one of those horrible moms

Big City, Small Town

2010-07-20T21:09:00.001-05:00

About a year ago I decided to treat myself to lunch at Naidre's--a fabulous coffee shop that is not in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. I'd been there a handful of times over the past couple of years since it's not far from my kids' school, but not enough to be known by the people working there. I was just another stranger heading in for a bite.

It was one of the first great springy days of the year and so I'd grabbed a lighter jacket than the wintry one I'd been slogging around in for months. Switching coats, bags, or tampering with anything for that matter is a dangerous thing for me and even though I'm forty-one, I refuse to remember how forgetful I am. I stuff money in coat pockets, or maybe a credit card'll end up there if I've pumped gas recently and have had to separate one out from my wallet for a period of time longer than just a regular swipe. And then of course I do something silly like wear a raincoat, or no coat, or decide at the last minute to carry a different bag than my regular one...and I have that terrible moment where I realize I have no money too late.

That's what happened at Naidre's that day. I ordered a big cup of Rosy Earl Grey tea with milk, and some exciting sandwich. And as they passed the goods to me I dug around in my pockets and soon realized I was completely penniless. I was flooded with the familiar feeling of having failed at being a grownup, yet again. **The familiar feeling of failure is my new favorite concept, poached from the new novel Four Wives, by Wendy Walker where it's mentioned in a lovely passage about a woman who nurses her fussy child in the middle of the night, simultaneously calming him down AND destroying all of her sleep-training efforts. I've found this ffof applies to many aspects of my life.

'I have no money,' I announced, with startled unhappy eyes. There was half of an uncomfortable moment, and then I ventured 'could I bring you the money later today?'

While I don't try this kind of thing often, I'm always surprised when perfect strangers trust me. I have this wide open honest midwestern face that seems to invite conversation from all kinds of people in all kinds of places, but I also tend to dress wayyy down and often feel like retailers think I'm going to shoplift. This paranoia, no doubt, stems from my early days in high-end retail. On days off (which were never weekend days) I'd refuse to put any effort into my appearance and I'd do my own shopping. I always thought it ironic that nervous eyes that would flicker at me as I'd pad around a store in my oversized sweater and birkenstocks with socks, since only the day before I was the fanciest girl in the world personal shopping with people like Phyllis George and the Sultan of Brunei. So used to being considered a shoplifter am I that these little moments of trust--this counter girl in one of the biggest cities in the world trusts that I'll bring her the $7 I owe her!--shock me. Still, I threw it out there as a possibility. Hoping that open honest face would trump slovenly con-lady appearance.

Sure enough the woman shrugged and said 'yeah okay, that'd be fine.'

'Really?' I nearly ruined the moment, starting to feel even more like a loser. Of course I was good for it, I'd bring the money later, I'd make a special trip from home to do it, etc. But this just seemed so much to ask.

'Sure, no problem' she said, pushing my food towards me. 'Enjoy.'

And enjoy I did. Nothing like a bit of reading material, some hot tea, and a good sandwich. I took my time, soaking up the experience. An hour later I pushed away from the table, bussed my own stuff, and went to leave.

'Thanks,' I said, approaching the counter on my way out. 'I'll be back later, what time do you close?'

'Oh!' she said, looking confused. 'Didn't anyone tell you? The lady behind you in line paid for you.'

'Someone paid for me?' I asked, searching the room, trying to place which 'lady' might have done this.

'Yeah, she heard you saying you didn't have your money and she told me she wanted to pay for you, said she tried to do a good deed every day. But she left already.'

'She...' I started, craning my neck to the sidewalk in front, still thinking I could find her somewhere. This wasn't computing. Try as I might I couldn't even remember anyone being in line after me. I settled on a simple 'wow.'

The counter lady winked at me, appreciating my befuddlement. 'Pay it forward,' she suggested, smiling.

I left Naidre's feeling light as air. Smiling giddily at the next thousand strangers I saw might not have been the right way to pay it forward but I couldn't help myself. The glow of this stranger's good deed stayed with me all afternoon, all week, and can still rise up and make me happy whenever I remember to remember it.

Later that day I tried to tell the story to my husband, but found that no actual telling could recapture the shiny specialness of the feeling of finding out that someone who didn't know me had decided to make my day (and it didn't help that there was a bit of 'you forgot your money?' incredulousness from him which kind of ruins all the good feeling of the story). Of all the choices that woman had to make in that moment--judge me, hate me, ignore me, she chose to settle my tab for me. Anonymously. Ignoring me would have been anonymous too.

Another small town story from big city Brooklyn. Of course a story like this could happen anywhere. `But the fact that things like this do happen here is something I love. I love this place.

They Know Movie Stars

2010-07-19T21:06:00.000-05:00

Sasha swivels around in her seat, folds her arms high on her chest, lowers her chin and her eyes well up with tears. 'They're hurting my feelings,' she sniffs. The two blondes at her table look up at me with wide eyes. Still engrossed in their paintings and in their conversation, they can see that Sasha's troubled, but they don't understand why.

'How are they hurting your feelings?' I ask.

'They (sniff) they're talking about how they know movie stars. And I (sniff)--I don't know any movie stars.' Her face is screwed up now and red. The tears fall off her cheeks onto her plaid skirt.

I look at the other two, also in their plaid uniforms. Not sure if there was indeed any taunting, or if their innocent chatter about the movie stars they know was sufficient to send Sasha over the edge. She's prone to needing little bits of extra attention.

The other day Carrie got something in her eye and I knelt down and focussed on her intently and encouraged her to blink, and the next thing I knew the 'something in the eye' disease had become contagious, and four girls surrounded me pointing and blinking. Sasha took one look at the group and approached as well. 'Umm, Miss Morgan?' she said, in a grave, raspy voice. 'I think I should go to the nurse because I just threw up three times in my mouth and swallowed it.'

'Fine with me. Go.'

The two blonde movie-star knowers happen to wear glasses. Gigi's are rimmed in pink, and Trixie's aren't. Both girls squinted up at me, smiling uncertainly. Not sure what they'd done wrong.

'Well,' I started, looking at Sasha who was clearly assuming I'd defend her against this celebrity onslaught, 'you know, movie stars are just regular people--boring old people who just happen to have jobs that make them famous. It's really no big deal.'

'Yeah,' Gigi shrugged, setting her paintbrush down to push her glasses further up her nose. 'And they're just very good friends of mine who are in lots of movies, that's all.'

'See?' Sasha complained, with an accompanying sob. 'She's hurting my feelings again.'

Trixie looked at me, confused. 'But we didn't know it was hurting her feelings, we were just talking about all the movie stars we know. We can't help it that we know them.'

'See?' Sasha begged.

I tamped down the urge to ignore Sasha's complaints. How much fun it would be to pull up a stool and find out which movie stars these girls were talking about!

One youngster's mom knew Jackson Pollack, one is a direct descendant of Walt Disney ('Zoe's the whole reason we even have Mickey Mouse' is the skewed, but funny logic I've overheard since Zoe's been on the planet for about five and a half years), one has a mom who's on Project Runway. One girl's dad is good friends with Susan Sarandon--who to these little girls is just the voice of the evil witch in Enchanted. Regular, boring, old people. I reminded myself. But of course, what a blast it would be to know who these little girls were rubbing their little shoulders with.

'Can't you make them stop?' Sasha pleaded, snapping me out of my daydream.

'Girls, Sasha's feeling a little bit sensitive now, so do you think you could just change the subject?' I asked, soberly.

'Sure!' the girls said, gaily. I'm certain they were glowing inside from knowing their movie stars. When I was fourteen I went to New York City and saw Robby Benson in The Pirates of Penzance on Broadway. That I'd been in the same room as Robby Benson of Ice Castles and Death Be Not Proud fame (the desperate teenage girl kind of fame) felt really wonderful and I'm sure I felt important when I talked about it back in my midwestern high school.

I'm guessing these girls' degrees of separation from their own movie stars didn't involve complete anonymity and two thousand other audience members. Of course it would be fun to know who they know, but of course it doesn't really matter who they know. Of course I did the right thing and never asked.

The tableful of uniformed first graders settled back to their art projects. Sasha settled back in to her painting, and eventually decided she needed to visit the nurse again.

Just a little itty bit of a day in the life of the Upper West Side private school where I've been teaching this year.

Morals of These Stories

2010-07-17T21:04:00.000-05:00

I was driving my daughter to camp this morning and at one point in our journey we came across a barrier of orange cones and a big sign that threatened 'Road Closed, Local and Emergency Traffic Only' and I took one look at the gridlock being caused by all the people obeying the sign and I thought to myself, simultaneously, 'her camp's local,' (it wasn't really) and 'this is an emergency, we're running a few minutes late.' And without feeling too guilty I drove right past the sign and made our way to camp. We didn't encounter anything that looked like construction or anything else, and glided smoothly, unobstructed, all the way there.

Years ago I had to go pick up W-something forms for our babysitter from the IRS agency. Either the place was as crowded as the DMV OR at that time it was combined with the DMV. I don't really remember which of these is true, but the basic idea is that it was just a disaster of a government agency. I was 'triaged' immediately by someone who learned that I just needed to pick up a form, and I was sent to some very specific line and given a very high number. I couldn't believe that I was supposed to wait for my number to be called. Around me people sat with sour faces, my memory is that there were chickens clucking and children screaming, but again that might be embellishment. You get the idea though. After a few minutes I did the math--they were on number 39 when I got here and I have number 187 and it's taken seven minutes to get to number 41--and realized that it would never be my turn. I asked a few official people if I really had to do all this waiting just to get a form, and they all nodded grimly. A few more minutes passed and then number 42 was called, pause, repeated, and I realized I could be in front of the open teller in seconds. I lept to the counter, confessed that I was not number 42, and said 'I just need this one form.' The woman rolled her eyes, reached behind her, pulled one down from the shelf, and handed it to me. I left the building fifteen minutes after I arrived, and strolled out past hundreds of downtrodden people on my way out, with my crisp W-whatever in my hand.

Hooray, right? In each case I broke the rules and got exactly what I needed, as scores of other people, sheep-like obeyers, suffered the consequences of their obedience.

Good for me, right? Wrong.

These moments make me ill. I hate it. Leaping to open tellers, disobeying stern traffic signs, these things do not come naturally to me. But I live in New York--the land of 'HONK! the red light's taking too long, it MUST be broken! HONK, just drive through it--I tell you, it MUST be broken, HONK!' and I've just kind of adapted. So all I'm thinking as I waltz out of the IRS agency with my form in hand is 'crap, does this mean I have to be this pushy every time I need something from the IRS?' And when I sailed past the orange barrier and found nothing but open road and no traffic I thought 'crap, does this mean I have to consider ignoring every construction sign?'

In each case I got what I wanted, I got where I wanted to be, and I got these things quickly. But not without some shame on my part and yet another lesson learned: self-righteousness and aggression really pay off sometimes.

And even though I feel quite triumphant in these moments...I don't love the morals of these stories.

Easy Boy

2010-07-16T21:02:00.000-05:00

The other day my neighbor sat on my stoop and we watched some of the younger kids playing on the block. Her son was screaming and racing around. He's five and is an especially rambunctious youngster with loud opinions and an at-rest stance (one arm up in front of his head with a clenched fist. the other fist at his waist, elbow pointing sharply out behind him) that makes him seem always prepared for battle.

When does he grow out of this phase? she asked me, pleadingly. When will he settle down like your son? She was referring to my nine year old. My younger kids are girls, seven and four.

I never know how to answer this. I'm asked it a lot. I think it can be traced to how the wave of gentrification has spread out over this corner of Brooklyn. We couldn't afford a nice brownstone in Fort Greene ten years ago like many of our counterparts could, but we could afford to take a chance on a crappy fixer-upper here in Clinton Hill. Several years later Fort Greene's prices were astronomical and all those thirty-year old professionals bursting with their first child bought up places in Clinton Hill. So while my son has a lot of peers about seven blocks away, there aren't many kids his age nearby. And among these parents of younger kids, he stands out as being this older, slightly mysterious kid. He's into baseball, he's into Star Wars, he's into whatever blockbuster movie's at the theater, he can talk to grown-ups but unless he's talking about one of the aforementioned subjects, he'd really rather not.

On the whole he's an incredibly mellow chill kid. So all these parents of younger boys ask me this question all the time: When will my son get to be all relaxed like yours?

Of course I have no crystal ball, but I do have the dark secret that my boy was never like their kid. I remember one time when he did this little destructo thing at a Barnes and Noble--pulling all the board books off the shelf to watch them kind of cascade down. But that's the only thing I remember. He was two. One other time (at a Barnes and Noble, I'm wondering if there's a pattern here), he cried and wouldn't share a train with a stranger-boy at the train table. He was two and a half. That's it. One destructive moment, one major unkindness. But that's really it. He's just a sweet gentle boy.

Full disclosure: My four-year old daughter has proven destructive and unkind enough for all of us. I've caught wind that the PreK she's entering has grouped the classes around HER powerful personality. In some ways, after watching my older two kids getting slotted in as space filler around some of the more out-there members of their grades, I do feel like I'm finally getting my money's worth, even though it's a public school.

But I'm not asked about her. I'm asked about him. Here's how I hear the question: When will my little monster turn into your amazing son? Another way is this: When did YOUR easy boy STOP being a terrible little kid? And I'm back to not knowing how to answer.

I usually just shrug and say 'well he was always pretty mellow,' I pull out the two examples that I mentioned above to show some 'mother-of-a-wild-boy' solidarity. But it's not too convincing.

Sorry folks, he's just a great kid. Good luck with your little nightmare.

The Blogger on my Shoulder

2010-07-15T21:00:00.000-05:00

I've always been quick to make connections. Every single thing that happens to me, everything I notice, every news bit I hear sparks a swirl of ideas in my head about things in my own life, my kids, my suspicions about how the world works. Everything resonates.

Wishing my daughter wouldn't play in a puddle on the way home from school, I catch myself taking a half-step back and wondering why I'm so opposed to it. Is it really too much trouble to have her come home with wet feet? Am I really 'the mom who doesn't have the energy' to deal with several extra minutes of clean-up in the wake of my child having what might possibly be considered the single most perfect kid moment possible? The sheer enjoyment of splashing in a puddle on a wet sidewalk on the way home from school? Am I really trading in on the preciousness of her fleeting childhood for the preciousness of an easy first few minutes in my house? What does this say about me? What does this mean for her? What will it mean for her children somewhere down the road?

All that from one little moment on a sidewalk with a puddle.

How much fun that is when I have the energy to capture it in a little essay!

How satisfying it is to throw it up on a blog and get 'wow you really nailed it/I never thought if it that way!' comments! Or better yet, 'you describe what goes on in my mind so well, thanks for putting your words to my thoughts.'

What a ball and chain it feels like when I hit these patches where I don't feel like doing anything about these things in my head!

Sometimes I just want that 'hey I'm offended that they're showing a male enhancement ad during a Mets game on tv because my boy's nine and I have to explain so much to him and I don't really understand what male enhancement is (is it like Viagra? How come they're driving race cars?) and how am I going to explain it to him?' voice to disappear. Let me just observe that something's going on that I don't appreciate, and then let me move on without feeling compelled to write it down.

I know no one's asking for any of this from me. I also know that there are times I know that I need to write things down in order to stay sane, and sometimes I learn something just by virtue of having spent a few minutes getting it out in paper. But then sometimes, every now and then, I just want a puddle to be a puddle, and an ad to be an ad.

And for some odd reason, I had the urge to write this down today.

No Children

2010-07-13T20:55:00.001-05:00

Years ago when I was pregnant for the first time, a new father colleague said to me, 'you'll be amazed to see how the world is really divided into two camps: those who have children, and those who don't.'

I remember noticing the tiny things at first:

The waiter who sets an open glass of liquid right in front of my toddler? No children.

The waiter who hands the liquids directly to me, or otherwise out of reach of the two year old? Children.

The waitress who'd put the hot steaming grease-bubbling pizza face pizza down right in front of my children? No children.

The waitress who waits til its not bubbling anymore to bring it to the table? Children.

It was just a slightly amusing but otherwise benign observation.

Lately I've had cause to make the same observations, but in situations that are slightly more heartbreaking. My son invited a grownup friend of the family over to watch a claymation movie that he'd made--it was about eight minutes long. The friend arrived, chatted with grownups in the kitchen for a bit, and just as the popcorn was being popped, he announced he had a headache and had to go home.
Headache and had to go home? No children.

Aspirin? Aleve? Tylenol? I offered. Knowing it would have little effect on a headache that was apparently so excruciating he couldn't just humor us all for eight (okay maybe nine, with compliments) minutes, but passive-aggressively shoving in his face anyway.

No, no...I think I just need to go lie down.

Go lie down? No children.

My son was heartbroken--and confused. Sure, he's being raised in that 'everyone gets a trophy' age, but this was really a proud accomplishment, this little product of his claymation summer camp. I certainly understand that my children are going to experience disappointment in their young lives--and I get that this is the best time for them to exercise that muscle...much better be disappointed when you're small and surrounded by loved ones who pay for you to do things than when you're older and have no one. But this just seemed cruel.

The grownup left.

My sister-in-law described a time when her own brother promised to take her son out to a movie, then cancelled mintues before. He just didn't feel like it anymore. Her son sat in the doorway, where he'd positioned himself to wait for the uncle, and wept.

Her brother? No children.

I have many childless friends who are over-the-top thoughtful and focussed on my kids. And while I have three kids of my own, I've probably made some stupid mistakes with other pals' toddlers, now that I've been out of the toddler-mindset for a few years.

This past weekend some relatives were lined up to take my daughter away for part of the weekend, to visit cousins. She was over-the-moon excited. On Saturday morning they called to say they'd decided to go up a day earlier, so wouldn't be able to take her. I hardly felt like I could beg them to change their minds, but my heart broke on behalf of my girl--a middle child who yearns for any form of attention that doesn't involve being lumped with her siblings. I want to scream 'don't you know how disappointed she'll be???' but I know that would be pointless. They just don't get it. They have, you guessed it, no children.

Vocabulary Lesson

2010-07-12T20:53:00.001-05:00

Hooray my son got to use a vocabulary word at dinner tonight.
'Mama, that's one of my vocabulary words!' he exclaimed, with sparkles in his eyes.

This is a kid who has not been won over by school, until lately. Learning the tricky rules of the English language actually made him cry when he was in first grade. 'That's 'ph' instead of 'f?'' he'd wail? 'Why? This is just so mean!'

When he had to come up with five every-day uses for math in second grade, he struggled. If it weren't for his obsession with Yu-gi-oh cards which have points that have to be added and subtracted regularly, and if it weren't for the fact that he used allowance money to buy those beloved cards, he probably wouldn't have been able to come up with anything. 'What's the point of math?' He'd complain.

For him, school was just another big grown-up conspiracy. There were many. Like having to dress nicely for certain occasions, having to have a bed time (when it was clear the grownups were staying up later and having fun without him), and having to sit in the back seat of the car.
But this year, in fifth grade, it's all coming together. He got to use a vocabulary word at the dinner table tonight, when we first heard that that guy gone into the Holocaust Museum shooting.

'Why would anyone want to do that?' my eight year old daughter asked.

'Probably because he's an anti-Semite,' my son answered, before adding 'that's one of our vocabulary words.'

His class has been studying the Holocaust this month, on the heels of a unit on bullying, and one on slavery, and at one point, thanks to O Ambassadors, a former child slave from Africa came to his class to speak about his experiences, and last week some Holocaust Survivors shared their stories . He's become passionate about Emmett Till, and Anne Frank. And his own class has visited the Holocaust Museum in Manhattan several times this past month.

It's exciting to see what he's learning in class start to apply to the world around him. It's just so tragic that the history he's learning has become current events.

Brung It On

2010-07-11T20:51:00.001-05:00

My otherwise perfect eight year old daughter can make me lose my mind with one word.
"I brung my shinguards."

"Sophie brung me this necklace from Africa."

"I wish I brung my money."

Can you guess what that one word is?

I should be clear. She's not getting perfect grammar from either of her parents. I don't make many written mistakes, but can be pretty lazy verbally--realizing, only after the fact, that I said 'and me' when I should have said 'and I' and vice versa, but I do know the difference, which should count for something. Something like having grown kids who speak without glaring mistakes. Brung? She's not hearing this word from us. Brung??

It probably used to be cute. Like how the fact that she didn't have the 'r' sound was adorable in kindergarten, and then less adorable in second grade. 'Brung' isn't cute anymore.
I have friends who correct every mis-speak that comes out of their children's mouths in real-time, and usually I think this is a bit over-the-top. First of all, it seems rude to correct them constantly--they have so much to figure out, and it would seem that eventually they'll just develop an ear for what is right and what isn't. And secondly, like with the writing-philosophy taught in their schools, I would hate for their little freedoms of expressions to be squelched by the fear of more so many virtual red-marks all over their stories. We've all watched bright little faces fall when faced with a barrage of nit-picky adult adjustments. It's heartbreaking.

Of course, I've found the right times to explain certain tricky language things ('a' vs. 'an,' and 'twenty-eleventeen isn't a real number'). And about a year ago I started to let her know, gently, that 'brung' isn't a word. Her response has been to get really put off by being corrected. Which is out of character for this girl who, for as long as I can remember, craved knowing all of the real rules--in part, I'm sure, so that she could correct her older, less-curious, less-exacting, brother.

But she's 'brunging' all the time. Sometimes I swear she's saying it to get a rise out of me.

I've tried to ignore it, I've tried to mention it minutes later, in private, just as an 'oh by the way' aside. Last weekend we were at a college graduation--eating eclairs on the lawn of the college President, surrounded by twenty-one year olds and their proud families, and she 'brung' it up again.

"I wish I brung my frisbee."

Something about the academicness of the whole event brought out the worst in me. A word that sounds like fingernails on chalkboard on a Brooklyn playground felt like fingernails in my brain on this campus green.

"'Brung' isn't a word and you know it! I don't EVER want to hear that word come out of your mouth again! Do you hear me?"

Instantly, I was left with the bad taste of having over-reacted. I'd pulled out a tone reserved for major sibling-bashing infractions. If you'd asked me, when I was a twenty-one year old in a graduation gown, if I'd have ever imagined using that tone in response to a minor grammatical error from an otherwise perfect eight year old daughter, I'd have said no way, I'm not going to be that kind of mom.

We stood facing each other, stunned, and then she glared at me with this glare that I'm one hundred percent sure will be a part of my daily life in three or four years. And I realized that I was powerless in the face of her 'brung.'

I comfort myself the way parents of late-potty trainers do. They tell themselves that their kids won't go off to college in diapers. I doubt she'll pull out a 'brung' in a college interview, or a job interview, or when she's being interviewed after leading her soccer team to victory in the World Cup. But for now, it's making me NUTS, and she knows it and that's the problem. It's too much power for her. And after my crazy outburst, I'm not sure I can trust my own response. It might get uglier. But what can I say? She done brung it on herself.

Biden Time

2010-07-10T20:46:00.001-05:00

this originally appeared on nycmomsblog on May 1, 2009

Yesterday morning on the Today Show, Joe Biden said that he would recommend that his own family members stay away from travelling in confined spaces, in light of the whole swine flu thing. Planes and subways, more specifically. I wonder how his friends at Amtrak are taking this?

I watched several minutes of talking heads chatter on about whether or not this was alarmist, and predict a strong message from the White House to follow--and then I grabbed my stuff and headed out to the G train.

I could hear it rumbling underneath the sidewalk as I approached the station, and made a valiant effort to catch the Brooklyn bound train, but the doors closed before I could reach it, so I made my way to the rear staircase, where I could position myself to catch the next train, no matter which direction it was headed.

I got a nice seat on the north-bound G train, and settled in with my New Yorker magazine.

I love the subway. I've invented it many times. If only there were some vehicle that could scoot along, disobeying normal traffic signals, I'd think at times, with my arm outstretched hoping to hail a cab, my brain desperate to cough up some alternative to this waiting game--which could get emotional with the addition of other people looking for cabs. Then I'd realize that this imagined vehicle wouldn't necessarily know that I was waiting on the corner of, say, Houston and 6th Avenue. So I'd decided that this invented idea could just have designated stops along different routes. I'd be happy to walk a few blocks in either direction, I'd think, looking up and down 6th Avenue. Then of course I'd realize that this magical machine already existed, and in that particular area it was the C or the E train, and I could grab it simply by walking north to West 4th street, or south to Spring.

