When a Little Head on Your Lap Has Been Replaced with Your Head in a Laptop

For days overripe with sibling squabbles, whining discontent, and a strung-out mother, there are ways of escape.  Susanna Wesley, mother of 19 children including Charles & John, would sit in her kitchen and throw her apron over her head.  This was her posture of prayer and the children knew to leave her be.

I have a lovely window seat, where I have placed a prayer journal, a Bible, meditative books, and a pen.  I'm supposed to go there when I need to escape.  The children know that although it is in the main living area, it is a quiet place, for anyone who needs it.  


But where do I usually escape to instead?  My laptop.  E-mail, Facebook, blogsites, Amazon.  A colorful, interactive, addictive distraction.  I have no memories of my mother sitting in front of a computer, but I wonder if this will be a strong memory of my own kids. 

A mom whose face is set aglow by monitor light. 
       The faint click of the keyboard. 
                 Her rapt attention to a glass rectangle,
                     where they seem to temporarily fade into the               
                                                                                   background.  

This is not the picture I want to model, let alone imprint on their memories; not a legacy I want to pass on to them.

Can I change?  Can I learn to gravitate to the window seat instead of the laptop?  Can I learn the art of being present, so the temptation to escape is not so strong? 

Can I throw the apron over my head, or will I end up looking like this...

Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative : not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.  ~Lewis Mumford