often ends the conversation entirely.

Suffice to say this (for now):

I have committed myself to never simply residing in my community.
If I am not somehow benefiting it--creating something, bringing something new to life (or bringing something dead back to life), making it safer or stronger, or more beautiful, then I am a waste of space and have surrendered my rights as a resident of the community.



So, I suppose this is where the real conversation begins:

What are you doing to bring your community to life?

Local Issues: Raising Kids in a Lead-Contaminated City

According to a news article from 29 Dec, 2009:

Ninety-three percent of the city's housing stock was built before 1979, before lead was banned from paint. If the paint is intact, it does not pose a problem. However, when the paint chips and peels due to poor maintenance, dangerous toxins are exposed. Young children are particular susceptible because they touch the floor and windowsills, ingesting the poison, which can cause developmental and cognitive delays. (Read the complete article here.)

My husband and I live in a loft apartment in Cincinnati's historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in a building that was once a brewery. In many ways, the apartment is a dream: we have 15ft. ceilings, concrete floors, over 2000 sq/ft of open living space, and pay pennies per square foot compared to other folks in our city. In other ways, though, this apartment is a nightmare: it's impossible to properly heat, the landlord neglects normal maintenance issues in the units and the building, and my husband has had to invest his own time and energy into the most basic of improvements on our place. It's a trade-off. We get a ton of space for cheap, but we have to work to make it comfortable.

When our son was born, we considered leaving, but also made a plan for the work we'd need to do on our apartment if we stayed. Insulating the back of the apartment and building bedrooms in that section, closing/insulating the ceiling, painting the floor, and rebuilding the bathroom were all on the list. Frankly, the past year has gone by too quickly and we've been too tired to do all that work ourselves (not to mention unwilling to foot the bill).

The one issue, though, that keeps haunting us is the open ceiling, which is basically just the floorboards of the unit above us. Not only does it mean there is no sound barrier between us and our neighbors, but that everything from water spilt on the floor above to the everyday dust from walking has the potential to end up in our apartment. Needless to say, keeping our floor clean is like conquering Goliath. As soon as our son started crawling, the open ceiling and the dust the results became our primary concern. This brings me back to the issue of lead contamination.

At my son's nine-month doctor's visit, he was subject to a routine blood test to check for lead contamination in his blood. As any mother would be, I was happy to comply and, as any mother living in the City of Cincinnati should be, I was anxious to hear the results. Knowing that my apartment is A) built long before 1979 and B) owned by a man who is not particularly interested in making improvements left me concerned that not only the paint on our walls but also the everyday dust on the floor could be poison for my son.

A month later, I got a very calm and courteous voicemail message from a nurse named Donna:

"Ms McEwan, I'm calling about the lead test results for your son. First of all, I would like you to know that he is NOT lead poisoned, but the test did show signs of lead contamination in his blood and I'd like to speak with you about it."

The next week involved a lot of phone calls, internet searches, panicky floor cleanings and "what if" conversations with my husband until we were able to have our home visit from the nurse and discuss the issue of lead in general and our apartment and baby specifically.

To make a long story short, my son's lead contamination level at the time of the test was 8.3 migrograms per decileter of blood. A level of 10 is considered "poisoned," and the City can do very little to help us unless my son has been poisoned (i.e. enforcing lead abatement laws with my landlord, inspecting my apartment to pinpoint the contamination). Thanks to the help of the nurse who visited us and took a sample, we know that the paint on our walls is not lead paint and so we can assume the paint dust falling from the ceiling is not contaminated either (since they appear to be a result of the same paint job). Because that was our assumed source of contamination, we're totally stumped as to how our son could have ingested or inhaled the lead.

Some thoughts:

- The nurse told us that all the rehab work being done in OTR could be producing lead dust to such an extent that my son could have inhaled it. Could this have happened just walking up and down Vine St. in the past few months?

- I would assume our building has lead pipes somewhere down below. Although the pipes "should not" produce lead-contaminated water, what if they do? We're going to purchase a cheap (and often unreliable) lead test to see.

- We've been very careful about the toys we've purchased for our son--where they're made, what they're made of, etc. But we've let some toys slip in from friends and family members. What if my son ingested lead from a cheap, foreign-made toy? We're seriously considering getting rid of all of them, just in case.

- When asked to compare the severity of my son's 8.3 lead level, the nurse said that a child can ingest one single lead-contaminated paint chip and their blood be poisoned to a level 20. So, there's a chance that my son's lead exposure was a one-time fluke that will soon be a memory.


So, until we get connected with the Lead Clinic at Children's Hospital so our son can be watched closely for further exposure, my husband and I are playing detective to find the source and taking extra precautions to get our baby's blood healthy (via extra iron and calcium and lots of hand-washing).

I'm curious if any other folks out there have had experience with lead abatement in your buildings or a lead scare with your own children.
Thoughts?
Ideas about the source?

Another point of interest: There are all sorts of theories and rumors around the environmental health world that suggest lead poisoning (and not poor parenting, education, or culture) as the primary explanation for the high presence developmental delays, ADD, and behavioral problems in poor urban youth. This theory holds weight, I believe, if you consider that many families in cities live in rental properties and not family-owned homes, do not have the financial means to abate their own living spaces, and may not have the education to know the dangers of lead and how to prevent lead poisoning in children.

For further information about lead poisoning, visit the Children's Hospital website or read this Wikipedia article.