Of course we all know the ups and downs of the subway--we've all encountered the dreaded 'sick passenger' which can be code, it seems, for 'they're scraping someone off the tracks up ahead.' We've all had trains stall, run late, and be miserably hot and crowded with unpleasantness. But for me, in my life, the ups are just so great that I remain a huge devotee. What? I can read for 45 minutes, with little interruption and someone else will get me pretty close to where I work? No parking spots, no hassle? Checking my logical mind at the door and curling up with a great magazine on the way to and from work each day is an enormous benefit. No parking spots to search for, no cab to squabble over. When I moved to New York twenty years ago the bus was gently considered to be the 'classier' of the mass transit options--picture grandmothers with fun hats above ground, angry people below. Now the bus is a catastrophe of cell-phone users, angry people shouting into cell phones, angry people angry at people using cell phones, no chance to tune out and read and the subway is full of interesting people reading interesting books.

After fifteen solid minutes of reading, I switched to the Manhattan-bound L, which requires a bit of walking underground. The L train rumbled in just in time, and was very very crowded. I reached for a pole with my left hand and made a mental note to scratch all itches with my right. Joe Biden's warning flashed through my mind as I stood shoulder to shoulder with dozens of travellers. But what was I going to do? We only have one car, and my husband had taken it to work out in Long Island.

We jostled along to Union Square where I switched to the uptown express--4 or 5, I can't remember which one. I got a seat on that one and resumed my reading.

After my appointments I took the 3 to the F to pick the kids up from school, and then we all took the G back home. Later that night I took the G to the C to the F to get to a party at the Plaza, then I took the F to the A to the G back home. I sneezed a few times and a woman glared at me, but it was just the ticklish nose type of sneezing so she needn't have worried.

Twelve subway rides in one day, might even be a record for me.

I've always been a pretty relaxed parent when it comes to disease and disasters. I'm full of fears and worries for my kids, but without fail those are all limited to the social and emotional aspects of their lives. I guess I feel like everything else is just either going to happen or not. Yes, you could accuse me of waiting too long to call the pediatrician in certain cases, but in many many others my lack of anxiety has served my family members well.

So we just wash our hands when we get home and soldier on. On the subway mostly, and in a few weeks, we fly again.

Ode to a (Borrowed) Balance Bike

2010-07-09T20:24:00.001-05:00

What a difference a balance bike makes! Last fall my three year old daughter pedaled to school every day, on a hand-me-down bike with streamers and training wheels. All of her friends still slumped down lazily in strollers (don't get me started...)--but not my girl...she was determined, energetic, and justifiably proud. Fast forward six months or so.

Now everyone was four, the weather was nice again, their little legs had gotten stronger (or their younger siblings had aged out of bjorns and needed the strollers themselves)--and all of these pals showed up at school on these little wooden balance bikes. It just didn't seem fair. She was still doing that terrible uphill pedal move necessary with training wheels--my open hand was never far from the small of her back, so I could give her the little jolts necessary to heave her over sidewalk cracks, curb cuts, patches of weeds--and all these little former slugs were on these lightning quick bikes, flashing by, coasting, having a ball.

I'm ashamed to admit that pick-up became a very emotional time for both of us. She'd pedal, hunched over her handlebars, crying, while teems of children swooped circles around her, saying 'helpful' things like just tell your mom to get you one of these!, or 'tactful' things like my mom told me not to make fun of you for having those things (indicating the training wheels. or maybe even the pedals).

Egad.

And it brought up all sorts of feelings of inadequacy as a mother and poorness for me. I have two older kids and honestly, this was the first time I felt peer-pressure about one of my kids having some must-have item. I started to pick her up at off-times, we'd find new blocks to walk/wheel down. Anything to avoid the horror.

I had priced the bikes out and they were around $80. We just don't spend that kind of money on our children, especially on our youngest (I know, that's terrible, but it's our reality). There'd be no younger siblings to use it when she was done and if she followed in her older siblings' footsteps, she'd be on a 'real' bike by fall. We might only have it for one season. It just didn't make good fiscal sense.

So I called my pal who owns a consignment shop and asked her to be on the lookout for one of these babies, and--glory be--it turns out her own middle child was 'finished' with his, and her baby wouldn't be needing it anytime soon. She said we could have it in the meantime.

So we got ourselves a balance bike, on loan. And it's changed everything.

It makes so much sense, it's hard to believe anyone ever thought training wheels on a bike with pedals made sense for young kids. No one really needs to learn to pedal, EVERYONE needs to learn to balance. Why not tackle the balance first, then add in the pedals?

My daughter zips around the neighborhood now, lightning fast, thrilled beyond belief. If I'd known how transforming it would be I would have plunked the money down sooner. I can't recommend it enough. I should say here that we did try to 'make' a balance bike by having the cranks removed from our tiniest bike, but the seat was still too high. This thing's brilliant; the smoothest, most graceful ride around. It's one of the few 'new-and-improved' contraptions for kids these days that is an absolute improvement. It actually feels like someone invented something new for a change--rather than just adding bells and whistles to something tried and true.

Trying Mushrooms

2010-07-08T20:23:00.001-05:00

When my oldest child turned seven I decided to quit my job to stay home with the kids. It turned out to be the opposite of what most of the other moms were doing. I'd thought I was joining an amazing network of wonderful stay at home moms, but turns out they, after nurturing their infants into elementary school, were ready to hit the job market again. I hadn't had much interest in the days in and days out of little babies--so many unreasonable marbles rolling in so many directions--but got really interested in being around to influence homework habits, have the kinds of conversations you can have with fully formed kids, do things with them that they might remember, etc.

So with all this time on my hands and with no other neighborhood moms to do yoga and lunch with, I started to cook real meals for my family. I like to think I'd have been motivated to do that anyway, but there's no way of knowing.

Until that point my kids had consisted on chicken nuggets, velveeta shells and cheese, goldfish, ramen noodles, take-out Indian food, and ketchup. Not necessarily in that order.

Now I was asking them to get excited about the kinds of meals I was served as a kid. Meals with more colors in them, more textures. An upside-down shepherd's pie we call 'grumption,' (though, when I looked it up now to see if I could hyperlink to it, it turns out to have some pretty unrelated meanings), lemon poppy chicken, pasta with pesto, tacos, pot roast, etc. Of course some of my 'home-cooked' meals are the kinds of slapped together things that my more Enchanted Broccoli-types of friends would consider pre-cooked and processed. Not everyone would put tacos in the home-cooked category, but I figure if I'm messing up more than one pan and using a measuring cup, I've cooked.

The kids were not instantly excited. I'd prepared them for butter-waterfalls on their mashed potatoes, but rarely served the potatoes as hot as would be necessary to get that effect I remembered so much when I was a kid. They'd seen Fear Factor on tv though (something I'm not proud of) and so I ended up introducing a game called Family Fear Factor. The children could earn a dollar for every new thing they tried. And just like on the show, we'd all gather around for the chewing and swallowing and then we'd inspect the inside of their mouth to make sure they hadn't hidden a cockroach, sorry, I mean a stalk of broccoli somewhere. It was fun, it was funny, it was expensive, and--surprisingly, it worked. Once my son discovered he liked pot roast, he ate it every time. Once my daughter tasted pesto, she was a fan forever. Of course the food I was serving wasn't much of a stretch. I don't eat any kind of fish, at all. No mushrooms, ever. Not a lot of adventure in my own cuisine. Just meat, potatoes, some vegetables, variations on pasta...stuff like that.

I realize that it's hypocritical to encourage them to take chances on food when I refuse to do the same. But I'm kind of fully formed, have long identified as a non-seafood/non-mushroom kind of gal. At a clam bake (or was it oysters?) in Princeton twenty years ago I spent the entire evening with a guy I'd never met, having bonded with him only because of our disdain for all the sea-creature-slurping going on around us. It was kind of like having a husband--like that new concept of a work-husband?--he was definitely my party-husband. We clung together for the duration, gave each other knowing looks, and found strength in numbers when it came to being cornered by someone with oyster slime on his lip, demanding to know why we wouldn't even try it.

I'm aware that much of this food-aversion is in my head, as I enjoyed ruffles dipped in clam dip, sardines, and Howard Johnsons clam strips as a kid. Now that I know what most of that food is, I cringe at the thought of aiming for the chewy bits with my potato chips at all those neighborhood parties I grew up going to. And once, in my adult life, I was served a mushroom ravioli with mushroom sauce that managed to have no visible mushrooms anywhere. I didn't know what it was, liked it, and only rejected an offer of seconds once I was told what it was. I get how terrible it is to admit that. But still, eating those yucky brown slimy things that grow on rotting trees? Yuck. I don't even know why the beauty products that advertise shiitake mushroom extract, as the camera pans over artfully arranged mushroom, are playing that part up. What part of the word 'mushroom' makes you think of beautiful skin? Exactly. 'Fungus' might have something to do with feet but not in a very desirable way. What crazy person thought that one up?

As of a week ago, I'd never eaten a mushroom on purpose. But now I have. I'm not going to be ordering them on pizza anytime soon, but I can announce that little raw mushrooms just aren't that bad. At an Italian dinner the other night sponsored by Select Italy with chefs from Eatalian leading us through what we were eating, I (and a handful of other invited mom-bloggers) was invited to eat several frightening things. I'd planned to be a big girl and keep my feelings about mushrooms and seafood to myself, but of course I spilled my secret to the first mom I could, therein christening her the person in the room who I could make worried eyes at while being offered things like eggs with truffles, and porcini something-or-other.

The mushroom breakthrough moment came when one of the chefs brought out these soft powdery puffs that almost looked like meringues but were, indeed, some kind of fresh mushroom. The trick, he said, was that you don't wash them--that makes them turn brown, and slimy (or did I just add the slimy part?). You peel the edges off and then slice them into little inoffensive mushroom pieces. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say 'yum!' but...you know...they weren't that bad.

I even looked for them in the mushroom section at Fairway today as I scootched past with my cart. Big soft white powdery things. I saw them (amidst other more hideous varieties that look kind of like someone dumped a forest floor into the display case), and didn't buy them. But I didn't feel any animosity to them. I kind of felt like they were some familiar friends...ambassadors, maybe, to the other more drastic kinds of things in boxes around them.

And, just like every mom should have to relive the pain of a skinned knee so she can bring a bit more sympathy to the children who get them (they really, really hurt!), so should every mom take a wee bit of a chance on some kind of food she might have written off a lifetime ago. My meals aren't getting any more complicated around here as a result of having gone to this dinner (the rest of which was, by the way, out of this world spectacular), but I feel a bit more grown-up now. I handled a mushroom. Maybe I can handle anything.

Making it Happen

2010-07-07T20:22:00.001-05:00

I rarely know what to ask for for Mother's Day. When it's far off in the future I feel like one of those moms who doesn't really care for all the fuss. Just another Hallmark creation, here to keep the flower companies in business...I'm not going to fall for that...and so on and so forth.

And then the day arrives and we trek off to do something that I said it was just fine to plan way back in March--usually a barbecue at a cousin's house that comes complete with several bickery hours in a car on a highway, and I find myself getting kind of worked up internally that, here it is, MOTHER'S DAY, my ONLY day of the WHOLE year, and I'm cooped up with ungrateful children and a husband who might offer up a few criticisms about my driving. Mother's Day Shmother's Day, I might text a friend from the cousin's driveway. And then I soldier on, smiling, acting like it's a day like any other.

Perhaps my ambivalence is linked to my day-to-day awareness of how imperfect my mothering is. I'm not exactly a superhero of a mom. I hope that a car never backs over one of my children, not because I'm worried about the child so much as I'm afraid that we'll all discover that I'm the one mom who'll turn out to be incapable of lifting the vehicle off the kid. I'm not a big advocate for my children, so uncertain am I that I even know what's best for them. I'm not even good at protecting them from weirdos. One afternoon, on a sidewalk, a crazy lady came up to my children and demanded that they call her "auntie." I just kind of froze and encouraged them to go along with it. It was a terrible failing and I apologized to them later. But I was hardly the ferocious mother bear on heightened alert for things that might endanger her cubs. On the contrary, I urged them to be polite, do the 'auntie' thing, before whisking them off, tail between my legs.

But this Mother's Day I'm feeling a bit more deserving. Seems I found my mother bear.

My nine year old son has been completely enthralled by The Lightning Thief series of books--wonderful fantasies full of Greek Mythology, something he's also come to love. This has been a breakthrough year for him with reading and academics in general, and I've been awestruck by the perfectness of these books for him. He and his 4th grade reading group have been plodding through the books for the last several months, reading a few chapters at a time, creating final presentations for their class after finishing each one. Promising each other they won't read ahead is one of their deals, and there have been times when, after finishing a chapter, my son has been doubled over in agony because he couldn't turn the page to see what happened next. I've never seen him so engaged. Hooray.

And then I found out that Rick Riordan, the author, was going to be doing a reading-slash-Q&A session at Bank Street--way up town in Manhattan on a Friday night. Double-hooray! I emailed the teachers and reading group parents and everyone got excited, but when I called to 'reserve a spot' I found out that, not only was the event itself completely full, the waiting list was full. The best we could do, the lady offered, was to come and wait outside the event, and maybe the author would eventually sign their books. He was crushed.

Roar!

I raced to the author's website to see what could be done. Surely he'd come visit their classroom that afternoon--right? Wrong. Don't even contact me about scheduling events until 2009, his website urged. He was very busy. No new events, no tag-ons to current events. Nothing.

Heave!

I searched the calendar for anything else nearby. He'd be in Massachusetts the following day. Hmmm, I've always liked Massachusetts. He'd be in Indiana the day before. Well, my parents live in Ohio. That could be convenient. But then I saw that he'd be signing books in Books, Bytes, and Beyond in Glen Rock, NJ. GoogleMaps said it was a 50 minute trip, but to allow an hour and forty minutes.

I called the store and nailed it all down. Yes Rick Riordan would be signing books from 3-4 o'clock. No it wasn't a reading or a Q&A. Yes we'd have to buy the books there. No we didn't need to camp out the day before. Yes they could meet him. Hallelujah.

I emailed his publicist to say we'd be making the trip from Brooklyn and were hoping to have a picture taken with him. She responded that he'd be happy to accomodate.

My son was excited, his reading group was thrilled, parents were amused, teachers were cooperative. I picked everyone up from school at noon to allow three hours for the trip. We were NOT going to miss meeting this guy. No way.

We got to the bookstore an hour early (had to stop for AFFORDABLE New Jersey gas!) and got to know the women who work there. It took fifteen minutes to make our complicated combinations of purchases. Each child had money to spend, gifts to buy, hardcovers, softcovers, the works. The kids spoke animatedly about Greek Gods and the women in the store were impressed that they were only in 4th grade. Private school, right? they ventured. Nope, public shcool, we replied. Now they were really impressed.

When the author showed up the two girls in the group swooned, Marcia Brady-like. He was ushered into the room to get ready, and we lined up outside the door. When the door swung open a few mintues later we were invited to come in as a group. You must be the reading group from Brooklyn, Mr. Riordan said.

He signed each of their books, addressing each kid by name as he signed them. Then he asked if they had any questions. They had plenty. By the time our time with him was over, we'd had about ten solid minutes alone with him. We took several pictures, asked tons of questions. The kids forgave him for making one of the main characters a Yankees fan when they learned that he really doesn't have a preference for Yankees or Mets, being from Texas himself. They asked him about his inspiration, his writing habits, his favorite books, his children, his last name (first syllable rhymes with 'fire').

And then we were done. Elated, the kids spent the majority of the trip home talking about Greek Gods again. In The Lightning Thief, the main character--a kid from Manhattan--learns that one of his parents is a Greek God, and so the kids tossed around ideas about who their own Greek God parents might be. Having warlike tendencies meant Ares, falling in love easily might mean Aphrodite, loving to work hard could mean Hephaestus. We were enshrouded in fog as we drove over the George Washington Bridge and it was easy to imagine that Poseidon had something to do with it.

All of the details of the day had kept me from appreciating the magnitude of what was happening. It didn't hit me until later that night when I uploaded the photo we'd taken of Rick Riordan surrounded by the children. One boy thought to open his book wide to the signed front page, another girl holds two hard-bound books in front of her. Everyone is beaming. It had been an incredible experience that the kids would never forget. Who needs an overcrowded reading at Bank Street? We had a private audience with the man who's taught these kids to love books and Greek Mythology. I'd lifted the car off the kid.

Maybe I deserve a massage after all.

Ten Dollars in my Pocket

2010-07-06T20:19:00.001-05:00

I set out the other day to pick up the kids from school. I had ten dollars in my pocket. It was one of those new, crisp ones with the big head and the large numbers. I'm used to thinking that a ten dollar bill is something to be excited about. But on this particular day it occurred to me: That's not really enough, is it?

How many twenties do you want? The ATM machine basically asks me. I used to think that was ridiculous--my choices are 20, 40, 60, 80 or a quick hundred? A hundred dollars still seems like a lot of money to me. There shouldn't be anything quick about a hundred dollars.

But if $10 really isn't enough to get through an afternoon with the kids, then a hundred dollars isn't much anymore either.

Let's say we want to indulge in the ice cream truck--something we only do on Fridays, unless there are special circumstances (a new policy that deserves an entire essay, it's been working so well). Let's say someone's thirsty so we end up needing to buy a few Vitamin Waters? But then we want some Pringles too? What if I remember I need milk and spend $5.29 on a half gallon of organic? We're done, overdrawn, broke.

I used to begin every week with a twenty in my pocket and I'd see if it could last all week. It was a reasonable personal challenge--and it meant I was the person making bright 'let's have coffee!' eyes at other moms at drop-off early in the week, and it meant that I was the dull-eyed 'I'm just going to go home' mom by the end of the week. And I was okay with that. A goat cheese sandwich on Monday meant ramen noodles on Friday. A tangible (tasteless) consequence. And I learned to make the necessary adjustments.

But now there are so many more temptations.

We live in a vibrant neighborhood with a lot of new and exciting eateries and cafes and I'd love to be one of the people who frequents these joints. But ducking into any of these establishments for a snack with any combination of my children and/or their friends ends up draining my wallet. I'm the Johnny Appleseed of money, wandering around town leaving twenties in my wake. My new game is to see if I can walk out of my house without spending money. I'm not very good at it.

I guess it's one of the downsides of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Hooray my husband and I thought to buy a brownstone for mere pennies ten years ago! Aw shucks the neighborhood got popular and now I'm surrounded by millionaires and the kinds of exciting businesses they attract. I suppose there's plenty of money in my walls, but that's not the same as eating a fun sandwich every day.

Those of us who bought homes here years and years ago are considered pioneers. People look at us with envy in their eyes when they do the math and realize how little our houses cost us. You can usually spot a pioneer mom at the playground because she's the one with baby carrots in a bag. The envy in our eyes is aimed at their exotic coffees and aerodynamic tangerine-colored strollers.

I haven't consigned myself to the bags of vegetables yet. I don't pack up snacks to fetch my children from school. I'll pack a picnic for a baseball game, but not for pick-up. I'm just stubborn like that. I've always enjoyed a more 'where will the day take us?' kind of mentality. But with out-of-pocket dental insurance in our near future (my husband was laid off last year and the benefits are running out soon), gas prices making weekend trips something to reconsider, and three kids who go through $40 worth of organic milk a week, I think the day should just start taking us right back home where we can get our money's worth out of our cable bill, and where we can save for the important things. Like babysitters.

It Takes a Village--To Ignore the Ice Cream Truck

2010-07-05T20:16:00.001-05:00

One of the best things about our Brooklyn neighborhood is Underwood Playground--a full city-block of great play equipment, shady areas, a separate sprinkler area, and even an enclosed mini-'meadow' place where kids can play in the grass, dig, and romp in a way that has nothing to do with concrete.

I love that I can show up with any combination of children at any time and find friends/make friends...or just let the kids stretch their legs.

You find out a lot about other parents in the playground. I'm a major bench-sitter. People think I've chosen to give my children all sorts of independence, but really I'm lazy and I just like sitting. I admire the moms and dads who agree to play monster, or who invent elaborate and comical ways to push their kids in a swing. How energetic they are! I'm bored by the spotter-parents, the ones who are always underneath their kids, acting nervous and jittery whenever junior's up too high. How humorless they seem!

Another major test involves the ice cream truck and the icee man. At first I prided myself on being one of the moms who enjoyed these things. I grew up on a dead-end street and ice cream trucks were nonexistent. Part of me still finds it magical that a little bus full of ice cream rolls through Brooklyn. I mean, that's pretty great, right? Plus I decided that I'm annoyed by the kinds of people who make hay out of being annoyed by the ice cream truck. 'Can you believe some of our neighbors have tried to report the ice cream man for coming on our street late at night?' I'd hiss. How could someone admit to being such a Grinch? They'd totally be the villain in the movie about the neighborhood.

There were always a few hold-outs. The moms pushing baby carrots and granola bars on their children, while everyone else swarmed, lemming-like, to the curb at the sound of the Entertainer music or the bicycle-horn of the icee man's cart. Poor kids, I'd think...as I'd shell out more money for my brood.

One summer a soy ice cream truck rolled around, manned by a rastafarian guy. The granola folks got off their benches for that one, but there were rumors about drugs and we never ended up seeing the guy again.

It's important to mention that my two older children were always reasonable kids. While they enjoyed being kids who could get treats from those trucks, they also understood it when I said 'no,'--whether that no was based on my having no money with me, or a reminder that they'd had/or were going to have some other kind of treat that day. But my youngest? Not so easy this way. She's the queen of instant gratification--whatever suggestion passes through her mind becomes a desperate need within minutes--if it's not fulfilled within seconds of it occurring to her, she collapses noisily and dramatically. It can ruin everybody's afternoon. So when the weather started to turn towards summer about a month ago, now that she can't be distracted as easily as she could last summer, I started to get worried about the ice cream trucks-to-be.

Easy, my friend Ingrid said, when I said 'what are we going to do about the ice cream truck all summer?'--'just say 'only on Fridays.''

Only on Fridays? Okay. Let's do it only on Fridays.

Is today Friday Mommy? my youngest would ask as she biked to school in the morning.

Nope, I'd say. Friday's in two days.

Okay. So I get ice cream in two days, right Mommy?

Right.

Perfect! Keith, neighborhood dad suddenly visible in the playground those days to help with a brand new baby, pointed out that it was the same theory behind the rat experiment involving randomly assigned rewards versus predictable rewards. Apparently the rats who were given treats at random were anxiety-filled beasts, who spent their days frantically pressing buttons. The rats whose rewards were doled out in predictable chunks were calm and relaxed. He was dead right. By giving in every now and then, but never in a predictable way, I'd created an anxiety filled beast. Poor thing.

No more frantic anxiety-filled afternoons, but rather, four year olds at peace with the fact that the rewards would come, just only on Fridays. Dozing quietly in the corner of their cages, in their nests of shredded newspaper, I mean...playing happily on the swings, in the tunnel, playing bumper cars on the slide...

Now I should mention here that it rained for about four Fridays in a row, so our poor kids hung in there week after week with no Friday ice cream. Because the rule is designed to help with the temptation of having the ice cream jingle repeated a thousand times several yards away from us, there's no real hard and fast rule about having cold treats at other times during the week. Of course the Friday rule is open to interpretation and the decisions we make when we're not all clustered together in the park are up to us. On a recent Thursday, for example, we all decided to cave. The heat was excessive, and several of the children weren't going to be in town the following day. But it was a firm trade-off. Yes today, but no tomorrow. And the kids managed it well. But the best thing is that the tension that used to arise whenever the sick-honk of the icee cart approached, where some of us would give in immediately, and others would cringe and bristle as they prepared their defenses for their own soon-to-be disappointed children, is gone. We're all more relaxed now.

We're now approaching July and I'm ultra-impressed with this whole system. I spend a lot of time wishing I'd known about it eight years ago, but am mostly glad to know about it now. There was one Tuesday afternoon where she just about broke down, begging for it. But I held firm, stressed how much fun Friday would be, and we haven't had a repeat of that. I've always known that psycho-mumbo jumbo about giving kids limits, and how they thrive with boundaries and all that but all parenting advice seems to be preachy and mired in denying them things and I tire of it quickly. Something about those poor little rats really drives the whole thing home.

