Not long ago, my wife and I spent a weekend together without any of our three children. This was the first time we had been alone for more than a few hours since our oldest was born four years ago.
What did we do on our short vacation? My wife read the first hundred or so pages of Tom Jones, a book she has been meaning to read for ages. There was takeout and a nice long walk along the shore of Lake Michigan. Football was watched. But mostly? We slept, without worrying for once about whether a shrill voice might awaken us between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. to demand a glass of water ("No，not that one，the Tinkerbell cup!''). We were too relaxed to do anything else.
As parents, we might tell other people that given the chance for even a short child-free break we would love to do some reading or take in a concert. This is not true. The truth is that what most of us really want is a chance not to think about how well we are using our time.
By admitting this，I realize the myth (错误的看法) of the brain-dead parents. Being brain-dead is what a parent like me looks forward to rather than something to be accused of. The novelist Lucy Ellmann recently provided a convenient summary in an interview：
You watch people get pregnant and know they'll be emotionally and intellectually absent for 20 years. Thought, knowledge, adult conversation, and vital political action are all put on hold. With a kiddo, you become a human koala while your old friends continue to have "interests". They do art and literature and science, you see, not diapers (尿不湿）.
When you become responsible for the life of a very small person, nothing is more important than shouldering that responsibility. In that sense, parenting is a chance to reconsider the value of an extra 20 minutes in bed or a short phone conversation with an old friend. As to my wife and me, we spent the weekend eating steamed dumplings and drinking wine until we fell asleep.
We value the all-too-rare experience of being brain-dead.