About Cincinnati and how I ended up here.

According to the source of all human knowledge (Wikipedia):

Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. The municipality is located north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border. The population within city limits was 333,336 in 2008, making it the state's third largest city. In 2008, the Cincinnati Metropolitan Area had a population of 2,155,137 making it the largest MSA in Ohio, and the 24th most populous in the United States. Residents of Cincinnati are called Cincinnatians.

Cincinnati is considered to have been the first American boomtown in the heart of the country in the early nineteenth century to rival the larger coastal cities in size and wealth. As the first major inland city in the country, it is sometimes thought of as the first purely American city, lacking the heavy European influence that was present on the east coast. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, Cincinnati's growth had slowed considerably, and the city was surpassed in population by many other inland cities...

Cincinnati is also known for having one of the larger collections of nineteenth-century Italianate architecture in the U.S., primarily concentrated just north of Downtown in an area known as Over-the-Rhine. Over-the-Rhine is one of the largest historic districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Read the full article here.

How did I end up Cincinnati?

I grew up in the near southwest suburbs of Chicago, in a small city called Palos Heights. I am a bonafide Midwesterner, with the first eighteen years of my life contained within the southern half of the Chicagoland area, and summers spent between our family's small lake cottage in southwestern Michigan and a camp in the northwoods of Wisconsin. Until I was about sixteen years old and allowed brief day trips downtown with my brothers or friends, my experience of real urban life was limited to school field trips, visits with friends who lived nearer to the city, and the occasional family drive downtown.

I attended college at a small university in Elgin, IL, a city 40 miles west of Chicago and ten times the size of my hometown. Elgin is not exactly a booming metropolis, but it's a city nonetheless. With it's official population hovering around 100,000, off the record are the (I'm guessing) thousands of illegal immigrants and hundreds of homeless that live there. The city, at the time I lived there, was almost a Little Mexico, with just as many signs in Spanish as there are were English, and Cinco de Mayo was a hell of a party in town.

The summer before our senior year of college, two friends and I moved into a small loft on Chicago St. My bedroom was extremely cold in the winter, hot in the summer, and we could hear everything our downstairs neighbor did (and smell every drug he smoked). We were on the third floor, two stories above a tattoo shop, nextdoor to the YWCA, two doors from the public parking garage (where we parked), and a few blocks from the public library. Our favorite bar--The Gasthaus--was three blocks away, my bank was on the corner, Akina's was a few blocks away if we wanted Thai food, and so was Al's Cafe (for sandwiches and milkshakes). We walked down to Cafe Magdelina for wine and creme brulee, and I rode my bike to the grocery store (where half the signs were in Spanish) for groceries. I bought fresh cookies at one of the local Mexican bakeries and I shopped for gifts at Keeney's--the old-school sporting goods store with a treasure trove of vintage goods in the basement. I worked at a local coffee shop and rode my bike to summer classes. I took the train--from the station on the river--to Chicago.

Elgin may not be a booming metropolis, but I loved it there.
After growing up in a neighborhood where the more urban areas 10 miles away were considered "dangerous," Elgin liberated me of my suburban bias. I experienced what much of the rest of the world experiences--loud streets, street parking, public transportation, homeless neighbors, etc.

In the summer of 2005, in an effort to sustain a oft-wavering relationship (that ultimately failed), I moved to Cincinnati. My first apartment was a tiny, 2-room, studio in the back of a house. In the unit next door lived another local musician. I had a separate entrance with a little patio and a plum tree outside my window. I slept on a loft built into the corner of the living room, and survived the misery of my first hot, humid Cincinnati summer without A/C. The apartment was in the Northside neighborhood of the city and I lived a block off of the main street, where I could find just about anything I needed--veggies, beer, ice cream, breakfast, an indie flick, records, or vintage clothes. I think the only thing Northside doesn't have is a full-service grocery store, but one of the best ones in the city is only a 5 minute drive away.

After a year in Northside, I moved to Norwood to live with some friends in the same neighborhood as our church community. I lived there--without the amenities of a hip, urban life but surrounded by the same urban blight--for almost two years.

Then I got myself married and moved to Over-the-Rhine.

My husband and I are now almost a year and a half into our marriage and almost 8 months into parenthood. We rent a large loft apartment north of Liberty St., in a part of OTR that hasn't yet been gifted with the development that our neighbors below Liberty have. In the next year, we hope to purchase our first house. For now, we invest a lot of time and energy in improving our apartment in whatever ways we can, for as little as we can, so that the hostility of the neighborhood doesn't seep into our home.

The city is a difficult place to live.
I am the first to admit this.

My husband and I sometimes dream of a rural homestead, a place where our family can have some privacy, peace & quiet, and be surrounding by natural spaces instead of concrete. And we often admit to each other that the suburbs have a certain charm--clean sidewalks, backyards, and friendly neighbors. But we have, at least for the time being, committed to living as near downtown as possible. We believe that the city needs families and that families need each other, so we've put ourselves in a position to be a part of a renaissance that calls families back to our urban core. I can't guarantee how long our time in Cincinnati will last, but for the time I'm here, I have chosen to dive head-first into my new hometown.

I want to share the wonderful things I've discovered about my city and the life that cities in general offer. Maybe I can paint a picture of city living the way it's supposed to be--vibrant, creative, friendly, and POSSIBLE--so that someday, I can call you my neighbor.

Thanks for reading!