My Boyfriends

2010-07-04T20:14:00.000-05:00

this post appeared on nycmomsblog on June 23, 2008

When I got the news that Tim Russert died I was crushed. I was in the car with my 9 year old son and I noticed that it was the 'top of the hour' as they say in the news world. I had some strange hunch that there might be some new news so I turned on 1010Wins just in time to hear Tim Brokaw say "...moderator of Meet the Press, Washington Bureau Chief..." and my heart sank. I knew what was going to follow, and I was right. Omigod Omigod I said, turning the dial up to hear. As the story unfolded my son said 'oh you loved that guy, right?'

Right.

We came home and told my husband. 'Oh your boyfriend!' he said. 'I'm so sorry.'

What a loss. Everyone's been agreeing all over 24-hour news land and I won't even go into the particulars about how wonderful he seemed to be. But suffice it to say it was Tim Russert, not even Jon Stewart, who got me through this whole Democratic Primary season. I'd learned how to catch him in the minutes past 7am on the Today Show, then switch to MSNBC just in time to see Tim walk on the set, be greeted with kisses and hugs, and then settle in to explain everything with a twinkle in his eye.

I've loved him from a distance for over a decade (and once, up kinda close, when I saw him at a Bob Dylan/Van Morrison concert at the Paramount Theater--the night before the Monica Lewinsky story broke). I love other people too. That's normal, right? Doesn't every married couple with three young children have lists of acceptable 'affairs'--like, if I came home one day and announced that I'd hooked up with Tim Russert, my husband would have had to say 'well, good for you...so proud honey, I know you've always really liked him.' And that would be that.

My list has two categories. I can be a sucker for the latest smokey Hollywood hunk--Robert Downey Jr, in Ironman, anyone? After Black Hawk Down Josh Hartnett was high on my list, now he's no where near it. Jake Gyllenhaal was on it until I discovered Peter Saarsgaard.....and there was the time I left the movie Serendipity with such a crush on Jon Cusack it occurred to me that the TRUE serendipitous event was that I'd gone to see the movie and realized that I was meant to spend the rest of my life with him. I fall hard and fast and then I move on.

And then there's the brainy clever-man part of my list. Tim Russert, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher (when he isn't bashing breastfeeding), David Sedaris. That list doesn't change too much--if any of these men ever found me fascinating it would be more flattering than anything else I could imagine, given how sharply observant they are.

My husband is much steadier in the celebrity crush department. If he were to confess to making out with Isabella Rossellini in an elevator somewhere, or if he decided to leave me for Jody Foster--I've already agreed to smile and be happy for him. Those have been his two faves ever since I've known him. In fact, those choices helped him win the 'best husband ever 'award at playgroup a few years ago (a fact I've never shared with him). The subject of who our husbands had crushes on came up (perhaps I'm the one who brought it up?) and I totally won. Seems everyone hears those two women's names and thinks 'oh, classy guy, good taste.' Sally's husband lusts after Pam Anderson? Gross! Marissa's guy digs Cindy Crawford? Bo-ring!

I'm so sorry to have lost Tim Russert; I was really looking forward to going through the elections with his enthusiasm and grace and generosity and curiosity. But he was on my clever-guy list, and that's proven to be a pretty permanent list. So in a way, I suppose, he'll be with me forever.

Barack Around the Block

2010-07-03T20:06:00.000-05:00

this originally appeared on nycmomsblog on November 6, 2008

I'm not sure I'll ever forgive myself for staying in bed watching TV instead of joining the throngs outside, but to my credit, the throngs weren't celebrating on my own little block, but rather around the corner on the main avenue. I could hear them. Shouting, cheers, swells of pleasure wafting in through my open window.

It started when Ohio was called for Obama. A loud cheer went up. It was like watching a tense sporting event and hearing neighbors celebrating the highs and moaning through the lows to the rhythms of what the announcer on my little tv was saying. Just another reason to love New York--when you're like me and the thought of not having people around (within shouting distance, preferably) gives you the total heebie-jeebies, In Cold Blood style, if you know what I mean. I like to know they're out there, and I like the shared experience of having them shout out to the things on my tv.

All was right with the world. The swing states were swinging our way, the kids were all asleep. We let them watch until about 9:30 but past elections haven't been called (truly called, and I was feeling superstitious) until 3am, or the next morning, or sometime near Christmas, so I didn't want to keep them up. Plus, I have a special relationship with Murphy's Law and chances were that if I'd kept them up, Ohio and Florida and Iowa might have swung the other way, and so I figured we should all just play it safe and get to bed.

Plus they'd had the day off. If you ask me, NO ONE should have to do anything but vote on Election Day, but that's another post for another time. Or you could watch this excellent and chilling (but less chilling now that we know the outcome) Rachel Maddow piece on the new poll tax, and hear a great argument for that. So the kids had been off of school all day and had been at each other's throats. And they did have to wake up early the next day so keeping them up til midnight seemed careless (of course if I'd known...).

So all was right with the world and I decided to let myself doze off, just a little drifting, at about 10:30, to the ocean of noise from the people outside, but nothing distracting. Just great happy noises. At 11 my husband woke me up. He's done it! Obama won! They just called it! The crowd outside went nuts, I sat up and sat, glued, to the footage of the Spellman College kids dancing and singing to Signed, Sealed, Delivered. A perfect song for the moment.

The phone rang and my friend was on a street corner near her house a few blocks away. You should see this! she shouted into the phone. Everyone's out here, everyone's cheering, the streets are full, there are fireworks! I made great tearful happy noises into the phone and let her get back to the craziness.

I'm not sure Obama would have approved of the gunshots that punctuated the celebrating I could hear from my bed. Just a few enthusiastic shots, I'm sure. Not unlike what we hear sometimes at midnight on New Years. But when you want to make a loud fireworks like noise and all you have is a gun, I guess you use the gun, eh? What's a guy with a gun who didn't think to buy fireworks in advance to do?

This all made my husband want a beer, so he went down and got one, and went out and walked around a bit to get the feel of it. Part of me wanted to go, but part of me wanted to lie in bed, under my comforter, and watch the Spellman College students weep and sing and wait for McCain to concede and for Obama to speak. I didn't want to miss a minute.

Just before twelve we tried to wake up our oldest. Obama just won, my husband said to him.

He did? my son responded.

Yeah, and he's about to give his acceptance speech, do you want to come into our room and watch it with us?

That's okay, I'm all set. was the reassured reply. I learned later that my son has no memory of our attempt to rouse him, or of his own polite refusal. He felt a little bit left out when the kids in his class raised their hands to indicate they'd seen the whole thing, but in my husband's Obama shirt, worn down to his knees, he didn't feel that left out.

I did wonder if we should just go ahead and wake everyone up--forcefully, if they kept refusing our polite suggestions--to make them bear witness to this incredible, completely unmatchable moment. But decided against it as well.

The moment was the moment and I was in it. I wasn't out in it, I was in in it. I wasn't alone in it, but I wasn't making it anything other than it was. I didn't have to do anything to create a more perfect version of it. A perfect moment, a perfect speech, perfect children asleep in perfect beds, a perfect comforter and a perfect pillow, a perfectly wonderful feeling that nothing could ever do anything to take this moment away. Nothing could happen--not anything--that would make this moment not have happened.

At about 12:35 I decided that Obama must be on his way to bed. He'd been in like a zillion states in the last few days, giving speeches at rallies at all hours, and he must have been exhausted and now he could rest and he seems like a sensible guy and since he couldn't go smoke cigarettes he might have just chosen to go to sleep. I hadn't done much out of the ordinary in the last few days, 'cept some awesome trick-or-treating on Friday, and cheering on the NYC Marathoners who run up the avenue around the corner on Sunday, and teaching art to sixty little girls on Monday. Oh, and getting up at 5:30 to wait in line at 5:45 for the polls to open at 6am with my 8 year old daughter, and giving terrorist fist jabs to the neighbors (including our local councilwoman) in the polling place, and smiling at everyone, and feeling buckets of hopefulness laced with twinges of worry all day. And maybe that was enough.

So I figured if Obama was in bed, I might as well go to sleep too. And I dozed off again with a happy heart to the sound of a million neighbors celebrating the most wonderful moment that my children would never forget, even though they were sound asleep, and that I would never forget, even though I was still in bed.

Pick a Peck of Poplar Palin

2010-07-02T20:03:00.002-05:00

this post originally appeared on nycmomsblog on October 16, 2008

I am not poking fun at Sarah Palin's family. That would be in poor taste. Rather, I'm going to spend a few moments publicly bemoaning the fact that one of my children shares the name of one of hers.

Quick! Name Obama's kids! Having trouble, right? Now try McCain's kids, or Biden's kids? Can't do it. There's Megan McCain who said "no one knows what war is like other than my family [p]eriod" and there's Bo Biden whose name I only know because of all the Fee Fie Fo Biden jokes, but I can't name the rest, and, probably, neither can you.

But Sarah Palin's kids' names are up there with Apple and Moses. Palin's kids' names are (of course) Track, Willow, Bristol, Piper, and Trig--which I think must be short for trigonometry. Everyone knows them, most people make fun of the outrageousness of them. There's even the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator where you enter your own name and watch it morph into something like 'Rifle Commando Palin' or 'Blaster Puck Palin.'

Writing here under a pseudonym, I feel compelled to preserve my young daughter's own anonymity, so I won't divulge which name is the same. But let's pretend Sarah had a daughter named Poplar. And let's pretend I had named my own daughter Poplar. Let's say the name Poplar was a departure from our older children's names, and that it was chosen because it was a combination of several family members we wanted to honor, as well as just being a damned cute-seeming name. And until Palin's Poplar came along, we'd only ever met maybe one or two other Poplars.

There's a strange thing in our neighborhood, and maybe in Wasila Alaska as well...there's this incredible baby naming freedom. In fact, most of the names in our neighborhood seem to indicate an intent to be original, to side step the more obviously common names like Ethan, Emily, Tiffany, Andrew... Of course the strange by-product of that is every boy in our neighborhood is named Hudson or Lucian, and every girl is Ella or Eden. We also have Arrow, Lion, Tiger and Boo.

So we've all had a bit of fun naming our children. And some of us have had the same exact kind of fun naming our children with the odd result that the original names have become common and the regular names rare. Surely the mom who chose the name Daisy never envisioned that her daughter would have to be Daisy R. for her entire elementary school career to distinguish her from Daisy L. and Daisy C. while the one girl named Lisa would get to be the only girl named Lisa.

My first two children have names mined from some of the older branches on my family tree. They are actual names (not types of fields or mathematics) but are more in the old-fashioned category, and we've never met another child with one of their names (older adults, yes, but no kids) which, I have to say, is kind of nice, though it can be frustrating that souvenirs never come pre-printed with their names. My third child is the one with the same name as one of the Palin crew. My fifth grader wrote an essay for school (he was able to choose the topic himself) that was a hilarious rant against Senator McCain, and in it he listed things that bothered him about the Republican ticket, and number one was that Sarah Palin's daughter has the same name as his little sister. I thought that was really cute, until a few weeks later when I found myself at a birthday party for a child I didn't know very well. I had to tell about a dozen different people that my daughter's name was 'Poplar' and I found myself cringing every time, since given the current political climate it kept seeming to link me to Sarah Palin, and that made me very unhappy.

It reminds me of when my son--at age four--had these delicious long blond locks and then he had his first haircut and ended up looking like all the other little bowl-cut towheads--with the platinum blond straight top and the little brown 'V' of hair close cut at the top of the neck. I was in a little hippie bread shop in a little hippie town upstate and he was calling me 'mommy' and I had this strange realization that I felt like his ultra-conservative 'do was somehow misrepresenting who he was, who I was, and what types of things we value (or don't put much value on). Strange, and probably not so great to admit, but true.

The way we dress or style (or don't style) our youngsters is a reflection of who we are. Likewise, the names we choose to give our children are also a way of advertising our own taste. Several dozen families naming their first child Michael doesn't necessarily join them at the hip politically, but two different moms choosing the name Poplar for their daughter? Those moms must have something in common, right? And that's precisely what made me cringe as I met new people at that birthday party and told them my daughter's name.

I am hoping that, come November 4th, Sarah Palin drops off the media radar. It might take a little bit of time, but I'd like to get back to the world where I can say my daughter's name out loud without thinking that I'm being subconsciously linked to a politician who really doesn't represent me, or speak to me, and who doesn't even seem to care about me--or my daughters, for that matter--at all.

The Conflicts of Their Interests

2010-07-01T20:01:00.000-05:00

For years we've made travel plans with our children, despite whatever small obligations we/they might have at home. It was awfully convenient back when they didn't have the awareness to know what they were missing (back when a peek-a-boo-playing parent's face really did cease to exist when it wasn't in sight), and also nice when they'd know what they were missing but the obviousness of the greatness of the experience we were sailing off to have was so apparent that they didn't care about a class celebration or some kid's birthday party--it was hard for my seven year old to know that she was missing her second grade poetry celebration, but when we remembered about it on the beach in Waikiki we were able to laugh it off as not being reason enough to still be in dreary Brooklyn.

Of course all that lovely ignorance couldn't last forever, and just when we started to feel able to count on their indifference, it's all changed. We're in a new phase.

The phase of much-anticipated weekend plans bumping up against important family obligations and travel. And it's significant that they are still too young to be old enough to be excused from many of these adventures, but they are old enough to feel the agony of missing out on, say, a weekend full of baseball double-headers, a movie premier with a friend and his dad, a cherished friend's sleepover, and so on. And I'm just not feeling equipped to guide them through the emotions of having to be in two attractive places at once. It's just life, of course. But it's hard to reconcile in my own head, let alone walk them through navigating their own feelings about it.

Parenting was so much easier back when my children's problems were all things I felt that I'd mastered over my life time. I feel comfortable encouraging them to share (barely, since no one's asking me to share my most precious possessions with near-strangers or friends who are annoying to me), I feel comfortable asking them to take turns, not to hit, to brush their teeth, to avoid eating too many treats, to do things that all of us grownups know just make sense.

But now they're getting into things that are more difficult to resolve. My son complains that he did all the work on a group project and then had to watch the teacher praise all of the kids equally, my daughter is baffled about why she's losing good friends to some of the meaner girls in her grade. And I don't know how to parent this. Because they parallel the things in my life that keep me awake at night.

We have some of the most wonderful family-event-themed weekends coming up this spring--weekends for which we'll be doing a lot of flying, and in the 'old days' of them being just a few years younger these would have been single-minded pursuits. Nothing but plain old 'this is what we're doing this weekend' stuff going on. But now my kids know their sports schedules--my son can see that he's missing a total of four baseball games (out of only, like, ten) and two practices (which are just as much fun). My two girls are missing six soccer games and two practices between them. They're losing some momentum, as well as much of the bonding that goes on during these events. And they're sad about it.

We are clear in our priorities--no one has asked why we have to travel to these amazing (once in a lifetime) family functions--but we are all left feeling unsettled by all they're missing.

I know I know it's just life. We have many more sports seasons ahead of us, and we'll look back on this as having been an amazing spring for being with extended family, and we might even forget that there were tinges of heartache about missed games and other events.

Or we could go the schadenfreude route and pray for rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain. With plenty of makeup games waiting for us in June.

Revolutionary Road--Warning

2010-06-30T19:56:00.000-05:00

I'll do my best to avoid requiring a special spoiler alert but I just feel a duty to warn my fellow wives and mothers about Revolutionary Road.

I went in completely blank. I could tell from the trailer that it was some kind of heartbreaking/aching look at suburban life...but that's it. It might have been funny in parts, it might have been uplifting, it might have been any combination of suburban life and anything else. I wasn't quite sure. I did know enough to know that I wasn't really looking forward to seeing it. When was I going to feel like spending two hours away from my kids in a dark room watching a young vibrant couple deteriorate?

And then it went and got all mentioned at the Awards shows... and I ended up deciding that it was one of the movies I should see.

I went with another mom when the kids were at school on Thursday. We sat in a row behind Lauren Hutton--and I spent a little bit of time wondering if I should tell her that I was her personal shopper at FAO Schwarz about eighteen years earlier, and that I remember she had an eight year old boy with her who was in to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and that I hand-delivered her purchase to her Noho loft, and then decided not to.

I won't give away any specifics about the movie, but I can say that when the lights came on again a few hours later my mom friend and I turned to each other in tears and said 'at least we live in Brooklyn...that's different, right?'

The movie's stayed with me these past few days. Every now and then I feel myself slipping into despair about all the dreams I had when I was younger and about how having children means that I won't ever realize those dreams, and I shake a mental fist at the movie for putting all that pessimism into me at such a vulnerable time.

I had breakfast with another mom the next morning and was telling her why the movie depressed me.

It hit me in all my weak spots, I said.

Like what? she asked.

Well, before my third child was born I had this idea that my husband and I could do a house swap for some portion of the year, and everyone kept telling me that I couldn't do that because of school. And I really hated hearing that because, like, who makes up those rules? Why can't we just live somewhere else for awhile and not get all trapped by the limitations of the school year and testing and stuff. And I half expected and fully hoped this friend to agree with me that anything is really possible and that I shouldn't feel like I can't have these enriching experiences just because I have children.

But she didn't. But you can't do those things once you have children, she said definitively and in a tone that made me feel like a silly little girl for thinking I could.

And I want to be strong in the face of it...just like Kate and Leo with their schadenfreudey neighbors. But it's winter time, and my mood is low, and even though I have the life I want and I'm even getting to do some great travelling in the midst of it, I've let go of certain dreams, dreams that people told me I shouldn't bother to have, but that I wanted to have anyway. And that's what depresses me.

So be warned, if you're thinking about going to the movie. Yes I live in Brooklyn (not Connecticut) and yes I saw the movie in a row behind Lauren Hutton which probably doesn't happen in the suburbs too much. But it got to me, and I can't let go of it. It's going to take a whole lotta lighthearted date movies (He's Just Not That Into You? anyone?) to bring me out of this funk.

So Long, Sarah

2010-06-29T19:54:00.000-05:00

I have a secret to tell you, my four year old whispered to me on the couch a few weeks ago. She got up on her knees, cradled my head with her hot little hands, and managed the following, very serious statement:
Sarah's not real.

Wow. For over a year we've been hearing about Sarah. First Sarah lived in Africa. Then Sarah lived in a house in the woods somewhere near the Hudson River (she pointed it out as we drove over the Bear Mountain Bridge one Sunday in the fall). Sometimes Sarah lives in Manhattan--"Muh-hattan."

Sarah's parents were dead. Sarah has an older sister and an older brother. Sarah is much smarter than anyone else in our family.

When we were driving back from Ohio after Christmas we used our new blackberry/GPS device to find a family style Italian restaurant a few miles off the interstate. As we pulled up to it, the four older people in the car (ie. everyone but the four year old) were admiring the curtained and cozy little brick building--we were all so grateful for a change of pace from the same-old same-old service area places.
My daughter was unimpressed. Sarah brought me here when I was two, she said, dismissively.

It's been hard to keep up with Sarah these past two years. Sarah knows so much more than any of us do. One time when my daughter and I were butting heads about dressing warmly on a cold wintry day, I told her that it was going to be cold all day.

No, she said, it's going to be sunny.

No sweetie, the weatherman just said it's going to be freezing cold.

Well Sarah said it's going to be sunny.

Well maybe Sarah didn't see the news this morning.

No, she told me it was going to be warm out. And she told me--and then she paused for effect, and she slowed down her words so there'd be no mistaking her--before YOU were born.

So Sarah was a big know-it-all who breathed all kinds of words of wisdom to my four year old daughter, over forty-two years ago. It was pitiful watching my little one--the baby of the family--try to keep up in this world of taller smarter people, and kind of heartwarming that she'd invented this Sarah--a clear attempt to level the playing field a bit.

I'd often wondered how far to take the Sarah business. There was no evidence that my girl knew that Sarah wasn't real. While we never brought Sarah up out of nowhere, we did nod along and pretend to believe most of the stories that involved her.

The name Sarah would pop up here and there as well. Any new doll or stuffed animal was instantly named Sarah. And once, when recalling the day she was born my daughter told this story:

I was born at the dentist's office and you came to pick me up. And I wanted you to name me Sarah but you didn't so I was sad.

Sarah had hair like my daughter's (blonde), but then once it turned out that the lovely Asian dancer spinning in front of my family as they sat on a curb watching the Macy's Day Parade go by was Sarah.

It was hard to keep track of Sarah, and yet some things always remained the same.

I got worried one day when I was handed the telephone and told that Sarah was on the line. If I pretended to talk to Sarah wasn't I going a bit too far? Turns out Sarah wanted my girl to come for a sleepover. When I expressed concern that Sarah's parents had died so the two girls would be all alone, I was told that before they died they'd told Sarah that my daughter could come sleep over.

So, this Sarah isn't real comment was a bit of a jolt. Clearly my daughter was ready to put her to rest. The big question is: Am I?

Have you been waiting a long time to tell me that? I asked sympathetically.

Yes, she nodded.

Should we tell anyone else?

She glanced towards the kitchen where her brother and sister were doing their homework. No, they might miss her if we tell them she isn't real.

Well then, do you want to keep pretending that she is real. Just only sometimes? I asked--adopting her 'just-only' phrase, another thing I'm not sure I'm ready for her to be done with yet. She shrugged. We didn't hear about Sarah for about ten days after that.

And then, her PreK class went ice skating on Tuesday, and when I asked her about it in the car this morning she offered this:

There were lots of animals with us. And I only fell down once. And there was a unicorn, and I got to ride on it. And the animals weren't wearing ice skates, they just slid around on their hooves, and Sarah was there and everyone wanted to hold her hand. But she just only held mine. And when I fell down, I did a flip, and I landed on my feet.

I was glad to hear that Sarah made an appearance. They're much fewer and farther between these days.

Of course it's sweet that the unicorn was there too. None of the parents who chaperoned the outing mentioned that part to me.

The Downside of the Loftbed

2010-06-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

We hear it from the moment our baby boys are born. Older people (and even younger people with older kids--who always end up feeling like older people) seem to love to tell us mothers of little boys that they'll grow up and leave us someday. My sister in law used to say she wanted daughters 'because they never really leave their moms.' It all kinda creeps me out, like there's some set rule out there. It's odd to think that my unique little baby boy could ever just become one of those grown up guys these women love to tell me about.

What a love affair it's been with this little boy! And to top it off he was kind of shy and preferred to be with me, hanging out, with us, in our living room, at home, than anywhere else. He wouldn't even take a class that didn't involve a parent being right by his side (we settled on rock-climbing, with his father spotting him). Of course we'd roll our eyes like everyone seemed to think we should and complain about his lack of independence, but frankly I didn't find anything wrong with it, plus I was perfectly content to hang out with him at home as well.

A few years ago his shyness morphed into an extreme self-awareness--almost like he was watching himself be a little boy, instead of just being one. By second grade he started to ditch us at the corner, half a block away from the school building. It was heartbreaking to watch, especially since I knew that he was aching to be with us. But I totally got it. I remember not wanting to be seen with my parents when I was a teenager. Sure, it was happening to him sooner, but the feelings still seemed the same--hyper-awareness of who he was in the eyes of the other kids, and a need to appear to have separated from his mom.

I stopped reaching for his hand when we'd cross the street. I stopped ducking back into his classroom to tell him things, I stopped waving hello to him if I saw him with his buddies in the school yard. Of course I'd keep my face open, waiting to return any gaze he'd send my way, but I wouldn't initiate anything. I respected his need to create his own little existence.

In our home he has the tiniest little bedroom at the top of our stairs. His two younger sisters share a larger room, and my husband and I have a medium sized room in the back. His room was so small that his door would bump into his bedframe when we opened it, and you had to sit on his bed to get the right leverage to open any of his dresser drawers. At one point, in a fury of adding things like floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and other desperate space-saving measures, we realized that if he had a loft bed that ran parallel to his back wall, he would have an entire room to play in, to celebrate all this new independence.

Some great workmen from Queens designed and built a really high bed, with a ladder leading up to it, and a built in desk underneath. When their work was done we all painted it, and the walls, a Shrek green. His favorite color. His room seemed enormous. The door opened all the way, he had his own little universe under the loftbed (he can stand straight up underneath it)--with his desk and his globe and his drawers and his chair and his desklamp. A little green paradise!

And then it came time to say goodnight. And I stood below him and watched him disappear up the ladder--almost like Jack climbing up the beanstalk. By the time he got to the top and pulled his barefeet off the ladder and onto the bed he looked teensy and very very far away. I tried, on a couple of occasions, to climb up with him, but the ladder was too vertical and while going up wasn't a problem, I had a genuine fear of getting in the right position to climb back down again.

The best I can do now, when I go in his room to say goodnight, is to reach up and grab a toe and wiggle it and say "I love you kiddo,' or something lame like that. There's no such thing as snuggling up with him, lying in his bed reading to him, or even stroking his forehead if he feels sick, or waking him up with a kiss.

Why didn't anyone tell me about this?

To make matters even worse, he's now a self-assured fifth grader, who will reach for my hand on occasion, even when his friends are around. Who wants to snuggle up and read, who wants me to come on his class trips, who gives me spontaneous hugs. I'm aware that this might be one big last push of closeness because he's sensing all the growing up that's just around the corner. But whatever it is, it's really there, and it's really great, and yet this crazy loftbed just makes some simple parenting moves feel impossible.

His loftbed makes him seem very very far away, which is kind of too bad since pretty soon he really might be really really far away, but right now he isn't, but still, he is.

Teller No, Teller yes

2010-06-27T19:48:00.000-05:00

this originally appeared on nycmomsblog on December 11, 2008

This time of year is tricky, what with all the online shopping and packages that can never be received during regular daytime hours. I'm always either playing 'tag you're it' with the UPS and FedEx guys--scrawling notes on the backs of their slips with sharpie and rigging them to the door so they won't blow away but will be noticed by them on their return, or playing hide and seek with these same clever deliverymen who will sometimes take pity on me and find crafty places to hide my packages. Of course it always takes me awhile to think to read their handwriting, usually I just assume I've missed the package yet again. One guy leaves my boxes down in the stairwell (a dramatic word for the two steps down) of the garden apartment. Another guy sneaks the package between my garbage can and our neighbor's stoop, which makes me nervous because that's where we put recycling, sometimes, when our inside area overflows. Of course they only do this sometimes, and most of the time I just have to hope the planets line up and someone will be here to receive.

But the worst thing is to come home and find the vomit colored beige-pink slip from the post office several blocks away. Did they pick that gross color on purpose? How much different would it be if the slip was a pretty green, or a mango-yellow?

Of course once I read the fine print and realized that it wasn't just a plea to come try to find the package at the post office but rather, an invitation to a dialogue about how I might want them to attempt to redeliver it, even those ugly slips didn't seem so bad. I'd simply sign the back, stick it back on the door (again with clever rigging since it has no stickiness on it), and wait for the Post Office guy to bring it 'round again.

This morning however I got an email from Amazon stating that my post office had attempted delivery of my package (full of 'word combination locks' for my children--one of whom is anticipating a locker in middle school next fall, and the other of whom has taken up ice skating and so will need to become familiarized with the lockers at Wolman Rink, and the third of whom will need one just because the others have them) but that no one had been here to receive it (duh), and that it would be waiting for me at the post office.

This was confusing to me because I didn't expect the package for another few days, and because I never received the little slip notification from the post office.

After I dropped the kids off at school this morning I did a few errands and then attempted to return home only to find that my entire street was being blocked off for tree pruning. So when I set out to find a parking spot on another block my mind was doing its usual calculations about how I could maximize this unexpected extra mileage. I remembered the package at the post office.

I drove over and parked nearby and braced myself for what would no doubt be a really long and angry line. At one point my post office was rated 'worst in the city' and I heard a rumor that it was rated 'worst in the country,' but I never found evidence that that study had been done. There's no organization whatsoever, and long lines are often compounded by the fact that people who've gone to fetch something (like an ID) tend to be allowed to barge back into the building and go straight to the next available window ahead of the people in line. Sometimes the package slips are handled at the regular windows, and at other times, just as I'm about to get my very own teller, some new 'packages only' window will open up and I'll find myself forking over my slip along with about seventeen other slips and then they just come out in whichever order the grumpy teller deems fit.

When I got there there was no one in line. Hallelujah. I had no slip but I did have ID so I figured there'd be no problem. The woman however, wasn't interested in taking me at my word that I'd gotten an email from Amazon, even though I knew that the combination of a package with my name and address and my ID with matching information should have sufficed.

"We have a new system, since four weeks ago." She explained. Great. I needed the tracking order. A 'fine' escaped my clenched jaw and I turned to leave, visualizing the next hour or so, of looking for a parking spot, printing out my Amazon email, returning to find that dreaded long line, etc. All of this was feeling extra emotional to me since we only found out (yesterday!) that my four year old won't have school tomorrow, so my second day 'off' of the week wasn't going to resemble a day off at all (so much for slipping into a movie theater for a half price matinee while the kids were at school).

As I approached the door I found myself wishing there was some way to get that tracking number without going home and just as I was inventing a little handheld device that could access the internet it dawned on me...I already had one of those! I've had this Samsung Blackjack II now for about a month and despite the fact that it's been fun to check email on the fly (and depressing to realize that I don't get that many interesting emails), my main issue with it has been that I don't get reception in building where I teach three days a week--seems at&t doesn't work, t-mobile works fine, and Verizon works in all areas, even the basement and the elevator. So I've owned this little at&t device but because of the at&t poor-reception complication it hasn't felt like a life-saver yet.

Until today.

I whipped it out, and within minutes I'd called up the Amazon email, followed links to the tracking page, and was writing the tracking order down on paper for the teller, who seemed a lot friendlier this time around.

She was able to locate the package (eventually) and even called me 'sweetheart' as I left. There were tears in my eyes as I left, but not the same kind that I'd fought back moments earlier when I'd turned away in defeat, cursing the inhumanity--distraught at the fact that I could prove who I was and where I lived but that that wouldn't hold a drop of water in the face of their new and impersonal 'numbers only' system.

So an enormous personal victory today at the post office. Hard to believe I'd ever write that sentence. Anyone who lives in this part of Brooklyn would understand.

I Love You But...

2010-06-26T19:42:00.000-05:00

this post appeared on nycmomsblog.com on November 16, 2008

I love my family. My husband, my kids, my sister, my in-laws, my nieces, my nephews. I love my dad. I love my mom, my sister... I love my friends. But on the first Sunday of every November, every year, as I stand on the sidewalk just around the corner from my brownstone, I am struck with the realization that I probably don't love them enough.

For My Dad With Cancer! screams the permanent marker scrawled across the back of some NYC Marathon runner's purple shirt.

Running for My Mom!

In Loving Memory of (fill in the blank)! And so on and so forth.

The NYC Marathon becomes a blur of fast-moving, dedicated, people who love their families more than I love mine.

As I stand there applauding and shouting out the name of every person who bothered to draw their name out of tape on their shirt "Go Lucy! Great job Robert! Lookin' good James!' I feel like less of a human being. Do I even have a heart?

Probably not.

It's possible that the voice in my head that doesn't want me to work out is stronger than my capacity to love the people in my life. The few times I've tried to run more than a few blocks (and of course, I have to be wearing the exact right no-bounce bra--one that's earned 5 barbells in the Title Nine catalog--or I can't even attempt to dash across the street) my head is filled with this:

Oh, come on. Give it a rest. What's the point. You hate this! It'll never be over. This is going on forever. Nothing about this is good. Everything hurts. Just stop, why bother?

Stuff like that.

So family members and friends, I've said this to you every November, and I'll say it again. I will be so sad and sorry for what happened. I'll miss you more than I can ever explain. I will be filled with grief and I will pull the curtains closed and eat chips and dip in front of the television for months. I'll shave my head, I'll get a tattoo. I will go to a thousand dark movie theaters and sob away, in between milkduds. I will be unable to get out of bed.

I might consider moving to the Seychelles and starting over. And I might consider going about my life, business as usual, but with a hole in my heart, eyes that will never see the same way, and a brain that will be forever altered. And I might consider doing something heroic in your honor. But training for and then running twenty-six-point-something miles? Forget it.

I'll draw your name on my shirt. I'll wear that shirt all the time. I love you, everything I do will be for you. But I won't do that.

His Sister--His Beard

2010-06-25T19:00:00.000-05:00

I leave in a few minutes to take my daughter to see High School Musical 3. I'm dragging her ten year old brother along with me.

Actually, that's what he's hoping it looks like. In reality, we chose the 6pm movie time so he could come. The 4:40 time we originally chose would have clashed with baseball practice. And he wouldn't miss that for the world.

Poor guy, having to schlep along to see HSM3, right? But that's life with a little sister.

And he's pretty discerning about movies. He actually didn't want to see Wall-E this past summer, and Journey to the Center of the Earth came close to not being, I don't know, man enough? for him. He's more of an Ironman, Hulk, Dark Knight kind of kid.

But he does tend to gravitate towards the TV in the afternoon when the girls are watching Hannah Montana. And as the chief DVR-operator in the family, makes sure to tape High School Musical and other similar movies when he finds that they'll be coming on. Then he usually hounds his almost less-interested sister into watching them with him. Come on! he'll scold, we have to watch this before it gets erased! Once it's on, she'll drift away here and there, but he remains glued, blaming her for making him watch it, but glued nonetheless.

I remember growing up with a sister and being very intrigued by boy stuff. This is definitely one of the perks of growing up with opposite sex siblings. Maximum curiosity-satisfying. My poor son has had friends--boys with older or younger brothers--show up to play with him, and then watched in horror as they've gotten drawn into games of house, or family, or gotten sidetracked by Polly-pockets. Of course now that the boys are all ten they're officially uninterested in the girls' things. Officially uninterested, that is.

Unofficially? Who knows?

Last night he reminded her that the movie was opening today and then whumped in the car this morning when he found out we were aiming for an earlier show that would begin while he was still at practice. He acted like we were over-planning and, in a very casual slightly annoyed voice with the perfect tone of put-outness, suggested why don't we just all go together tomorrow or something? For logistical reasons, she and I decided to stick to the 4:40 plan, and I dropped them off at school. But as the day went on I started to feel bad for him. When would he get another chance to see High School Musical 3? When would the 'ugh they made me do it' moment happen for him, if not tonight? So I picked up some 6pm tickets, and I'll spring it on him at the end of baseball practice at 5:30.

Quietly, of course.

I won't say what we're doing in front of his buddies. I'll just let him complain about it in school on Monday with all the other boys who have sisters. Poor guy.

Average Joe Lane

2010-06-23T20:59:00.000-05:00

originally on nycmomsblog, summer 2008

I was watching the Olympics from my hotel room in Florida and noticed a guy named Keith Beavers from Canada preparing to jump in the water to swim in some competition that ultimately resulted in Michael Phelps winning another gold. This Beavers guy had an Olympic Rings tattoo on his bicep (or tricep?)--somewhere on his upper arm. He clearly got this tattoo in excitement about participating in the Olympics. You go guy. Good work, must have been a long hard road to get here, etc. etc. etc. Of course, the race began and he was in lane 2 and he ended up coming in 8th and it's hard NOT to watch and think--hmmm, kinda slow.

Of course this guy's not slow! Of course he's an incredible talent. But we'd just been shown this piece about Michael Phelps' 'genetic superiority' (a phrase that made me cringe as they broke down his parts, "dinner plate sized hands," size 14 feet that "may as well be flippers," the legs of an average man, the torso of a really tall guy...)--and, frankly, everyone else seemed kind of regular after that. Even the guy who ended up being the 8th fastest 200 meter individual medlier in the world.

Which is why I'd like to propose the Average Joe Lane.

How slow do the other swimmers look when the winner blows past them to the finish? Michael Johnson used to make the other guys look like they were stuck in mud or like they thought the race was over half way before they got to the finish line. You kind of felt bad that they even showed up. And let's face it, the guys in the outer lanes in the swimming pools look like they're just there as filler. Wouldn't it help put things in perspective (for all of us couch potatoes, eating York Peppermint Patties while watching the Olympics) to see how fast the average guy could run? swim? I don't know...throw a shotput?

I'm not suggesting that there be regular guy lanes in all the events. It clearly wouldn't make any sense in gymnastics--though it could be awfully entertaining. I've heard that the average American can do zero chin-ups. Does that mean that for every American who can do one there are about a dozen that can't do any and for every American that can do twenty there are two thousand that can't do one? (I'm in the can't do any category, by the way. Full disclosure, and all that.) I imagine an average American guy attempting to do the rings in the gymnastics competition and basically just hanging there from the rings yelling 'ouch' the whole time. I suppose watching Meredith Viera flop around on the gym equipment at Chelsea Piers while Shawn Johnson looks on supportively and amused comes close, but again, I don't need any help realizing how difficult those balance beam moves must be. I get it. I can't even stay on the tightrope in the wii fit game. It's hard, we know.

I am suggesting there be a regular guy lane in any sport with lanes. Any straight up race, that'd be a good place to start. Let's say the lane had a sponsor; we could have the Starbucks Average Joe Row, or the Doritoes Regular Dude Ditch. My sister came up with the La-Z-Boy Lazy Guy Lane. That has a nice ring to it. People could win the chance to be in the lane by tearing off labels or scratching off that silver film with a penny.

Perhaps the Average Joe could be plucked from the crowd minutes before an event. It's important that there be no opportunity to train for it. Average Joes finding out they were about to board a plane to China would be given a pretty broad packing list (swim suit, sneakers, sports bra...) and it would be great if the person could have average measurements or something. But that might be asking too much.

As much as I've been into watching these Olympics (and I never think I will be, it always sneaks up on me), it's not the gather-the-family 'round the tv opportunity I'd hoped it would be since the time difference with Beijing puts all the fun stuff on way after the kids have gone to bed. Having an Average Joe lane would really change it I think. It would, at least, make that Beavers guy seem more deserving of those rings on his arm.

In one swimming event, the announcer said about one of the faster women she doesn't like to do the hard work if she doesn't have to (explaining some rare necessary surge on her part). Hey, me neither! That's why I'm not an athlete, that's why I'm not in the Olympics. I'm like that swimmer, I tell myself, as I pop another snack into my mouth.

See? It's really really easy to sit and watch and feel kind of like 'maybe I could do that if I liked doing hard work.' And it's thoughts like that, coupled with my thinking that the 8th fastest guy in the world is a little slow, that make me realize that I could use a little perspective.

From my couch, in my air-conditioned hotel room, on my beach vacation, far from anything that resembles hard work.

World Wide Day of--Whoops

2010-06-22T18:51:00.002-05:00

My four year old woke up Saturday morning and put her soccer uniform on. Navy blue top with flames on the shoulder, maroon shorts, with a scratchy white waistband, 'knee badges,' and those impossibly thick navy socks. I said 'Oh there's a Blue Dragon in my house!' and she nodded in agreement since that's the name of her team. She smiled and added, but not a really scary one.

She then waited patiently at home while her brother and sister were shuffled to and from from their own athletic events. She played with her imaginary friend Sarah (who has several houses: one in Africa, one upstate near a little bridge in Beacon), and sat and played her new Zingo game by herself (I think..but Sarah might have been there) for about forty five minutes. Zingo had been a surprise gift for her yesterday when, after having her walk fifteen blocks under the Brooklyn Queens Expressway with me to fetch our car from a mechanic, I had to drag her to two different Brooklyn neighborhoods to fetch aforementioned brother and sister from various friends' houses.

At eleven thirty she ate half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then went off to soccer where she played like she usually does--running around the field after the ball, waving and beaming at everyone on the sidelines, stopping the ball with her hands to line it up for a perfect kick (a tactic that doesn't fly with the referees), and generally exhausting herself.

When she came home she took a bath and then asked to watch some television and I ushered her upstairs to watch a kids' show, because the guys were watching a crucial Mets game (the one where Santana ended up pitching the entire game). We turned on Noggin and saw a placid little scene with some fish in an aquarium. I checked the guide and noticed that the same 'show' was playing on Nickelodeon, our other favorite channel. Three hours of something called World Wide Day of Play. Hmm, maybe three hours of fun kids' shows? Perfect!

We watched the scene a little bit longer and then some words began to race along the bottom of the screen. Something like: Noggin is participating in Nickelodeon's World Wide Day of Play, a day when we celebrate all things active, so turn the tv off, and go play! We'll be off the air from 12noon to 3pm. Have fun!

My four year old and I stared blankly at the screen, waiting to see if the same words would rush by again, or if we'd just hallucinated. And then, here they come again...is this really happening? A warm sense of community flooded over me, what a great idea! Followed by a tinge of guilt, oh I'm one of the idiots who actually needs Nickelodeon to tell me to spend more quality time with my daughter.

Oh look, I said, playing along. They want us to go play instead of watching tv. Freshly bathed from her muddy midday soccer game, she looked up at me incredulously.

See? Those words are telling us to turn the tv off and go play a fun game! I wasn't sure if I'd have the stamina to keep up with a fun game, but it was still kind of interesting and I was inspired to share it with her. She looked back at the screen. Moose A. Moose walked on from stage right. 'Hey what are you still doing here?' he asked, looking out at us, standing there in the upstairs bedroom. 'You should be playing something! Turn off the tv!' (something like that).

Look, even Moose A. Moose wants us to turn the tv off and go play, I said.

But I want to watch Dragontales, she said.

Ummmmmm (I'd like to think this pause lasted longer, but it really wasn't that long). Okay, I said, scrolling through the higher numbers to find Kids On Demand. Select. Preschool. Select. PBSKids. Select. Dragontales. Select. Some episode about teamwork. Select. And I left her alone in the room, with a tiny bowl of cashews and almonds. A good snack for my soccer star, right?

A World Wide Day of Play a nice idea. But it's also nice to have about a zillion other opportunities to call up some great show for her.

Today is a rainy rainy Sunday, and she just spent the morning playing dodgeball and capture the flag in the backyard with her older brother and seven of his best friends. And once we get back from Gus's birthday party at two, it'll be nice to curl up and watch some kids' shows.

After a World Wide Morning of Play, we're ready to soak in some shows.

To Read or Not To Read

2010-06-15T21:18:00.003-05:00

I just got home from Curriculum Night at my kids' wonderful public school. No matter what grade a child is in, the teacher reminds the parents to read to their children. It's a promise that we continue to make, year in and year out, PreK on up to fifth grade. As they get older they're supposed to take on some of the reading, but we are never supposed to stop reading to them ourselves. Apparently it's great for them to hear more complicated passages and ideas--it builds their vocabularies and expands their minds, and makes them ready for higher levels of reading themselves.

I don't do this. Isn't that terrible? It's really the one thing they keep drilling into us. Read to your children. Keep on reading to your children. Read, read, read. I get it.

My kids have never known the feeling of curling up with one of us, hearing Harry Potter or Little House, or Anne of Green Gables, or whatever. I've read to them before. My son and I read The Great Illustrated Classics version of Frankenstein, and The Prince and The Pauper. And I read The Secret Garden to my daughter. But these are the exceptions...the handful of books I can recall sharing with them. And my oldest kids are only eight and nine. Still at that cuddle-up-and-read age (something that, apparently, won't be true forever).

So what's my excuse? I've done some of my own calculations on the subject (never a good thing, given my inability to consider dissenting opinions with a clear head) and I'vecome to believe that it's not about the reading, but rather the quality time with an adult. I choose to share my quality time with them in different ways.

We play lots of games. Skip-Bo is a favorite game of ours, and fantan too. Very simple concepts, but still room for bits of strategy here and there. The Game of Life is too long for pre-bedtime, and Clue should be perfect, except that my mind isn't usually that sharp at 8:30 or so (were there always so many rooms?) and then everyone's mind wanders a bit, and then it takes longer than it should. Qwirkle is a huge favorite--a little known game where you build on shapes and colors with tiles, kind of like Scrabble. Set is fun too.

And then there's the old 'event tv' bit. I know it's a cheap move, but we really do enjoy bonding around American Idol, or a crucial Mets game (like the one being played right now). Huddled under a blanket offering up criticism, taking turns singing during the commercials, or second and third and fourth getting some bad call? It all feels like classic family time to me.

These things are more my speed than curling up with a book. I have plenty of guilt about it--I am a big reader myself, but rarely 'model' it around the kids since much of my reading time takes place on the subway to and from work. Wouldn't it be great if they came into my room at night to ask a question, and found me wrapped up in a novel rather than catching up on last night's Daily Show? Yeah, it would be great. Just not now, not in this lifetime.

Plus I've tried reading to them at night and I really struggle with it. I'm just too tired by night time to be able to keep my focus, and have often reached the end of a passage without having paid attention to a single word of it. What's the point of that then? That doesn't seem like sharing. And there's often more inflection in my voice from trying to stifle yawns than from any kind of animated reading.

So there we were, just a few hours ago, perched on desks and tables at Curriculum Night. The principal smiled her knowing smile and urged all parents to continue reading to their children--she gave a nod and a warm smile in my direction (I have the kind of face that makes people think I'm ultra-responsible) and I smiled back knowing that she heartily assumes that I'm a shining example of a parent who reads to her children. But that knowing smile was a lie. My kids are missing out on something I've promised to offer them. And I won't get this time back, and so on and so forth. But they sure do know how to hold on to a seven in fantan, and how to play the wild cards in Skip-Bo. And maybe they'll be okay after all.

Fakebook

2010-06-15T21:18:00.000-05:00

My eleven year old son is mad at me. He's the only one of his peers who isn't allowed to have a Facebook account. I can handle him being annoyed with me about this, it's simple to me. I won't let him lie about his age and claim to be thirteen. That just seems wrong.

It's very clear-cut. In fact it's just about the ONLY clear-cut thing to me these days. When he's thirteen I'll sign him up myself. I have an account. I have nothing against it, and can see how it could even be a useful, if not insanely hovering, way to keep track of him, see what he and his pals are talking about, and so on and so forth.

A few months ago I sat with him to help him sign up for Facebook and it kept refusing him. Eventually I realized it was because he was too young. We tried to sign him up again, and I just kept looking at the birth-years it was offering. Having him claim to be born in 1996 was just so wrong to me.

I'm not always this clear on things. I don't have a firm stance on teeth-brushing (once a day is fine? skip it? no problem), movie ratings (I took him to see R-rated Kick-ass a few weeks ago and we both loved it), and we have very few limits on television--even just let him watch this (particularly brutal) season of 24. And in many ways I'm more permissive than many of these other moms. He's been riding the subway independently since he was ten, and did I mention I took him to see Kick-ass?

I've always enjoyed letting him be as up on what's current as he wants to be; I'm happy to send him out into the world able to keep up with water-cooler conversation. His love of Yu-gi-oh, and his ability to hold his own in a conversation about it, is what firmed up a bunch of his friendships on the first day of kindergarten, when he went off--painfully shy--to a brand new school. In theory I'd love him to have a Facebook account so he could communicate with every other boy in his class who has one. His email box is always full of new invitations to join. He can't believe I won't let him.

And I can't believe I'm the only hold-out. I'm universally undecided about things, and easily swayed.

I have a friend who feels like tattoos are the devil (I don't) and would much rather have her daughter pierce her belly button than ever ever get a tattoo. This baffles me, and reinforces for me how wishy-washy I tend to be about certain things. In my mind the piercing is so much more drastic. But tattoos or piercings? I don't know how I feel about them. And in reality, I'd probably be fine with either one.

But lying to join Facebook? I'm clear on this. I've let him order things online where he's had to check a box saying he was 18--because it was a one-time purchase and he was just the one at the keyboard handling the transaction. But claiming to be two years older to enter into this whole Facebook thing just seems drastic. He'll probably be on Facebook for the rest of his life. It's a longtime relationship, not a one-off like a movie or a pair of sneakers. I had a shtick at one point about how he'd be aging himself by two years, and that that would just be a crazy thing to do since those extra two years would just follow you online--forever (college applications, job interviews). It does occur to me though that you can probably change your age as often as you change your profile picture or your status. Maybe that's what all his friends will do (will the people at Facebook notice that some kids stay thirteen for two or three years?) Still. It just seems wrong.

And all of his friends are doing it? What are all of these parents thinking? Some of the most hyper-worried overly protective moms I know are allowing their eleven year olds to claim to be thirteen? Seriously, I'd love to know why. And not because I'm freaky-prudish about things because I am not freaky-prudish about anything. I'd just love to know how they justify it. I'm very curious to know how I--of all people--am the single unflinching parent out here. I am never THAT parent.

In order to join Facebook you have to be at least thirteen. Sorry kid. You're not.

But What if My Kids are Easy?

2008-10-18T06:45:00.007-05:00

We used to be in Caribbean nanny land—lovely maternal warm and giving. Our babysitter was beloved by all. I made it clear that I only wanted her to keep my children alive and hold them a lot…so I’d come home and the house would be a mess but she’d be holding my sleeping boy and that was just fine. Diapers would be changed (more often than I’d have asked), milk would be put in (more often than I’d have asked), and hair would be oiled (that was odd…our scrappy blonde boy would be greased into Little Lord Fauntleroy, more often than I would have hoped).

And then I stopped working, and we didn’t need her anymore. We were ready for the college babysitter-type. Someone fun, someone who needed the money, but preferably someone with loads of sitter experience, as there were still vegetables to encourage, pull-ups to manage, bedtimes to negotiate.

Now we’re moving further down the scale. My oldest two children know all the systems. It just seems like a logistical fluke that they, at ages 8 and 9, aren’t old enough to just stay home alone and care for their little sister. We really just need someone who's at least twelve years old. Hannah Montana would be perfect. There's a fourteen year old a few blocks away who my children adore. We need someone to be pretty and fun with my girls and not take offense that my son is going to just stay upstairs reading, watching tv, and playing video games. We need someone to be pretty and fun and welcoming if he meanders downstairs and wants to be included in a game or a project. We need someone who can dial 911 or open the front door and start shouting if anything goes wrong. But we don’t need anyone to do all the hands-on nanny-mommy stuff anymore. Just pretty, and fun, and old enough. And by the way I know the pretty part is harsh--fun is most important, but pretty means my little girl will develop a mad crush, and she's always better behaved when she's flirting.

So do I really need to pay the three-kid rate?

Babysitting rates have skyrocketed since our early days of being parents. Part of it is just that our neighborhood has become affluent (but we’re not), part of it is that it’s nine years later, and part of it is that Brooklyn is still right up next to Manhattan and they always have crazy-high prices. We've had the good fortune to be sort of grandfathered in at the older prices. Like how house cleaners and therapists up their prices every year, but then the rate stays the same forever.

Until now.

A potential sitter, an incredibly dynamic and wonderful woman, just let me know what the current rates are. She said that she was told the rates are $10 for one child, and $15-20 for two, and more for three. This of course, added up to her asking for over $20 per hour. Well technically I have three children. But we pay $15 an hour. We can’t afford much more than that (but that’s a different essay)—but more importantly, is coming to our house and hanging out for 4 hours or so really babysitting THREE children? Is it?

Sadly, 14 year olds aren’t around to do school pick-ups plus commute plus snacks and homework. And that’s what we need. I get it. Commuting on a subway with my three kids and then overseeing homework is substantially more than flopping around being pretty and fun in the confines of my living room. But more than $20 an hour is just too much for us.

And then I started to think about it. This three kid rate. Babysitting thee kids might mean three wacky toddlers, all rolling around in different directions like marbles, with full diapers, and drooly chins. Forgive me for feeling superior, but we're kind of the opposite of that (and that, by the way, should cost like $100 an hour if you ask me). My youngest doesn't even need help wiping her butt anymore.

Our three add up like this. Three kids come in, put their shoes where they go, wash their hands. One child gets to watch unlimited Dora, two children sit down and do homework. After homework, one child disappears upstairs to laze around with various electronic things like Gamecube or Naruto. Leaving one kid to sit and ask thoughtful questions, while drawing or playing solitaire, or making an art project out of stuff in our recycling bin or something. I know that bad things could happen, but our kids aren't at the drown-in-the-bathtub or fall-down-the-stairs age.

So maybe we shouldn't have to pay like the other people with three kids do.

Did I mention? My kids are easy.

Originally posted on nycmomsblog.com

Crayola True to Life Series

2008-09-11T20:41:00.006-05:00

Crossposted on Parentalapproval.blogspot.com

My youngest child just started school in the same building as her older brother and sister. Hallelujah! Only one PTA meeting to feel bad about missing every month, only one school asking us for more than we can give. It's simplified everything. The trick is that, now, she has to leave with them in the morning. No more packing them off to big kid school while we laze around in pajamas only JUST starting to consider what we want for breakfast, and what we should wear for the day. It puts a little more pressure on bedtime, and it puts a little more pressure on establishing some solid routines. Throwing out nighttime television (shhh unless the Mets are on) and morning television is a good beginning for us. Our little girl cannot tell time but 'after Dora,' and 'one more Backyardigans' has felt a little bit like 'I'm staying up til 8,' and 'I'm not going to bed til 8:30.' So cutting out those thirty minute chunks of time that eat away at her bedtime so easily seemed right. That left us with the question--well what are we going to do after dinner then? (Some of you will shudder as you struggle to answer the same question, and others will shudder at how ridiculously tv-centered our lives must be that we'd even have to ask it). Here's what we do: we do a lot of drawing, and then when the little one goes up to bed, we break out the board games she doesn't have the stomach for (she actually cheats at Candyland so we figure she's not ready for the hard stuff yet). So it was fun to be able to offer my kids the new and exciting Crayola True to Life stuff. Crayons, markers, and pencils, each with a tri-colored tip. I'm guessing the True to Life series gets its name from the idea that, in nature, no green is just plain green, no blue, just plain blue. In each case, there are a handful of obviously related colors (yellow/red/orange) and surprising combinations (purple/orange/red). The names of these blends are stunning--Maui Sunset, Grand Canyon, Yosemite Campfire... And we've all really enjoyed drawing with them. If we had to pick a favorite, we'd choose the crayons. There's something about the texture of the crayons and the blending of the colors that goes more hand in hand than in the case of the markers. Markers seem to me to be a bit more specific. If you want to color in something with a marker you tend to feel strongly about the color you choose. But with crayons, you get that kind of scrubbly texture anyway, and the colors don't tend to be as pure. So the subtle surprises in the crayons are slightly more satisfying than with the markers. A circle filled in with Amazon Rainforest (three green shades) with the marker creates a kind of schizophrenic disk of scribbled lines, yet in the case of the crayon, you end up with something that looks like a lemon that isn't ripe, with some extra greenness at one tip. In that instance, the True to Life series really does earn its name. As an art teacher, the only drawback I can see is that some children know exactly what color they want something to be, and don't feel very flexible about variations on that idea. Young children can be much more rigid in their expectations of their artwork than grown-ups tend to think they'd be. That said, I could see using the True to Life series being perfect for many different types of art projects--designs with watercolor overlays, invented flowers and fruits, or anything else where the surprises would be welcome. And in one final nod to the markers...I'm looking now at a 'board game' that my four year old made. Long intersecting lines form the boxes that your piece travels, and there's something really lovely about how the gold turns into purple and olive green. Who needs television after dinner? (stay tuned, this is only the end of week two).

My Summer Camp Acceptance Speech

2008-08-06T19:34:00.001-05:00

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you so much for this incredible award! I'd like to thank the members of the Academy for recognizing all of my hard work this summer. I know I know, there were people who didn't think I'd be able to pull it off, having three different kids in three different summer day camps these last six weeks. And there were certainly those who thought it couldn't happen. But look at me! I did it!

(Applause)

I did the math too. I was scared to do it back when we signed on for this, but now that it's over I allowed myself to do it. Check this out! Six weeks of camp times three kids, five days a week, all different drop-offs and pick-ups (I know, I know)...and sometimes in three different boroughs? One hundred and eighty transitions! And no child forgotten! And (get this) no extreme latenesses. I'd have about died if I'd ended up getting in trouble like Karen did, for picking her daughter up twenty minutes late that day. Yikes.

(Applause)

Of course we all know how saved I was by the late bird option at those three weeks of camp my seven year old did in Park Slope. Too bad I didn't discover that until the last week! I still haven't gotten the bill for those extra hours but it's gotta have been worth it, right?

(Laughter)

There are so many people to thank. Let's see, I hope I don't forget anyone.

Umm, I'd like to thank my husband for stepping in and handling some of the heavy-lifting, and especially that week where he did all the drop-offs and pick-ups for our nine year old and his friend at Mets Baseball Academy wayyy out in Long Island.

(Applause)

And also for the time we needed to sprinkle the kids around the city but I couldn't end up being stuck with the car (alternate side parking rules were in effect that day and I had an appointment in midtown!) and he agreed to be saddled with the van all day. But mostly for taking the time with me on those two nights--you remember those, right?--where I needed an extra adult and a piece of paper and a pencil and the cellphone in my hand to figure out the Sudoku of getting everyone set for the next day.

Then there's my friend Nadia, who lent me her car on the day when I'd figured out all the drop-offs and then realized at lunchtime that I had no way to get everyone home! Yowza! Good thing she was around. Good thing that weird light on her dashboard only came on at the end of the trip! Thanks Nadia!

I'd like to thank the traffic in the morning for being so agreeable, making it possible to nail two different 9am drop-offs two miles apart. One child was a handful of minutes early, the other a handful of minutes late. The camp counselors didn't even notice! I never thought I could pull that one off on my own! Too bad moms don't have stunt doubles, huh?

I'd like to thank the Children's Museum of the Arts in Soho for having that groovy ball-pit. Dragging my four year old from her camp to her brother's camp every afternoon became a lot easier once she discovered that gem. She actually wanted to go pick him up from then on!

Thank you Elena!--the mom from Park Slope I only met because I was looking to carpool with someone--anyone--who was heading into Soho for claymation camp. Thanks for not being as tit-for-tat as you had every right to be (and as some moms can be--which I find so annoying!). I know I was able to help bring your son home to you several times (that was helpful, I know) but I appreciate that you didn't keep score about it and didn't seem to mind when the scales tipped a little bit the other way. Thanks for being so flexible about all that! And thanks for feeding him on the nights we couldn't get to him til after dinner. Do I owe you anything for that?

(Music begins to swell)

Oh, umm, wait. I can't forget my kids.

(Laughter)

Wait! I didn't mean that, I mean, I can't forget to thank my kids. A hundred and eighty opportunities to forget one of of you and it didn't happen. Right? We made it, we really made it, didn't we? I'm so glad you each got to do the summer camps of your dreams. But the greatest part was that you were all so exhausted by the time you got home. And you were hardly at each other's throats since you hardly saw each other!

(Laughter, Music swelling)

Okay, so...thanks so much to everyone for recognizing what I managed to pull off this summer. It was such hard work, and at times I wondered if it was worth it but standing here, holding this award, knowing that you all really appreciate my efforts...? Wow. Really. Wow. I'm truly humbled by this honor, and I'd like to dedicate it to all the moms out there, slaving away behind the curtain, making everything work for their own families, thanklessly. It's too bad there isn't enough room up here on this podium for all of us.

Smoking My Kids

2008-07-29T05:08:00.004-05:00

In a recent essay in The New Yorker, David Sedaris talks about taking up smoking as a young man. He said it was as if he'd been fumbling around on a stage his whole life, and then the propmaster finally showed up.

At last! He knew what to do with his hands. Finally! He had an instant conversation-starter. Sure there were downsides to smoking, but to him, they paled in comparison to what were then some pretty obvious social benefits.

I get that. I really do.

I haven't smoked a cigarette in ages, but it was an awfully convenient accessory in college, and in some of the years after. Arrive at a party before anyone else I knew? Just ask someone for a cigarette or a light...boom!...instant interaction, with little flashes of knowingness, being now a smoker engaging with another smoker.

Traveling in a foreign country? Smoking'll come in handy too. First there's the comfort of seeing familiar brands abroad, and second there's another thing to have in common with someone whose language you might never understand. Smiling eyes, engaged hands...offering a cigarette, accepting a light. Piece of cake.

It occurred to me the other night, as I arrived to pick my middle child up from soccer practice, that my children are my cigarettes. I usually take my four year old with me to these soccer games but on this particular night I didn't have her with me. I found myself hesitating before approaching the group of parents. I was on my own. No prop, no built in distraction, no obvious conversation starter. Just me and a group of people I didn't really know. Usually it's not obvious that I don't really know them, so busy am I chasing around the four year old. And if she bounds towards them, golden-retriever-like, I lump along behind her and then end up having little snippets of conversation with them. Likewise, if she decides to roll down the hill over there over and over and over, I'm perfectly comfortable setting up a blanket and sitting alone on it with a magazine, keeping an eye on her, but also keeping near her and feeling justified in my decision to set up camp away from the other grown-ups. On this particular night I didn't really know what to do. Aiming directly towards the group of other parents seemed brash and forward. My intent would be clearly visible, and if I wasn't greeted with eye contact and welcomed into the fold I wouldn't really know how to get away. But setting up camp alone seemed ridiculously unsocial. I felt naked without her. It was then that I remembered the Sedaris piece. I was on the hilltop without my prop, and I wasn't sure how to behave.

I started thinking of all the ways that my kids have been my cigarettes through the years.

The biggest thing that stands out is the first grown-up party my husband and I were invited to after our first baby was born. Of course we brought him, he was just a few months old. But this wasn't a party full of parents, it was a medical school crowd. Sleek Grey's Anatomy folk mingling, having adult conversations about adult things. Since my social life had been swallowed up by pregnancy and childbirth--meaning that it was all I was ever required to talk about, I'd completely lost the ability to chat up strangers, if we weren't talking about episiotomies or cracked nipples. So there we were, my husband and me and the baby, attempting to schmooze and mix, but really we just kind of hung out by the dip all night and tried to steer conversations towards the baby. We fought over who was going to hold him (because whoever wasn't holding him might be asked to weigh in on some topic like politics or graduate school), and the poor kid probably got about seven diaper changes. Lull in the conversation? Oop, think I should go change the baby. Kind of like having to go put OUT that cigarette.

We took the boy to Chile when he was almost two. He was a platinum blonde kid whose looks got us more and more attention the further we travelled from Santiago. In one beach town about seven hours north of the capital, every restaurant we went into seated us in a front window. Places that my husband and I might have been nervous to go into--you know that uncertain feeling at the threshold of a new place, where you wonder if it even is a restaurant? No problem when there's a baby around.

I just returned from my twentieth college reunion. I brought my four year old. It didn't make sense to many, but it made perfect sense to me; I've since found out that the proper term for her in this case is 'distance regulator'--a chapter heading in books about intimacy (and how people avoid it, I'm guessing, though I haven't peeked). It was a perfect weekend, the perfect amount of being with old friends, and the perfect amount of being interrupted--oh, excuse me for a minute, I need to make sure she finds the dessert table--as well. There were extras on hand to help out with her, but it was always ultra-convenient to have her in the periphery.

Maybe someday I'll quit. Oh wait, I mean, maybe someday my children will grow up and move away and I'll be forced to find my way back to being comfortable without them. Or maybe I'll move on to some other kind of 'distance regulator.' I have a hunch that a blackberry might do the trick.

Babysitter Rejection

2008-06-17T14:20:00.002-05:00

My most vivid rejection memory from childhood is of playing in the front yard with two older neighbor girls--the one who I choreographed the Dancing Queen routine with who ended up working at the U.N., and the one who became a track star in high school who teaches public school in the South Bronx. The Dancing Queen/U.N gal decided that we should race to her front door and so we all started to run there. I got there last and by the time I got up to the little cement step with the white iron railing they'd shut the door and announced that I wasn't allowed to play with them anymore. What a terrible feeling! I'd been slow, I'd been duped, I'd been dumped.

Aside from that, I wasn't the victim of a lot of rejection in my early years, or even in my later years. Maybe that's why I don't have tough-rejection-proof skin. Maybe that's why I can, on a certain kind of day, feel rejected so easily. Maybe that's why I can find rejection in the strangest places. Maybe that's why I cringe so much at the thought of calling around for a babysitter.

I know it's ridiculous. I do. I'm not always this sensitive. Just when I'm not feeling at the top of my game, or when I'm feeling a bit blue or disconnected--more often in the winter than in the summer. If I could just use that knowledge to my advantage I'd be fine. But I never know when a pair of tickets might end up in my lap, or some other kind of night out with my husband might present itself, and all of a sudden, no matter my mood, I find myself in need of a sitter. And the agony begins.

Take Jane. Jane never calls back right away. (Why doesn't she ever call?) But she usually comes through in the end--'Hi it's Jane? I'm so sorry I never called you back! Do you still need someone? Cuz I can do it if you haven't found anyone else.' Great, Super. She loves the kids, and ours are the only ones in her life. She's in school with a weird schedule and so I know (intellectually) not to feel bad if a Wednesday evening class means she can't watch them on a Wednesday night. But still...why doesn't she ever call?

Then there's Carly. Carly watched the kids once and wrote us a long note describing how wonderful they were. And now she's NEVER available. But I keep trying, especially since there's always that big gap between leaving a message for Jane and hearing that she can do it. Carly always sounds convincing when she says she feels bad, and she's a bigtime neighborhood babysitter and I'm usually calling at the last minute--so there's a chance she really is always busy. But still...should I be reading between the lines here?

Yolanda is fabulous, but has a way of accepting a job that unnerves me and makes me feel desperate. 'Yeah sure,' she'll say drowsily as if I just asked her if she liked milk in her tea. 'You can do it?' I implore. 'Yeah. No problem.' I can hear her shrugging through the phone. This indifference (even though it's a yes) triggers some nervous energy in me and I find myself prattling on 'really? really, it's okay?' It must drive her nuts. She said 'Yeah, sure' four mintues earlier and I'm there nervously rambling on, 'really? tomorrow? So, you can do it tomorrow? Really?' Several times I've gotten off the phone with her, still not confident that she understood what I was asking.

Adding to the awkwardness is that I call some of these women so infrequently it's impossible to avoid calling them in weird places and at weird times. Like in the middle of their own wedding ceremony ('whoa, sorry...I mean, congratulations'), on the other side of the world ('ouch, what time is it there?'), or in the wake of some tragedy ('ohhh, sorry...' I'll say, feeling guilty that I'm calling about such a ho-hum-life-goes-on reason--'so I guess that means you can't watch the kids so Joe and I can go out to dinner?' I might add sheepishly, depending on how desperate I'm feeling). Several Pratt students have just moved on with their lives (tends to happen to twenty-one year olds after they graduate): Peace Corps, Boston...but I rarely see this coming and feel foolish when my call finds them in some far off place.

And don't even get me started on the no-shows. Or the last-minute no-explanation cancelers. To be sitting in my going-out clothes with the kids in the living room all hopped up on pre-babysitter adrenaline in anticipation of some girl who never shows up is the worst feeling. My four year old LOVES babysitters, my seven year old loves it when ANYONE does an art project with her, my son LOVES that his sisters leave him alone. It's like being stood-up times four. I can know that it's a reflection of the lousy woman who didn't come, and not a reflection on me or my kids. But in the moment it feels pretty personal.

Hooray! I just got a pair of tickets to Wicked! What fun! Joe scored Knicks tickets! Wonderful! my friend just invited us to Ethan Hawke's new show! And ohhhhh crap....I think, picturing a stack of phone calls to wonderful women with busy social lives and oddly-timed classes. All it takes is one yes. One yes erases all the uncertainty, all those gaps of not knowing. It's just too bad it can take so long to find it.

Ring Around the City

2008-05-02T14:22:00.002-05:00

My daughter is four and her friend Zed is 3. He was over the other day and they played like they usually do, all over the house. A little tv in the living room, some upper bunk time in my son's room, some action figure exploration, some water play in one of the bathrooms, sometimes they manage to sneak cookies upstairs and I end up vacuuming her bed with one of the funky hose attachments, to get rid of all the crumbs.

At one point the two of them started walking awkwardly across our oriental rug near the kitchen. They were kind of measuring out their steps and holding hands. She announced to all of us (Zed's mom, and several older siblings who were doing homework at the kitchen table) that she and Zed were getting married and we'd all have to yell out 'yip yip yerray,' at the right time.

She mumbled something about 'spitting up flowers,' though she might have meant 'putting out flowers.' Didn't matter, her imagination is pretty vivid and as long as a few of us waved our arms around and said 'flowers flowers flowers' she was pleased. They marched a bit, got distracted by Scooby Doo for a bit, and then remembered to kiss. He sat frozen while she puckered up and moved towards his face in slow motion. She made it to his chin, at which point we all yelled 'Yip Yip Yerray!' My camera was charged, which is rare in off-the-cuff moments like this one, so I even snapped a picture. Very very cute.

Eventually Zed's mom decided to head home to try to make a real meal for her kids. My older daughter went with them (it's the only time she eats vegetables), and my youngest, the new bride, got engrossed in Scooby Doo once more.

I did everything but make dinner. I folded sheets, sorted socks, watched some MSNBC, vacuumed up some more Milano cookie remains. I sat down at my computer to check emails and noticed my skinny wedding band sitting near the keyboard. It was then that I remembered taking both bands off much earlier in the day, during yet another frantic 'calgon take me away' email-checking moment--pretty soon they'll have to change that expression from a watched pot never boils to a checked email never arrives--nothing major going on in email land, but it begs to be checked every time I walk by my computer. Earlier in the day I'd walked home from Manhattan--over the Williamsburg bridge, and I'd gotten caught in a really chilly drizzle. I must have slipped both wedding bands off in an attempt to pare down and warm up, plus maybe my fingers were a bit swollen from all the walking.

So there was my skinny wedding ring--the one my husband and I designed to match his grandmother's engagement ring that he'd given me when we got engaged. I'd long since stopped wearing the engagement ring because I don't do well with jewelry that's pokey or with anything that requires extra thought. I'd managed to snag bathing suits (when did bathing suits start costing $80?) and scratch the cheeks of all of my children, drawing blood at times, forgetting the sharp art deco edges that held the diamond in place. I began to wear his grandmother's own wedding band instead, in addition to the skinny one we made. A thick chunky circle of sunflower-halves that gets much more attention than I could have ever imagined. It's practical, doesn't act like a weapon, and gets along nicely with lycra and nylon.

But it wasn't there.

Honey...I began, realizing that it was going to be hard to get her interested in anything now that she had Scooby Doo all to herself. Honey...I continued. Remember Mommy's shiny special ring?

I was feeling a bit frantic, but had to approach the situation with caution. Kind of like dismantling a bomb. Snip the wrong wire--in this case, reveal how important this is or act too accusatory, and the whole thing might explode.

What Mommy? She looked at me idly out of the corner of her eye.

Well, where do you think it might be? I asked cheerfully.

She shrugged noncommittally. I dunno.

Well, do you think you put it somewhere? A song in my voice--again, cross the line into 'you might be in trouble' territory and I'd lose whatever chance I might have of enlisting her help.

Maybe upstairs? She suggested. Maybe upstairs--but that's too vague. Maybe she's just looking to get rid of me and all this pestering.

Where upstairs? Another shrug. I dunno.

Well...did you put it on?

Shrug/I dunno.

Did you play with it?

Shrug/I dunno.

Could it be under the couch?

Maybe! I check it now, she said slipping under the pulled out futon where she and Zed had spent part of the afternoon. Nope, she said, backsliding out. Not there.

Where do you think it might be, I asked again.

Maybe in Zeddy's pocket?

Zeddy's pocket?

Yep. Maybe in Zeddy's pocket?

Did you put it in Zeddy's pocket?

Shrug/I dunno.

Was she saying this to put the whole thing to rest?--or could she be telling me the truth?

Zed is a pockety kid. He always shows up in blue jeans and several layers of shirts--each of which usually has a pocket somewhere, topped off by a jean jacket. This wasn't very specific. I think his boots might even have pockets.

Which pocket do you think you might have put it in? I asked.

Shrug/I dunno...pause...maybe the blue one.

The blue pocket?

Shrug/I dunno.

I went to the phone and called his mom. They were eating their healthful meal when I called. Zeddy stand up, I heard her say. And then. Yep, here it is. I've got your ring. She put it on the mantel for safe keeping. It was on the mantel in her house eight blocks away, deeper in Brooklyn.

Phew. Huge sigh of relief. The bomb was dismantled--the red digits stopped somewhere just before zero. Of course this was a teachable moment. But how? Should this be the time that I lose it completely and show my child who's the boss? The moment she'll always remember, the one that will make her afraid to go near any of my stuff? The one that might end up being her first vivid memory? Nope. Just a good time to remind my kids that the truth is always best.

I'm not even mad because I'm so happy that you told me the truth, I told her, but frankly I had to compete with the 'and we would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for you meddling kids' moment so I'm not sure she heard me at all.

I picked the ring up a bit later when I went to pick up my other daughter. The mom handed it over to me and laughed nervously. She was almost more freaked out that it had been in his pocket than I was. That she'd been in possession of it, and we might not have ever really found it.

I'm not one of these moms who has fun match-making toddlers--I understand the interest in doing it, but I think it does them a disservice, acting like they're grown-ups to be instead of little kids who are. But it would be awfully convenient if, eventually, she and Zeddy did fall in love and get married. She's already given him her great-grandmother's wedding ring, we've already yelled yip yip yerray. We'd be those kinds of people--the ones with the excellent stories to tell at the wedding.

Loving My Tree

2008-03-31T17:55:00.002-05:00

My seven year old daughter and I have been taking African Dance classes at our local YMCA. It's a family class full of mothers and daughters, led by a beautiful and powerful woman, accompanied by an energetic and incredibly focussed drumming teenage boy.

As long as we've lived in Brooklyn I've been tempted by classes like this; friends of mine have raved about African dance, Belly-dance, etc. Problem is I've never danced at all ('cepting for those occasional moments when the mood strikes--rare rare times indeed, especially if alcohol isn't involved) and have been basically too uptight and self-conscious to try anything with the word 'dance' in it. But like people who get dogs find that their social lives pick up, so I've discovered how many more things I'm willing to try in the name of my children. What a fantastic excuse they are to get out in the world, to try new things!

Taking my daughter to this 'family class' became a safe entree into the world. And I've really loved it. Hard to believe I could love anything that involves prancing around in front of an enormous mirror in front of other people for an hour, but I really do. Moving in concert with a roomful of women--hammering out steps and movements, moving as one, applauding each other, it's fantastic.

One day after class my daughter said 'Mommy whenever you raised your arms up everyone could see your belly.' Of course I'd noticed this, and because I am who I am I'd considered being embarrassed about it. But it's hard to feel that way in a class full of strong rhythmic heavyset mamas--where size is strength, and where self-consciousness of that sort would seem as out of place as pausing mid-beat to apply eye-liner.

Years ago I saw Eve Ensler's The Good Body on Broadway. I remembered snippets of a wonderful speech given by a Masai woman about her body called Love Your Tree.

"Its your stomach. Its meant to be seen...look at that tree? Do you see that tree? Now look at that tree. (Points to another tree) Do you like that tree? Do you hate that tree cause it doesnt look like that tree?"

In the afterglow of this particular class, I turned to my daughter and replied "I'm proud of my belly, my body's given me three strong children and a wonderful, capable life. It's part of who I am and how happy I am and how proud I am to have had all of my wonderful experiences."

She considered this for a split second and then said 'Oh, well I was embarrassed."

"You were embarrassed when your own belly showed?" I asked, cringing at the thought that she be on the verge of being crippled by self-consciousness.

"No Mommy, I was embarrassed when YOUR belly showed."

At any other time this might have pinched, but again, there in the wake of that empowering class, I channelled the Masai woman and found the words to say "Well I'm not embarrassed about my belly, so you don't need to bother being embarrassed by it either. It's just a waste of your own good energy."

Of course, it was a moment of mommy-strength not unlike the power we're supposed to access in order to lift a small car off of one of our children in an emergency. And this comment does not speak to any consistently true feelings about my body. But it felt right to say it, and I'm hoping she heard it. And now I want to play Belly's song Feed theTree over and over (because it seems related), and tack Love Your Tree up on the refrigerator. And see if we can't get some major tree-appreciation going.

Don't Be My Guest

2008-03-13T15:24:00.001-05:00

The other day I overheard my daughter arguing with her friend Fifi, who was visiting our house. They were both standing with their hands on their hips, bending forward in rage, noses almost touching. They're four.

"But I'm the guest!" Fifi said.

"No, you're not!" responded my own child.

They were in a squabble about who was going to go first with my nine year old's magnetic dart board. Needless to say this item only held their attention for as long as their fight lasted; they moved on to find other things to fight about moments later.

"Yes, I'm the guest. I'm at your house!" Fifi said again.

"Noooooooooo..." my child started slowly. Condescendingly. "I'm the guest" (actually, she says 'ine' instead of 'I'm' so I'll just insert that from here on).

Fifi saw me lurking in the doorway and looked up at me, confused. "She says I'm not the guest, but I am the guest and the guest always gets to go first," she insisted.

"The guest does always get to go first," mine countered. "But ine the guest. Remember? Your mom said so yesterday."

"But that's when you were at my house. Today I'm at your house so I'm the guest."

"No ine always the guest. You were there when your mom said it!" Then she started to tick the number of times off on her fingers......"your mom told me ine the guest, Chloe's mom told me ine the guest, Aliza's mom told me ine the guest...ine always the guest!"

OHHHHHH, I finally realized what was going on. At this moment, as with other similar moments, I remembered that Fifi's eleven days younger than my own daughter. Yet another example of something I forgot to teach my kid. Don't even get me started on the time the boy who's four months younger showed us all the movements to eensy weensy spider. I hadn't even taught my child the song.

In my girl's world, 'guest' has nothing to do with location, it isn't a status that can change. She's been told she's the guest by so many moms, so consistently, that she thinks she's perma-guest. Must be nice to live in her world.

Fifi turned to me for help. Instead of doing what I should have done, instead of intervening on Fifi's behalf (after all, she was the guest, shouldn't I have worked harder to make her comfortable in my home?), I just gave Fifi a look of exasperation. "You know what honey? she just doesn't understand" I explained." I'll have to explain it to her, but I think I'll have to do it another time. I don't think she's in a position to understand it right now." Fifi (did I say she was younger?) shrugged her shoulders and moved on to play with some other seldom-played-with item that was about to be elevated to sudden preciousness. And so the afternoon went.

I stuck to my word and I did try to explain the concept to my four year old. Several times. She nods like she understands, but of course she doesn't like it. Massively demoted, if you ask her. Sometimes when we walk to school and she's doing things like peering in pipes for watery eyeballs, or balance-beaming her way across someone's stone ledge, I see an idea flash across her brain, and she stops me and says "Mommy, sometime when no friends are at my house, can I be the guest?'

"Sure" I say. "No problem."

Pondering the Piano

2008-03-06T20:38:00.004-05:00

The jury's still out on whether or not the piano was a good idea.

We inherited it from a neighbor who 'had no room for it.' Meanwhile, when I showed up to the neighbor's house to get a visual on it, I discovered an enormous house with a grand parlour and visible baseboards, NOT a cramped apartment as I'd hoped. No, this wasn't a true 'we have no room for it,' in which case taking it off their hands and putting it into our HOUSE might have seemed like a reasonable thing to do. It was one of those enormous living rooms where you can actually see the pretty brown stripes on the edges of the wooden floors. We have those stripy edges, but every inch is covered with some bookcase, couch, cabinet, or other vital bit of furniture. When my daughter needed a wall against which to practice hand-stands when she was taking gymnastics at Chelsea Piers we couldn't cough one up for her.

'Want to play it?' The husband offered. I stared at the pretty piano and the inviting keys. I only know three songs, and they're all duets. Testing this piano by playing Chopsticks just didn't seem like the right thing to do. I kept my hands low in my coat pockets and said 'no, I just want to see it.'

He then tapped out all 88 keys to show me which ones were dead and which ones worked. The working ones worked beautifully. If I'd thought to try the intro to the Entertainer (my other big piece) or the bottom parts to any of the three duets I know (Heart and Soul being one of them) I would have discovered that some of the dead keys are kind of central and vital to my limited repertoire.

Then he sat down and played a song to show me that the pedals worked. Pedals? I'd never gone near them, except to make big Halloweeny effects. I had no idea how to use them in a real song. Or in Heart and Soul or chopsticks. The song was beautiful. The piano was free. (The movers were not). How could I go wrong? I figured if he could make such a gorgeous sound then it would suit my children's basic needs--twinkle twinkle, up the swing (up the swing I go so high...then I come down from the sky...up five keys, down five keys), some simple stuff.

So I set about rearranging our living room so we could absorb it. The rearranging led me to weed out our 'game cabinet,' which led me to clean out my 'office supply drawer,' which led me upstairs to weed through the 'dress-up clothes' and to find a new home for the 'bin of plastic food.' I decided to keep one 'tangle of unknown black cords' but decided to toss another 'tangle of unknown black cords,' based on very little investigation into what devices any of those black cords might have operated. A decision I may regret next time I'm looking to download home-movies or plug a dvd player into a cigarette lighter.

Then the big moment--the arrival of the piano. 'Why those guys speaking only Spanish?' my four year old asked, referring to the Russian-speaking and very-efficient piano delivery guys. Man number one walked into the living room to see where it was going to go and said 'nice place,' which I took as an enormous compliment, as though I'd given him a tour of the whole house (all 1600 square feet of it) and agreed that I'd chosen the exactly perfect spot. He didn't make a snide remark about how he'd just moved it out of a prominent spot in a much bigger home, which I appreciated.

They ootched it into place, did a bit of drilling (?) to shore up the leg that was very wobbly (I hadn't thought to kick the legs when I'd gone to visit it), and left. Us. Alone. With. The. New. Piano.

It's been in the house now for almost 48 hours, and I've had to drive our seven year old daughter away from it about seven times already. Play it more quietly, I beg her, if the tv's on and she decides to hammer out twinkle twinkle, or the swing song. Or there's the mildly supportive 'great! you played it like nine times, maybe that's enough?' Why hadn't I anticipated any of this?

After being rearranged to make room for the piano, the computer desk now makes a big L that divides the living room a bit, and if I'm at my computer and my daughter's at the piano her left shoulder is brushing my right shoulder. I've tried to show her that if she kind of leans the heel of her hand against the rim of the piano the keys make a quieter sound. It's a subtle thing I'm trying to show her, and not always effective. But I try anyway.

And she's my piano player. The four year old just bangs away and I don't even try to stop her, which isn't fair, I'm reminded. And it isn't fair. And if our nine year old son approaches it it's a different story too, since he's officially not interested in it. So when he tries to tap something out I rarely stop him, which isn't fair. And it really isn't fair. I know.

I'm hoping that once the dust settles, the kids won't feel they have to play the piano every time they walk by it. It'll also help when we figure out how to lower the little thing that covers the keys. It's there, we saw it when the guys installed the piano, but once it was lifted up there's no visible way of lowering it again. Once that gets sorted out I suppose it'll be easier for them to resist. And yes, I get the irony. I got us a new piano that I hope the kids don't ever play.

The whole reason I got the piano is a strong belief that my kids should grow up in a house with a real piano. I did, and I hated lessons, but I learned those damned duets, and it's fun to bang them out sometimes. And there's something about kids and pianos and being good at math, isn't there? And my son doesn't want to learn any instruments so that's a good reason to have him live with a piano, right? So he can have a bit of familiarity with one? Because this is the closest he might ever get to a real instrument.

Oh, and the duets? We've tried a few of them but very few octaves have all the proper keys working. I tell myself it's better than nothing. But I'm just not sure yet.

The Cat's in the Cradle and the Song's in my Head

2008-02-27T06:22:00.005-05:00

Attachment parenting all the way, was the way we went when the kids were young. Then, when they were toddlers I reclaimed my me-time. I went out for a movie almost once a week, or to dinner with friends, or even the occasional night or two away. We hardly ever used babysitters, but my husband realized that a satisfied wife was a happy wife, or vice versa, and he fully supported all of my little escapes.

If the kids ever gave me sad puppy-dog eyes and begged me to stay I felt zero guilt, since I'd worn them in slings, nursed them forever, and let them share my bed for years and years and (in some cases) years. Other moms had a harder time pulling away for these evening escapades. Friends who worked full time. Friends who only saw their children in waking hours (as opposed to our 'round the clock snuggling). But not me. Walking out of the house was one of the easiest things I did.

But now my kids are a bit older. Old enough that I'm starting to see this part of our lives coming to an end. And walking out of the house just got a lot more complicated.

The other night I was dashing out to meet some girlfriends for a late dinner. I hadn't seen these women in two months, especially now that several of us have started to return to work. We try to get together a few times a year.

My nine year old son looked at me and said 'but you always go out, why can't you stay and watch American Idol with us?' and even though he was completely wrong about the *always* going out bit, what he said really resonated. His words may have been 'stay with us,' but what I heard was 'I won't always want you to watch stuff with me.' With his skateboard-length hair and shifting fascination from home and family to local sports teams and school chums, he looked like a kid who was about to be a teenager. The type who might really want me around, but who certainly wouldn't come out and admit it. His posture was already starting to change from enthusiastic youngster to been-there, done-that.

My seven year old daughter climbed into my lap and asked me to stay. She said 'don't run out,' but of course all I heard was 'time's running out.' She still kisses me full on the lips, and almost seems to have a magnet in her that makes her press her whole body up against me, as often as possible. But there's a look that crosses her eyes when something doesn't go her way, and the older she gets the more it seems she thinks I'm the reason these things aren't going her way. And in that look I see the adolescent she might become. And it doesn't seem to be the type who'd rather hang out with me than do anything else.

And of course, like so many things in my parenting thanks to all the little gems that have seeped into my subconscious--when I say 'later' or 'tomorrow we'll do that' or anything along those lines I feel like the lame-o parent we all grew up despising in Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle.

As a fifth grader listening to that song (at any age before turning into a parent for that matter) the dad just seemed so shallow. Now I understand him completely. He's just doing his grown-up things and loving his kid. Adoring his kid, but still doing his things. After all he had 'bills to pay.' What was the guy supposed to do? Go into foreclosure? He had a lot to do, that's why he couldn't play with the new ball. Listening to that song when I was a kid, I imagined the dad was off to play golf, or go whittle in solitude somewhere. Now I'm thinking he might have had to fold the laundry, or take the car to the shop, or return an important phone call from a relative that might end up taking so long it could pre-empt the post dinner board game he'd promised.

*Sigh*

And look at me! I'm not running out to pay the bills, I'm meeting friends for dinner. I shudder at what the young me would have thought if the dad in the song had admitted to preferring something so indulgent to being with his son instead of remaining so vague as to invite all sorts of interpretations. Or malicious grown-up-distrusting misinterpretation.

As a kid, I thought it was great that the son in the song grew up to give the dad a taste of his own medicine. 'Right on, kid!' 'Attaboy!' Now I look at my own kids and think 'cut me some slack,' 'look how much I do for you,' 'I just need to see my friends, please understand.'

So this is where we are now. I'm beating myself up with Harry Chapin. This sort of self-flagellation isn't a first for me. Remember those old commercials where you'd see footage of some adorable girl in a princess dress spinning in a backyard and then the screen would go black and the words 'killed by a drunk driver' would fill the screen? That final frame haunted me so much it was hard to enjoy their exuberant childness, since I couldn't stop thinking 'what if this film clip ends up on one of those ads?' and I'd be flooded with sadness. I'm only just now able to go back and enjoy footage of my children as toddlers, now that I know they've made it this far.

My son is only nine. My oldest daughter's seven. I know they're not exactly on the brink of being teenagers. I'm hoping that 'not now mom I got a lot to do' is pretty far off. But the Cat's in the Cradle's dad's list of offenses began when his kid was pretty young--the son had only 'just arrived the other day' and he was already catching planes--so I guess I'm just wondering if there's still some time to undo some damage while they're still paying attention.

Maybe I should just hunker down in the house for awhile and be soaked up by these children. Maybe the movies that are in the theaters now can wait. Maybe my friends will still have the same fun gripes and energy for me in fourteen years when my youngest is off to college. Maybe we can wait and get together then. We're gonna have a good time then.

Four Wives

2008-02-03T11:07:00.000-05:00

When I started to write for nycmomsblog I was offered an advanced copy of a novel--Four Wives by Wendy Walker. It was my first official 'perk' as a mom-blogger (unless you count the awkward event hosted by an office supply chain in which I was served pinot noir and bruschetta and shown their new line of paper shredders and GPS systems) and I happily accepted it. Full disclosure. I didn't think I'd be sitting down to write a review of it, even before I read it. I've never been moved to write a book review. And unless I've had a particularly awful experience with some kind of place or product, I'm not generally moved to write at all. I was just kind of intrigued at the thought of having a piece of fiction sent to me, just because. Besides the only things I write about are things specific to my own life as a mother. Even if I loved the book I couldn't imagine a scenario where I'd be sitting down to rave about it. I couldn't imagine that it would affect me the way it did.

At first, the author's name didn't mean anything to me, but when I got the book in the mail and looked at the author's picture, I realized I recognized her. I met Wendy over twenty years ago. We were in the same wedding party. My biggest memory of her is that she drove to the wedding in a day from somewhere down south and she showed up with a half-sunburned face and a sunburned arm and we were all to wear strapless gowns. I haven't seen her or heard anything about her since then, and that was probably, like, 1991.

The cover of Four Wives is a shot of a red bikini top floating on the multi-blued surface of a swimming pool and I was surprised to think that the Wendy Walker I remember would write a trashy novel. The Wendy I remember was determined to fight stereotypes about women and sex and I have a vague memory of a story of her protesting certain gender-based dress codes at some powerhouse Wall Street company where she used to work. Sheeplike in my desire to be accepted in my first few years in the workforce, this story of her strength and resolve made a huge impression on me.

Optimistically, I took Four Wives with me on a two-week tropical vacation. I've carted many books around with me on many vacations (Middlesex got a free trip to Berlin a few years ago, and I never even cracked the cover) and was hoping that I'd have a chance to read it. Thanks to children with serious jetlag and way-early bedtimes, I had plenty of time. And then I realized I was wrong to judge this book by its cover (forgive me for the obvious, but there's just no better analogy).

The first few chapters are named for the main characters: Janie, Love, Gayle, and Marie, and the book moves along swiftly. Janie's having an affair, Gayle's hopelessly rich, Love's consumed by her new baby Will, Marie's working to juggle work and home.

Initially the women are all recognizable. We've all read about adulterous moms, wealthy isolated women, strung-out moms, and the disenchanted moms aiming to have it all. And as in familiar beachy books, the plot clips along easily--one bite-sized chapter after another. I thought I'd polish it off quickly, but I soon slowed way down. I realized I couldn't gloss over any of the descriptions. They were loaded with insight. And I've been thinking and talking about many of Walker's observations ever since.

In her introductory chapter, Love goes to her baby's crib in the night. He's crying, clearly hungry, but she's supposed to be sleep-training him. All of her daytime promises, and the 'rules' go through her mind. "Why had raising children become about denying them the very things they craved?" she wonders before caving in and nuzzling him. It's something I've considered many times. Bringing babies into the world only to start toughening them up right away has always seemed so cruel to me and has, fortunately for my kids, informed many of my parenting decisions.

But it's the next line that really resounded. After berating herself for being 'a complete failure' for nursing him instead of leaving him to cry it out, she settles "into the state of defeat--a familiar place now."

The familiarity of the feeling of having failed is an enormous idea for me as a mother. It's almost as though I walk around hoping I don't fail at something (please let the children behave in the restaurant, please let my daughter share with Fifi, please let my kids show gratitude at Christmas time) there's that moment when something hasn't happened--when some vile behavior on a child's part seems to shine light on my horrible parenting--that just ends up feeling comfortable. Ahhh, that's how it should be, I'll think. Finally letting go of the tension of hoping things turn out well. Sometimes being in the worst case scenario feels safer (like when my 9 year old said "I already have this box set!" when he opened a gift last month, "I already have this one!" he kept repeating, since saying it once wasn't enough. What happened to all that prompting I did?--what happened to 'remember to be grateful and if you already have something, just smile and say thank you'). The thing's already gone wrong. No worries anymore. The familiar feeling of failure. It's something I know well, now that I'm a mom.

Every page yielded some gem like that. The plot served a fine purpose of moving things along, but I hardly needed it, so satisfied was I just scouring each paragraph for some wise observation, some new phrase to chew on.

I soon realized I was in good hands with Walker. I was surprised too, to find out that some of the men in her book were in good hands as well. Having been introduced to the world of the suburbs through the eyes of the less-than-satisfied wives, I was prepared to meet a cast of buffoons for husbands. Easy punching bags, given the backdrop of struggling women married to moneyed men with expensive toys. But that wasn't always the case.

When Marie and her husband Anthony have a dispute about cereal boxes he'd left out on the counter after breakfast in the morning (a dispute he only realized he was in when he came home from work and found the cereal boxes STILL sitting out in the kitchen) the fight feels as though it'll be stacked in her favor, but really isn't. Her 'I am not your maid' offense is soon matched by an earnestly presented string of things he points out he's done for her in the wake of some of her oversights, and I recognize the same kind of stale-mate I often find in my own marriage. There's no right or wrong, just a series of things that annoy me, or my husband, and that can set off another oft-repeated tension-filled back-and-forth if one or the both of us is feeling unhappy or unconnected or un-something else.

In my own marriage I've got the 'guy' role. I could walk around a shopping bag for a week, honestly not noticing it at all. Then my husband will come forward with some massive complaint about the bag that's been in the middle of the living room all week, and how he's been waiting for me to move it. My feeling in these moments is that if he's the one who's been noticing the bag, he should be the one to move it. Of course he disagrees, so annoyed at my claim that I didn't realize it was there--a claim that baffles me, since there's usually some glimmer of remembering having seen it, just not focusing on it (one of my big m.o.s as a mom is that a kid will have lost something and I'll come up with this dubious answer 'I remember seeing it in some really weird place and thinking that it was in a really weird place but I don't remember where I saw it.'--so there really is some strange seeing-but not seeing kind of thing going on. Imagine being married to that). This infuriating cycle will probably repeat itself forever, serving as a barometer for other things in our marriage--how generous we're feeling towards each other, how well-rested we are. Sad, but true. But wonderful to see so realistically portrayed in Four Wives.

I won't give away anything else about the book. But suffice it to say there's a particular reason I feel wonderful about it that I can't say here without spoiling the ending. I heartily recommend Four Wives. It's not a trashy read like the cover suggests (was there even mention of a red bikini or a swimming pool in the book?), but one full of helpful insights on marriage and on mothering, one written by the Wendy Walker I remember being so impressed by so many years ago.

Waiting for the Flu

2008-01-21T08:07:00.001-05:00

You know the ad where the mom is sick but still has to take care of her sick kids and her sick husband? I don't want to be sick like that.

I want a good old-fashioned, laid up, splayed out kind of sick.

The kind where there's NO question as to whether or not to get out of bed, whether or not to call in sick, whether or not to continue to try to hit the regular day time marks--making school lunches, getting dressed, meeting the school bus, writing thank you notes for christmas gifts that were opened, say, a month earlier.

That's what I want.

I know *intellectually* that I don't want the stomach flu that's going around my school. *Intellectually*, I know it's an awful thing. I know that if I end up getting it I'll be miserable and think I'm going to die as my stomach gets turned inside out in every way possible again and again and again, and I'm not going to be able fathom how I could have ever welcomed the torment.

BUT! part of me craves it. Too sick to do anything but maybe catch up on some of my recorded shows...or to (finally!)plow through the Freaks and Geeks box set my tenant loaned me two years ago. Not to mention a head start, maybe?, on losing a few of the seventeen (yes, seventeen) pounds I gained in the last year--a final year in the house, in close proximity to our fully-stocked kitchen, before sending my youngest off to school and rejoining the work force.

A good friend with one child and a high-powered job considered having another baby JUST for the maternity leave. I get that. Just a chance to step out of it all and hole up for a little while. She ended up with shingles and was miserable. But maybe just a little bit well-rested? I remember bringing her a sandwich and eating with her on the stoop, in the sunlight, in the middle of what would have been a work-day. That's a nice alternative to getting everyone up and out and returning home after dark.

No new babies for me. But just a mini-three day respite. I'd like that. I think.

And, again, none of this wishy washy can I ask for the day off of everything kinds of walloping colds. The real thing. The obvious thing. But not over this three-day weekend please, and not on a Friday. Tuesday morning'd be just fine.

Shakes on a Plane

2008-01-03T11:45:00.000-05:00

In conversations about flying--when friends are detailing their fears, rational and otherwise--I'm the Miss Mary Sunshine who proclaims "I LOVE to fly." I do love to fly. I always have. Airports smell like possibility to me. It's the only time I let myself buy People Magazine and eat unlimited Peanut M&Ms. Fig Newtons become a fruit product--something healthy for the flight. I love the surge of take-off, the familiar bounce of landing. I've been in planes that were struck by lightning, and white-knuckle turbulence. And I still love to fly.

And that's why it seems so significant to me that I was so terrified on my flight home the other day.

We'd settled into a red-eye from Honolulu (New Years Eve no less), returning from two weeks away from home. Back in March when I booked the tickets and paid with them using points from my credit card, it had seemed like a good idea to find the cheapest cheapest fare (since anything more expensive, times five, adds up to a whole 'nother vacation for us). And I booked us through Houston--with a two-hour layover, before continuing on to Philly, an airport which, oddly enough, pops up on kayak as being in the New York Area.

We'd handily survived the two daytime planes out to the islands--even though the video portion of the in-flight entertainment system had been down and the kids had been up. Turns out you can play 8 hours of electronic solitaire.

The flight was packed--a large family reunion of large people was squished into the chairs ahead of us, a sure sign that I'd be chewing on someone else's reclined seat-back the second we hit the right altitude. After stumbling awkwardly through a PG-13 movie that was completely inappropriate for my 9 year old son--black rectangles attempted to hide simulated blow-jobs, exposed breasts, semen collection from a stallion (!), etc.--I'd switched to the Nanny Diaries, and everyone else in the family dropped off to sleep.

Somewhere over the Pacific our plane made some strange grinding noise--and it sounded like an engine kicked into some other type of laboring-extra-hard gear. You could feel the whole plane rattling and struggling in the new bass hum, and those of us who were awake exchanged nervous glances. And that's the first thing that scared me. If I've ever though a spot of turbulence was too much I generally find relief by looking at my fellow unfazed passengers. But everyone who was awake was clearly fazed. And since we were all sitting with sleeping loved-ones, we had only each other to scan for worry, and because we were strangers, we sort of half-smiled too.

To make matters worse, the cute little cartoon airplane that insisted on showing us exactly where we were on our journey on the screen at the head of each section of plane was just surrounded by blue. Nothing but ocean as far as we could see. Then it tried to be helpful by showing us a new zoomed-out view. Now we could see that, not only where we surrounded by blue ocean, we were as close to LAX as we were to HNL. Other helpful information followed--we were 3 hours and 13 minutes away from our place of origin, we were 4 hours and thirty three minutes away from our destination, it was 14 degrees outside. Benign stuff like that that suddenly seemed significant.

Grinding along, with nothing but ocean for hours and hours fore and aft, my insides hollowed out and my fingertips got cold. I looked at my sleeping family and wondered how two parents are supposed to save three children. A shiver of helplessness sliced through me.

A few days earlier we'd been whale-watching off of Lahaina. It was my first opportunity to be seasick since having children--and the nausea kicked right in (despite the fact that I'm a mom and my body should have slipped into some mind-over-matter vomit-proof gear like it's proven it can do when handling some of the ickier parts of parenting). I worked hard on the boat to tamp down my sick-feeling and as long as I focussed hard on it--or rather focussed on not focussing on it?--I was kind of okay. Then one by one my daughters started to feel ill. My oldest wanted to go downstairs where it would rock less, and I was completely unable to escort her there (what kind of mom am I?). So my husband took her while I stayed up top with my toddler. We were fine until she started to say things I was feeling like 'stop talking to me' and 'I just want to look at the floor' and, again, 'stop asking me if I'm okay.' I started to imagine what it would be like if she got sick. I knew I'd get sick too. I'd be completely unable to help her. It was such a helpless feeling, sitting there wondering how likely it was that some stranger would run towards us eager to be of assistance, and to feel so unable to be the one who could do it. My m.o. in this type of situation is to walk myself through the worst-case-scenario. In this case of course she and I had both thrown up, all over ourselves, and would eventually be back in Lahaina, wearing brand-new tourist clothing. She'd be in a grass skirt with a coconut-shell bikini top, and I'd be in an XL BadAss Coffee tee--the one with the cartoon donkeys pulling their pants down--and a fringed, floral sarong. We'd survive. It'd be gross, but we'd get through it.

But this? Would someone offer to help us? Would I wake them up first? Tell them what was happening? Would it be obvious what was happening? Was there really a life-vest under my seat? Would my three year old agree to wear hers? Would someone know how to turn the yellow slide into a rubber raft? Would we all fit on the yellow slide rubber rafts? I'd refused to go into swimming pools in Hawaii because they weren't heated. How cold would the ocean be? Do people ever get rescued from plane-wrecks in the middle of the ocean? I couldn't remember.

Oddly enough, my thoughts turned to my electronics. Should I tuck my mini digital videotape into my bra? Footage of my seven-year old daughter wiggling on stage at the Luau? Should I swallow my memory stick? 600 pictures of proof that we'd had a great vacation? Would these finds bring comfort to our family and friends? Do they ever find the bodies of people who drown in the middle of an ocean? Do they do autopsies on floaters?

These are the thoughts that I tried to hold at bay while keeping my eyes glued to Scarlett Johansson and Laura Linney. Eventually a flight attendant started to move a cart down the aisle and I searched her face for fear and found none. Surely she had family too, reason to worry if there was reason to worry. Laura Linney fired Scarlett Johansson around the time I started to feel better. At some point I became one of the sleepers too.

We woke 'in the morning' to yummy banana muffins and gorgeous streams of airplane-window shaped sunlight. Cheerful ovals of impossibly bright light danced around inside the plane as we neared Houston, banking this way and that, circling the airport. The kids stretched themselves awake and murmured about what a quick flight it had been. The middle of the night middle of the ocean panic seemed like fiction.

Tray tables were locked and upright, seatbacks were raised (some not as soon as I'd have liked), and we began our descent. The plane angled down, down, down and then there was the lovely rubber squish-thud of the wheels hitting the runway--familiar engine shifts began to happen and then--just as quickly as we'd touched down--all of a sudden--the engine gunned up, and the plane's nose lifted up and we took off again steeply sharply. A rushed and upsetting take-off that sloshed all of our stomachs, and then some sloppy but no doubt important tilts and angles and we were up in the sky doing a slow loop around the airport. No one said anything for a few minutes too long. Then the pilot came on and told us in relaxed-pilot-speak 'Well folks, you can see we're in the air again...had to lift off to avoid a plane that hadn't left the runway yet...we'll bring it around and touch 'er down again.' Something like that.

My husband gave me an eye-roll indicating that he was sick to his stomach. My three year old began to vomit, most of it into an airsickness bag. Once we got her settled down using the babywipes that I swear I'll continue to carry with me for the rest of my life, my seven year old began to throw up too. I pressed the call button hoping that, in addition to bringing us extra barf-bags and plastic bags and paper towels, the flight attendant would bring us some sort of big-eyed sympathetic wasn't-that-just-terrible kind of expression. But we only got the bags and towels.

A few fellow passengers mused about what had gone on--of course being trapped in the middle section of the plane we'd had the worst view of it so had no idea how close our call had been. But mostly there was silence, and we did land again (and I tried to start one of those rounds of applause but no one joined in), and then we were spilled out into the airport. No knowing looks or nods from any of the crew. Just poker-faces and professional nods as we deplaned.

My seven year old threw up a few more times in the terminal. And then we were blended in with all the other people connecting from other places, whose planes hadn't almost exploded in a fireball upon colliding with a plane that hadn't left the runway, and then we were blended in with all the other people just arriving at the airport--who had had good night sleeps and who thought it was just an ordinary day. And the grouchy flight attendant on our next flight seemed annoyed when I asked for extra barf-bags just in case and he seemed inconvenienced when I asked if my daughter could sit next to me instead of off on her own like her boarding pass indicated. And that flight was uneventful and everything was back to normal.

My mind moves now to the $5 dollar tiki statues the kids bought with their spending money only hours before the flight. Ku the god of strength, and perhaps more importantly, Lono, god of luck and protection were swaddled in tissue paper in my son's Naruto backpack. Maybe they deserve to be unpacked and placed in positions of honor somewhere in this house.

And of course I'm glad I didn't eat my memory stick.

The House without a Christmas

2007-12-14T23:41:00.000-05:00

It's hard to believe that it's almost Christmas. You'd never know it in our house. No nativity scene on the mantel, no Christmas Tree, no ornaments, no wreath on the door, no tacky white deer turning his head blandly this way then that in our front yard, no oversized nylon Santa-shell waiting to be plumped up with wrapping paper, no stockings, no nothing. We completely blew it. The only sign that anything out of the ordinary is going on is the smattering of Christmas cards taped to our parlour doors-but without all the other accoutrements of the holidays-to-be they just look like the doors usually do in January, when we've taken everything else away but haven't yet had the heart to remove these pictures of the children of far-flung family and friends.

Pitiful, I know.

Growing up you could spot the holidays coming from weeks away. Easter was a house-full of hard-boiled eggs and vinegar smells, or sticky turkey skewers lying around from the blown-eggs we were going to decorate and hang from an egg tree. Little vignettes of bunnies hauling eggs or of chicks in easter bonnets nestled in plastic grass covered our end tables. And my mom didn't have to run out to Duane Reade to buy new Easter Baskets every year, since they had their own shelf in her holiday closet.

You knew the fourth of July was coming when the red, white, and blue crepe paper arrived, so we could start to decorate our bikes for the local parade, and when the sugary smell of my mom's flag cake (a long rectangle of artfully dyed cake arranged so that every single slice contained a complete American flag-yes, really) filled the kitchen.

Even Thanksgiving, which is usually a day-of kind of holiday, meant a wicker cornucopia of gourds and Indian corn as a centerpiece for our kitchen table and a smattering of pilgrim figurines on the fireplace.

Of course I grew up in Who-ville, a town with a three-story high Christmas Tree, full of colored lights that could be seen from miles away, caroling parties, and elementary schools that basically turned us kids into holiday-decoration-generating machines. The homework one year was finding as many words as we could from the phrase Merry Christmas. Just try that one in a public school in Brooklyn-one that doesn't even make a big deal out of birthdays lest they offend any of the Jehovah's Witnesses in the building.

True, it was a simpler time. My parents weren't crawling into bed at 9:15 exhausted from hour-long commutes. And getting to the Holiday decorations in the basement didn't require tiptoeing through a tenant's apartment.

But I'm feeling pretty bad about it.

Of course, there's a 'reason' for all of this Christmaslessness (full disclosure: finding 'reasons' for my bad behavior is a talent of mine). Way back in March it seemed like a great idea to plan a Hawaii vacation. I got caught up in thinking that Hawaii is so far away it would only make sense to go if we could go for two whole weeks, and since no one joneses for tropical weather in the summertime, I had to figure out which week of school butting up against a school-break is the most disposable. So I cashed in all of my membership rewards points and bought tickets to Hawaii-the kids'll miss the low-academic week of school before winter break, we'll stay with a friend in Maui for a week, see cousins in Honolulu. Mele Kalikimaka. A no brainer.

So we planned it back in March, and rested on it all year long, anticipating our new improved Christmas-on-the-go. What a great way to do Christmas. We were going to take it on the road, have a free-wheeling time with friends. Perfect.

And then came the details. To haul all the gifts over there or not? To only give small disposable things or to go whole-hog? To load up on 99c store items for stockings HERE in Brooklyn-99c store mecca-OR see if they have them over there? To bring gifts for all of the people we'll see over there? Or not to busy ourselves worrying about gifting cousins we never acknowledge at holiday time? To cart along an extra empty bag for bringing stuff home? Or to deal with shipping things from Hawaii? To have Amazon do free-super saver shipping and mail stuff there? Or pay more for two day shipping and send everything here? To bring real New York-city style foods with us to the islanders out there? Or to just bring our own New-Yorky selves?

Untangling 50 yards of Christmas lights would seem a bit like fiddling while Rome burns, given the scope of all these other preparations. Digging out the North Pole sign instead of digging out the bathing suits? Hauling home a wreath instead of running out for snorkel gear? Urging the kids along with their advent calendars instead of encouraging them to sort through what to bring in their carry-ons?

I had hoped that this trip would simplify Christmas, instead of erasing it. We wouldn't be tempted to go overboard with gifts since one of the major gifts would be the trip itself (sounded really convincing in March, but doesn't seem so sound in the face of all the commercials being forcefed to my kids courtesy of Nickelodeon and Disney). At this point though the only big day I'm fretting over is the travel day (a 5:30 am flight from Philly connecting through Dallas also seemed like a good idea back in March).

The friend we're staying with assures us that her halls are decked and I'm certain that Maui will be merry. But I worry that I'll always look back at this month and wonder why we didn't see fit to do any decorating at home.

And while I know the experience will be magical in many ways, it's hard to forgive the fact that we didn't put an ounce of magic into the every-day part leading up to the trip. I'm only realizing now that all those weeks of pine-scented twinkling-tree blinking-yard anticipation just might be the most exciting part of Christmas day.

Turkey Practice

2007-11-20T21:40:00.000-05:00

Last year I hosted my first Thanksgiving. A local place catered the
meal. We had 24 people so much of our focus was on fitting everyone
in our house and finding enough chairs. I didn't realize that I'd be
reheating everything and it was sort of a disaster--the stuffing took
forever to heat up, as did the potatoes, and the once-piping-hot
gravy was cold by the time the sides were hot enough to reach the
table. It occurred to me then that if I'd cooked everything I'd have
a better chance at getting the timing right. I'm not much of a cook
but my mother and sister are spectacular and I've always felt that I
had it in my genes and the ability to move effortlessly around my own
kitchen would reveal itself to me when I was ready for it. In
general I know how to make my favorite things--big batches of creamy
mashed potatoes, vichyssoise, chili, egg salad, brownies, and apple
custard pie. That's it though. Nonetheless I decided to cook the
meal this year. I set my tivo to record everything the Food
Network was offering about Thanksgiving. I saved a page from the
Times, and bought a little magazine that had a turkey on the cover.

My sister suggested that I use the Sunday before Thanksgiving to
prepare a practice turkey. She added that I could make the gravy
from its drippings, and stock from its bones to use on the real day.
At 4 in the afternoon today (Sunday) I remembered this plan and ran
to the grocery store to fetch the bird.

Once in the supermarket, I didn't even know where to look. I saw
things that looked like whole turkeys at the deli counter...I tried
to get the counter person's attention but she was busy. Thankfully I
realized--before embarrassing myself in front of all the cold-
cutters--that it was just the mushed together deli meat shaped to
look like a whole turkey. Phew! I wonder how far it would have
gotten--would they have sold me a whole turkey shaped thing? Would I
have hauled it to the cashier? Would I have gotten it home and
attempted to stuff it?

Several steps away I found the real-meat shelf and a sea of whole
turkeys. I had the choice between the butterball, which was
shrinkwrapped in pretty plastic, or the purplish turkey that had
lived a lovelier life--probably one with a beak, and some free-
roami ng. It was organic and had no antibiotics but the plastic
was see-through and it totally grossed me out. I inspected it
closely and noticed that it had real wings. The kind that splay out
like it's flying. Not the kind you see on a platter of 'wings' next
to the blue cheese and celery. I made myself buy the ugly one. The
butterball would have been prettier until getting into the sink, so I
figured I should just grow up and buy the one I felt better about
even though it was a more obviously really dead bird.

I got it home and put it on the counter and called my sister who
talked me through it. My not yet two-year-old daughter was running
around naked and kept requiring my assistance with various ventures
to consider using the toilet so the advice from my sister was mostly
theoretical (being that I was hardly even in the kitchen during
certain points of instruction). "Don't think about what you're
doing," "double bag the stuff inside and freeze it until you can
throw it away," "don't even think about what's in those bags,"
"remember there's another *ahem* cavity at the top end of the bird
too, make sure you clean that one out also," "people say you don't
have to tie the legs shut anymore so only do that if you want." I
could begin to visualize the process. My confidence was building.

By the time I got the baby down for her nap (or bedtime?--we're never
sure when she crashes at 5:15), I was ready to take the thing out of
its plastic. I put it in the sink and set about inspecting it
without touching it. Sure enough there was a little bag in the
cavity--I pulled it out and plopped it in a double bag and stuck it
in the freezer. The cavity was smaller than I'd expected. I ran
water into it and dumped it out several times. I even had the nerve
to peer under a wing and remove a bloody thing. I was doing well. I
moved the bird over to the roasting pan and began to stuff the cavity
full of onions and celery. There was only room for half the stuff
I'd chopped...but I filled it to the brim. Then I considered putting
the rest of the onions and celery into the bottom of the pan.
Surely that would flavor the drippings? Or maybe they'd burn and
smoke or something. I decided against it. I was carrying the bird
to the oven, remembering that I had already ruled out tying the legs
shut, when it occurred to me that I hadn't noticed any legs. It was
with great creepiness that I realized that the double bone thing
sticking out of the neck wasn't a double-boned neck but was the tips
of the two drumsticks, with some loop of skin holding them closed. I
dug my fingernails into the loop of skin and freed the tips of the
drumsticks and discovered the cavity I was supposed to be filling--
the cavity I had thought I was filling when I was apparently stuffing
the neck full of celery and onions.

I didn't see a bag in there, so I reached in and my fingers curled
around two little frozen things, I tugged until they came out. Two
raw, red frosty lumps. I tossed them into the sink. Then I
reached in again and found something else that wasn't a bag but felt
more like a bone--I wiggled it loose from its moorings and pulled it
out and tossed it into the sink. The spine? The neck? I wasn't
prepared for this hard pinkish penis thing--tossed it into the sink
too. Now this was a cavity. There was tons of room. A studio
apartment. I stuffed it full of the leftover onions and celery.

Now it looked like a turkey. This practice run was turning out to be
a great idea.

Following the NYTimes instructions (fast roasting not slow, no
basting) I tented the bird after half an hour. Then an hour later I
remove dthe tent and, again following instructions, used my new meat
thermometer to test the bird. I'm supposed to put the thermometer in
perpendicular to the pan, in the thigh near where the drumstick meets
the body. Nothing looks like a thigh to me but I aim for a place
near a joint an d get a low reading--about 120. I pop the whole
thing back in the oven for another 20 minutes, then I test it again.
I realize my earlier poke was near the wing, so now I put the
thermometer down into a thicker spot. The temperature shoots up to
about 180. I'm aiming for 165. I'm supposed to get a few readings
of 165 so I put the bird back in for another 20 minutes and then get
all those good high (too high) readings again. I pull the bird out
and while it sits there I watch a food network special on making
perfect gravy.

Then I call my sister who makes perfect gravy for some on-the-spot
assistance, since her method isn't at all like Alton Brown's method.
Her kids had been at a dessert party so they aren't in bed yet but
she agreed to walk me through the steps anyway. Without any turkey
stock we realize I shouldn't make it at that moment, but rather
should save all the drippings and make it later, but still before
Thanksgiving. By that time I should have a better sense of the
whole process and might even feel comfortable whipping up gravy with
my Thanksgiving drippings (and a kitchen full of chattering
relatives). Who knows? I think I'm starting to get the hang of this.

We figured out a strategy for my gravy. I use my new fat/strainer/
separator thing and only get about a half a cup of drippings. She
was surprised that this was such a low amount, but again, she was
advising me from two hundred miles away and with a houseful of
sugared toddlers so we didn't focus on it for long. We decide I
should keep the whole lot of it rather than strain it. My next
assignment is to pull the meat off the bones and save the bones to
make stock. It sounds reasonable until I realize that I've never cut
into a turkey before. I beg my sister to stay on the phone to walk
me through this (several years ago I called her to walk me through
disposing of a dead mouse--it's a moral support thing mostly, but
necessary to many tasks, especially those, like this, that sorta
gross me out). She tells me to just start tugging at the white meat
with a fork but I don't see any white meat.

The more I st ab and pull the more bones I bump up against and
it's all dark meat, and sort of slimy. A little surprised that I'm
having such a difficult time locating any meat, my sister explains
that it's true that a clean-livin' turkey like this one probably ran
around a lot and won't have that nice plump genetically engineered
breast lump. I'm in a flat panic, unable to imagine how two of these
birds would ever yield enough meat for 5 people, let alone the 15
we're expecting. I start to talk about buying a butterball turkey.
If I get it tomorrow and start to thaw it out, I can do the two
organic birds I'd preordered for political reasons, and the
butterball for gastronomical ones. As I tug and pull with a fork and
a knife my sister asks me if I've roasted the turkey upside-down. I
highly doubt it, it looks sort of like the birds in the
pictures...the knees tucked under, the elbows propped up. It's the
way I'd be if someone asked me to crawl into an oven. She asks me to
take a photo and email it to her so she can see what's wrong.

I resist this suggestion for a moment, and then it occurs to me to
just prop the bird up and peek underneath. Lo and behold, there was
the enormous beautiful white breast, swollen against the roasting
rack, pinkish and plumpish with waxy drips hanging down through the
grooves of the rack. My sister and I gasp with astonishment at my
stupidness. I let her go, since I've now figured out where the meat
is, and her kids really need to get to bed. I flip the bird and
another cup-full of beautiful drippings and juices pours out all over
my kitchen table. I make a weak attempt to gather it into my
original half-cup. But the cat beats me to most of it.

I spend the next half hour tearing all t he meat off of the bones
(well most of it, and hardly any of it in some cases). I bag the
meat, probably woefully undercooked--where was I taking the
temperature anyway? The back of the bird? Between the ribs? The
meat's pink in the way that some fancy cooks like, but I'll never
touch it. I bag all of the meat for the cat to enjoy for many weeks
to come.

I'd like to think that it's the best $16.98 I'll ever spend, since I
made all of the mistakes on a day that just doesn't matter.

I shower to get the turkey meat from under my fingernails, and to get
the smell off of me. I watch a clip on the news about the avian flu
pandemic but the talk of bird to man and so on freaks me out...and
then I switch over to Wolfgang Puck's turkey school. I think I've
learned how NOT to cook a turkey. About sixteen of us will find out
on Thursday.

Alternate Sides

2007-11-09T13:06:00.000-05:00

Her smiling face was perfectly framed in my side view mirror. Our eyes met and she said something cheerful like ‘I think it’s time’ as she adjusted the bottom of her sweater down over her hips. She kept looking in my mirror, eyes locked on mine.
This was quite an invitation--I stuck my head out the window.
‘Wow this was really something,’ I said. ‘My first time.’
‘You never done this?’ she smiled, hefting a suede patchwork purse over her shoulder and then flipping her heavy curls out from under the strap.
‘I only discovered this block a few days ago, but I’ve never been here when the sweeper comes through.’
‘Oh yeah, that’s really crazy, right?’

The signs on this street say ‘No Parking 8:30am to 10am’ but we’ve all been here since before 9:30, most def initely ‘parked’. It was an odd sight to see all of these cars lined up here at 9:30 looking like sitting ducks under the ‘no parkingtil 10’ signs above them. But it was a welcome sight as I circled in this direction looking for parking and found an available space behind a blue Jetta.
People sit behind the wheels of most of the cars, doing crosswords, talking on cell phones, meaning technically--?--that their car hasn’t really been parked (does parked mean abandoned? left alone?). Some of the cars are only loosely guarded. One of the ‘drivers’ smokes cigarettes on the sidewalk next to his dented brown sedan. A collegiate guy sits on a stoop near his Passat with the paper and a
coffee. A woman ahead of me entertains her dog at the curb by her Volvo station wagon. A guy in a plaid shirt seems to be responsible for two different cars--he sits in one for awhile then hops out and sits in the other. It has a Goldilocks kind of flavor--I imagine him thinking this one’s tooo hard and this one’s tooo soft.
These 90th street people all seem to know each other, nodding hellos and mutterings about the weather I can hear from my own open window (it’s a gorgeous crisp May morning). This small cluster of neighbors must go through this together several times a week (with a reprieve on Wednesday and the weekends when *gasp* it’s all legal). Here today, like on a few previous days, I slotted my car in guiltily,
almost worried that someone more regular might show up and demand his spot.

In a decade of having a car in the city I’ve never gotten used to all of this legal law-breaking.
Double parking is gently overlooked on some blocks, including my own in Brooklyn, during the alternate side parking times posted on the signs. But keep your car double parked for one minute past the time when it’s ok to be back on the opposite curb and you could get a hundred dollar ticket. You could get towed.
Double park to pack your car up for a weekend getaway and you could get a ticket, even with your intentions advertised by a popped-up trunk and blinking hazards. But double park for a full hour and a half, trapping strangers’ cars against the curb, while watching soaps a block away in a living room (waiting for the beep of the oven timer to announce it’s time to move the car back) and traffic cops look the other way.
It’s overlooked to a fault. Once years ago (pre-cell phone) I dropped my boyfriend off for some minor out-patient surgery and went across town to make an appearance at work before returning later that morning to pick him up. When I came out of work at 10:30 to get my car to fetch him I discovered that I was completely walled in by a presumptuous row of double parked cars. I called the police to complain. I really really needed access to my own legally parked
car. They said there was nothing they could or would do. The owner of the car that proved the biggest obstacle had neglected to leave a phone number on his dashboard. For his crime he received an angry note from me under his windshield wiper, not an expensive orange ticket. I was livid. I was screwed. I was one of the only drivers that morning who had obeyed the law, and I was the one whose day was
most ruined (unless you count my pitiful drugged up boyfriend, waiting with a crutch, a cast, and a portable urinal across town).
This whole world took a bit of getting used to (the do-gooder in me just can’t believe I’m actually disobeying something) and now that I’d discovered this new block that worked with my current schedule of classes, I was aware that I didn’t know the particular quirks. Do we have to sit here til the moment parking’s legal or can
we leave our cars a few minutes early? I watched the people around me, in a when-in-Rome kind of way. Perhaps some day I’d be a regular here too, like the happy curly-haired Pinto-driver who keeps smiling at me now.

I eyed the clock. 9:54. Parking would be officially legal at 10, but my clock was a few minutes fast, or was it slow? All I can remember is that sometimes it works in my favor that it’s off a few minutes, but I rarely remember which end of on-time the favor is. I hadn’t sat in the car for half an hour to risk getting a ticket by cutting it too close in the final minute.
I laid out my belongings on the passenger seat next to me. I gathered them up slowly. I went to check the side view mirror again for the woman but she was standing at my window now. Beaming. Was she waiting for me? Is this something the regulars do?

“How about that guy with the two cars?” I asked, sticking to the safe subject of our shared experience. She was, after all, a perfect stranger. And I was sitting here with my window already open. I wanted to keep it light.
“Oh yeah they get paid to do that, you know. Not fair to the rest of us out here.”
I nodded knowingly, enjoying that I was considered one of the honest, hard-working law-breakers--my third time on 90th street and already a member of ‘the rest of us.’
“Well I don’t know how he does it, I had a hard enough time managing with my own car.”
It really had been quite a feat. In my dabblings with the double-parking I’d never been a part of such a scramble.

Fifteen minutes earlier I had been immersed in my New Yorker because Howard Stern was on a commercial break, when I realized that the Jeep a few cars up was pulling out suddenly into a double-parked position across the street. The cars between me and the Jeep followed frantically. Like in the movies when the coffee cup starts to dance around in its saucer before the townsfolk realize the earthquake is happening, this sudden and jerky disruption of our orderly curbside line-up confused me--until the rumbling of the street-sweeper sunk in.
I caught site of it swishing and lurking ominously about seven car-lengths behind me, and jammed my car into gear (whoops the engine was off, restarted it, switched it into gear...) and nudged the front of my van across the street in what became more of a show of my intent to move than a successful getting out of the way. The problem was that I was as interested in how the guy with the plaid shirt was
going to move his two back-to-back vehicles across the street as I was in getting my own car clear of the sweeper’s path. I was simulataneously checking him out in my side-view mirror and checking out my own clearance. Was I pissing off the woman in the Jetta? I couldn’t understand if the look on her face was anger towards me or
comradic anger about the guy with the two cars. I shrugged noncommittally back at her--a carefully designed shrug meant to indicate either ‘yikes! sorry’ or ‘that guy’s some kind of nutjob.'

By the time the sweeper groped its way up the curb, we had managed to turn this narrow side street into a four lane road. One lane of traffic remained parked on the left, our line of cars ooched over to create a double parked lane next to that, the street sweeper did its business along the right curb, and there was still room for the occasional poor sob to inch his way through. It must have been a
bizarre thing to witness from any of the thirty-floor high rises that lined the block. Enormously ungraceful. Not very satisfying--not like the slow choreography of two opposing lanes following their own left-turn signals down on Houston and Bowery, or at the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge--which always feels like water ballet to me. Somehow we all reshuffled ourselves back along the curb on the
right. I ended up leapfrogging over three vehicles and was now ahead of the Jeep. I’m not sure how that happened. The more I try to figure it out the more confused I get.

The lady was firmly planted next to my door now, looking down the block, sighing like I was holding her up or something--like we’d been assigned to each other and I wasn’t keeping up well enough.
‘Do you work up here?’ I asked--still interested in driving this conversation, worried that she might lead us somewhere religious and awkward if I let her have the keys. She was middle-aged and hispanic and had the kind of overly happy face that makes you wonder what sortof touchy feely corner you might find yourself roped in to, what sort of pamphlets she might be carrying in the outside pocket of her
purse.
“No I live in that building.” She indicated one of the highrises cheerfully. “You?”
“I teach a few blocks away--my first class isn’t until ten fifteen--if it were any sooner I wouldn’t be able to wait in the car like this.”
I checked the time--10:00 (but did that mean 9:58 or 10:02--not knowing could be costly)
“I’m always too nervous to leave the car too early” I explained, nodding at my dashboard.
“I know,” she laughed. “I always try to figure out how long it would take the traffic cop to get from the end of the block to the middle.”
“Me too!” and I really used the exclamation mark--I love it when other people confess to the weird inner math that I live with. “I always wonder how long it takes to write a ticket, and I try to figure out when I can go...’
“Me too!” she said, with her own exclamation mark.

Together we looked up and down the block, nodding in agreement that enough people were leaving their cars that it would take an honest ticket-writer more than a couple of minutes to discover our own vacant cars and by that time we’d be parked legally.

She stood by while I grabbed my bag and locked my car. We ambled down the block slowly, in the middle of the road.
“I’m an art teacher” I offered.
“Oh! my son’s a tattoo artist” she said.
“Wow that sounds really neat!” I said, suddenly thinking that being the mom of a tattoo artist must be really neat.
We introduced ourselves, still using exclamation marks, and parted friends. Excited to see each other for the next installment of ‘break the law before breakfast.’
For the next few days I aimed for that block at 9:30, only to find it full up with cars. Each time I’ve found a spot several blocks away. I park on these other blocks willingly but begrudgingly. 90th street remains my first choice. Because one day, thanks to this woman (whose name I’ve already forgotten) I was one of the regulars.

Mean People Suck

2007-11-06T07:33:00.000-05:00

“You’re not still mad that I yelled at you," the tall studious redhead said to the sweet butch gal behind the counter.

“Nah”...the shorter one said with a dismissive wave of the hand. And then she added something but I didn’t hear what it was. From her casual tone I could tell it was either “Nah...I like to be corrected...” or “Nah...I don’t mind it...” or “Nah...I’m used to it.”

I didn’t hear this part of her response partly because I was in disbelief that I was overhearing any of this conversation given the fact that I was only in this coffee shop because someone had just been mean to me, and partly because I was busy gathering my stuff--a small pot of rosy earl grey tea and a giant oatmeal cookie that cost $2--and scurrying off to my table because I both needed the sugary warm therapy and because I didn’t want the tall studious redhead to yell at me for eavesdropping.

Forty-five minutes earlier I fought back tears when a woman I only know by sight scolded me for not bringing my own paper to the copy machine on the fifth floor of my kids’ school. It’s a prewar building and so five flights is really ten flights. The second floor copy machine was either broken or just acting broken. It claimed it couldn’t do a thing until I put more staples in it--regardless of whether or not the small job I was begging it to do required staples (it didn’t). And even though the science teacher, whose copying mission was also thwarted by the staple-obsessed monstrosity, told me the whereabouts of three other machines scattered about the sprawling city block of building, my first peek into the first of these alternate locations yielded a gruff “you need to go up to the 5th floor and use theirs” from a tightly-wound beet-red male teacher. He thrust a ropy arm into the air and pointed sharply towards the heavens. He didn’t make contact with me but rather glared in the direction of his bagel, which meant the conversation was over.

I tromped upstairs past the other floors that, according to the science teacher, had copy machines that, according to the angry man-teacher, were off-limits to a parent like me, and got to the fifth floor.

At one point I passed a chipmunky lady I recognized from the lower floors where my kids’ elementary classrooms are. I smiled at her and added a flash of knowing brightness that was meant to signal “I don’t know you that well but I do know you well enogh to know that it’s funny to see you somewhere other than where I”m used to seeing you.” She didn’t flash anything back.

I found the copy room and entered. Two women looked at me and sighed like they’d already been through the encounter we were about to have.

“It’ll be awhile” one of them said, probably for the seventh time in five minutes, given her tone and the conspiratorial way she glanced at the other woman--a quiet Asian woman with the presence of a student teacher and a ream of paper clutched to her chest.

“I’ll come back in a few minutes,” I said and decided to go find a bathroom even though I didn’t have to pee. I just needed a quick change of scenery.

When I returned to the cramped toner-fumed room the chipmunky lady was in there too. As I cleared off a folding chair so I could sit to wait for my turn, chipmunk lady turned to me and said “you brought your own paper?”

I didn’t understand...I couldn’t tell if she was helping me or not--like maybe she was about to offer me paper, or maybe she was filling me in on some paper shortage that had occurred when I was in the bathroom. She repeated--”you brought your own paper, right? Because up here you can’t use theirs.” She smiled and winked at the other women in the room in a ‘get a load of this one’ kind of gum-cracking way.

When I realized that she was scolding me in a sideways ‘betcha weren’t thinking, huh?--betcha thought you could bring your elementary business up to the high school copier, eh?’ kind of way, I didn’t let her know I was catching on.

Rather, I kept the furrowed brow “I don’t get it” look because if I let go of that disguise I’d have cried. There had to be a way around this, I thought...I was here on class-parent business. Class parent business, for God’s sake! For the school’s sake! Wasn’t this a good deed? Plus, this is a school. Aren’t we all here for the kids? The seeds of the future? Tomorrow’s leaders? Tomorrow’s class-parents? Tomorrow’s xerox-copiers?

Chipmunk lady then launched into a soliloquy about how when strangers use the copy machines they break them, and that strangers shouldn’t be allowed to use the copy machines. She went right up to the edge of suggesting that I was the one who had confused the machine on the first floor but didn’t go over it.

I kept acting like I didn’t know what she meant and shook my head in bland-mock-disbelief at the lecture (like ‘damn all those strangers trying to use the machines), until the lady who had seemed in charge of the mood in the room when I arrived handed me a stack of extra- long powder-blue paper and said ‘if you don’t mind blue, you can use this.’

I took the blue paper. I made my copies. I left the room. I burst into tears. And then I went to the coffee-shop to warm my soul and cool off.

Chipmunk lady had just joined my list of mean people. Along with the Fairway manager who indicated that my dropping of a glass jar of wheat germ hadn’t been an accident, the old man at the outdoor bus- stop who scolded me for talking on a cell phone, and the Polish consignment shop lady who laid into me for bringing two bags of Flax
and Eileen Fisher cast-offs to her store (even though I called ahead to make sure she’d accept them and she’d said yes), because she was ‘trying to run a business here’ and she didn’t think my presentation was appropriate.

I have never understood why some people just choose meanness. It is a choice, isn’t it? It’s been the most major shock of growing up for me--even more shocking than the fact that I never stopped being me on the inside of my body.

As a kid I didn’t realize that grown-ups could be mean. I’d always assumed that all the stuff we were learning about being patient and kind we were learning because we had to be those things to be grown-up. In my own house I saw no badly-behaving grown-ups. In my little town I saw very very few badly-behaving grown-ups. (I
should clarify here that it turns out grown-ups *were* behaving badly...but it is of no small significance to me and to my developing self that it was all tucked behind closed doors, in bedrooms, or in the basement where the alcohol was kept).

Mine was an intimate college town and, until I was a teenager and my dad was on the vestry that felt forced to fire our minister-friend who lived next door, and I learned that a man who preached things like humility and turning the other cheek was super-good at maintaining a three year long silent treatment, I’d only ever encountered one mean grown-up.

I was having a sleepover at Kit Farm’s house and we were brushing our teeth with our mouths open and her dad walked by the bathroom in time to see teensy dots of pepsodent spray out of Kit’s mouth and land on the mirror. He completely lost it. He yelled at her in a mean booming voice, grabbed her wrist, and then humiliated her by showing her (and me, by association) how to brush correctly. I remember his sharp features and floppy bangs every time I brush my teeth. Mean Mr. Farm’s demo is my own madeleine...the smell of wintergreen and rough cedar panelling brings it all back, the sight of a dot of toothpaste on a bathroom mirror can send chills up my spine... I think he might have spank ed her, I’m not sure, because we were
separated for the next few hours. I do remember being sent down to the rec-room to watch ‘Walking Tall’ in silence with her exotic and remote much older brother and sister.

Except for these two up-close examples of adults-behaving-badly, and except for the occasional dinner-table story about a mean lady in line at the bank, or an opinionated co-worker, I had no reason to NOT assume that graduating into adulthood would mean entering a world of well-meaning, well-behaved men and women.

And even though I’m forty and I have three kids, when someone’s unnecessarily and unexpectedly mean to me I cry. And it only happens a handful of times a year. But it doesn’t seem to be stopping. And I didn't think forty would feel this way.

2 Much

2007-10-20T09:22:00.000-05:00

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance there's a section, early on, that suggests that we can never know what our life would have been like *if*.

If only I'd taken that high school teaching job upstate then... Then--nothing. Enormous gratification and success? Killed by drunk driving teenager on back country road? Impossible to know.

If only I'd kept dating that millionaire then... Then--nothing. Spa treatments and expensive clothing that fits me well? Lost at sea on the family yacht? Again, not worth imagining, because I didn't.

The image we've all grown up with is that of standing at a crossroads--looking ahead at all the possible paths. Our lives as the Game of Life, with all the colored squares laid out ahead. A stack of baby-pegs wait to be plugged into our cars. And will it be college and debt or shall we skip college and have lower paying jobs but get out there more quickly?

But imagine our backs are to that crossroads, and we can't peek over our shoulder. We're falling backwards through life--NOT walking forwards. We can only *know* what's already happened. We don't know anything else.

I liked that concept so much that I stopped reading the book.

If we hadn't had a third child--maybe we'd have been on a safari by now. Maybe we'd have been captured by rebel forces, stampeded by elephants.

If we hadn't had a third child, maybe I'd have gotten a Masters degree (in anything!). Maybe I'd have had a series of successful art shows. A retrospective at the Whitney? Maybe I'd have been slammed by reviewers.

Maybe I'd have written a book. Maybe Oprah would have had me on her show to tell me in person how offended she was by it. Maybe I'd be in a padded cell right now.

There is no way of knowing what our life would be like if we didn't have Piper. But motorcycles be damned, I have a few hunches.

Bedtime might run like clockwork, and involve long luxurious story time. Maybe we'd have read all of the Harry Potter books.

Maybe we'd have family game nights every night and protecting our scrabble tiles wouldn't be a crucial part of the experience.

I'd have won volunteer-of-the-year awards at the elementary school, the halls of which would be filled with imaginative and important murals overseen--of course--by me, Mom of the Year.

We'd pop over to London for long weekends several times a year.

Car trips wouldn't involve repeated playings of the Wonderpets soundtrack.

We could sit wherever we want in the minivan--and at the dinner table.

We wouldn't run out of ketchup every few weeks.

I'd enroll my daughter in as many after school programs as she wanted. Her friends could come over and play and they wouldn't have to find ways to include a grabby three year old at every turn.

We'd sleep in til eight, at least, on the weekends.

We'd have forgotten the numbers for the PBS channels, and we'd never have to hear the Barney song again.

When I was pregnant with her another mom stood in the playground and told me, while her own number 3 clutched her leg and sucked his thumb, that she often wondered what life would be like without him and that sometimes she thought it would have been a lot nicer.

I shuddered at her insensitivity then (judged her, told the story to other disapproving moms, all that bad mom stuff). And I think about her all the time now.

I could end this rant with a list of touching 'of courses'--(of course we love her ferociously, of course we wouldn't be a family without her, of course...of course of course--) but that would be so predictable and wouldn't really match the mood I was in when the first few sentences of this popped into my head as I brushed my teeth before going to bed a few moments ago.

We can't know what it would have been like without her.

There may have been no NOW for us. There may have been MORE now for us.

She's here. Now there are three. And sometimes it's too much.

A Two Year Old's View of the World

2007-10-15T16:53:00.001-05:00

I wake up begging for Barney but you say you need to check the weather. You say Barney's not on anyway now but I don't understand because I can't tell time. You turn on the news but it isn't the weather and you say to wait because we all need to know if it's going to rain and that reminds me of the Dora umbrella that I like to open in the car but I get in trouble because it's Etta's umbrella and Amos complains that we're all going to have bad luck and you remind Amos that only the one opening the umbrella will have bad luck and the one opening the umbrella is me and I don't know what bad luck is. But it doesn't sound good.

I slide off the bed and run to the other rooms to yell "it's eight o'clock!" They laugh at me because something like it's not really eight o'clock but eight o'clock is the only clock I know and it wakes them up anyway so what's the big deal.

It matters what everyone wears except me. It matters what everyone wants for breakfast except me. It matters what everyone wants to bring for lunch except for me. But I take a pudding and a juice box and some Doritoes and put them in a plastic bag and put it somewhere just in case. Sometimes I bring two of everything one for me one for Chloe but whether or not I see Chloe is never up to me. But I pack them just in case.

I give a big kiss and a big hug and sometimes a high five to Daddy and Amos and Etta when it's time for them to go. Sometimes they're gone when I remember to do this, or they slip away when I'm taking care of my lunch and Chloe's lunch and if I cry and scream loudly enough and if they're still on the block they run back.

I'll spend half the afternoon in the car when it's time to get them. And it really matters what seat I sit in because I don't want to be next to the door that used to have the gum stuck to it even though you finally cleaned it up, and I don't want to sit in the other seat because a piece of plastic is missing from the handle on the back of it and sometimes this is important to me and sometimes I forget. And sometimes I want to buckle myself and sometimes I want you to buckle me in and sometimes it takes me a long time to decide and sometimes you get mad and say you'll take something away but I don't really understand because I'm two and a half and I usually get what I want when I really want it.

These Moments

2007-10-07T23:04:00.001-05:00

Washes of pure joy flutter over me. Sometimes. They feel like the pretend egg we used to crack on each other’s heads when we were young, minus the startling knock with the knuckle part. It feels like the good part--flat palms oozing down the sides of my head, soothing, tingling, and finishing somewhere below the shoulders.

These moments of elation shiver through me like the wet heavy warmth of a dry head of hair leaning back into the rush of a hot morning shower. Or the shudder and swell of heat that warms my insides when I take that first sip of hot tea on a cold morning when I’ve had to get up too early.

These moments are not the result of loads of happy thoughts--the happy math I always think should work but that I’ve learned I can’t count on. My kids are great+I have a nice house=I’m on cloud nine. My husband adores me+I’m satisfied creatively=consistent solid happiness. It’s not that way. It's never that way.

These moments find me. I don’t find them. And they show up in the weirdest places.

Turning left onto the service road down by the Eagle Warehouse on the way to pick up the kids from school? Peaceful loving happiness floods into my heart. Glancing at the jumbled contents of my underwear drawer as I push it shut in the morning? Sparkly sunshine lights up inside. The one last look at my living room before I turn the light off and head up to bed? A cozy rosy glow envelopes me. Granted, that particular left turn happens when I’m facing the East River and Lower Manhattan--the grand sweep of the Brooklyn Bridge and all sorts of busy adorable-seeming watercraft jaunting by, and some of my underwear is pretty, and my living room always looks so peaceful once the kids have gone to bed. But that’s not the point.

The point is that these moments find me not only when I’m not paying attention but when I’m doing the kinds of routine or boring things I’ve spent thirty-nine years avoiding doing.

I’d always thought that I needed adventure to be happy--new experiences, new places, new flavors...excitement. It seemed obvious. Anything but repetition, routine, sameness. Chores weren’t a part of my childhood, and I’ve always resisted standard procedures and tasks--just ask my husband who balances the checkbooks, eats peanut butter and crackers every day for lunch, and remembers to change the bedsheets. Doing the dishes, folding the laundry, even walking the same route to work every day are the kinds of things that used to slay me. I thought I’d die if I had to do them. Surely life wasn’t about these boring tasks--surely I should be striving for more. If only someone could just take care of all of that mind-numbing tedium! I can’t be bothered with it! I should be travelling the world! I should be out chasing happiness.

Every job I tried bored me to tears, once I had the basic systems down. Going into an office building in the first summery days of spring killed me. For years I quit my jobs in the spring--it just didn’t seem natural to ignore the nice weather. I aimed for an academic calendar, so I could be released into summer happiness every June, and ended up being an art teacher who could never teach the same lesson from one year to the next. Who cares if eighth graders learn a lot from drawing their own sneakers? I oversaw that project last year, I can’t get excited about doing it again.

Before I discovered the dubious bliss of academia, I spent one happy summer camping all over America with a friend from college. She approached me with the idea and I quit my job (it was springtime!) and went along--for the adventure--of course. A new campsite every night! Creepy Lonely Lake, Kentucky. Armadillos are Roadkill, Mississippi. Watch out for Alligators, New Orleans. Oh No We Have New York Plates, Idaho...Every night we’d arrive and pitch our tent--lay down tarp, thread long snappy poles through holes in smooth laid out tent...and every morning we’d get up and break it all down. Pull up stakes, unthread long snappy poles, pick up shake off fold up tent, pick up shake off fold up tarp--origami it all into little nylon pouches. Pack up, drive off. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

One morning in a pine-grove outside of Aspen, I got really really sick of the routine. If I’d been a teenager and my friend had been my mom I so totally would have pouted on a log instead of helping out. But I did help. Because we couldn’t just drive off without the tent--and we couldn’t get the tent without breaking it down. And in that moment--that chilly-breathed sharp-piney frosted-toes pre-breakfast moment, I was overwhelmed by the fact that you just do it because you do.

I was years away from having kids then--but I figured that that’s what parenting must be mostly about, besides the love part anyway. The stuff you do because you do. Not because you want to, not because it’s your turn, not because it’s fun, not because it feels good, not because someone might call Child Services, but because you do.

And I didn’t get flooded with joy one time during the three thousand diapers I’ve changed as a mom, and sorting through handmedowns and putting away laundry has never done a damned thing for me (full disclosure: I always wait too long to do those things because part of me is still just a teenager pouting on a cold log on the edge of the campsite)--but something incredible has started to creep in--and it finds me when I’m doing these systematic does-life-get-any-more-regular-than-this?! kinds of tasks.

So I’m less inclined to feel like I should be varying my route when I drive to pick the kids up, and I’m less inclined to resist the inevitable routines of a life with a mortgage, a budget, and three kids in school. Because in the moments when my body and my brain are locked into something ordinary, a window I never knew I had might open. And more of these moments might come streaming in.

And I’m grateful, and I’m noticing--and I’m grateful to be noticing. And I’m trying to capture the feel of it now. Here. Because if I don’t, and if routines become nothing but routines again, I’d never believe any of this could be true.

Tale of a Tree-lined Block

2007-09-19T21:54:00.001-05:00

I told my 3 year old that the neighbors probably think it's Halloween, even though it's still just the middle of September. "Silly neighbors," I said. She shook her head and put her palms face up in an exaggerated gesture of surprise. It's not Halloween. But how else do I explain the candles and roses and empty bottles of liquor decorating every step of the stoop across the way?

My 7 year old seems content with our vague responses to her questions--I heard her explain to her friend Clem yesterday--"well some man went into that house and we're not really sure what happened but Mommy heard loud noises but Laura and Isadore and I were making loud noises upstairs so I think that's what she heard, right Mommy?' Right sweetheart.

My 8 year old son is the one who knows. He was the only one who wasn't home when it happened, came walking down the street a few hours later--carrying a plastic fairway bag with his pajamas and toothbrush in it, and hugging the blue shoebox that held his baseball card collection to his chest. He'd slept over at a friend's house the night before and so his return to home was more of a tour of the reality of what had gone down than anything those of us who'd been trapped inside had experienced. Slanted police cruisers blocked both entrances to the block (even though we're a one way street), police helicopters buzzed just overhead--searching backyards and other blocks, yellow and black crime scene tape roped off a square, like a boxing ring, kind of, that included the house where the shooting occurred and the houses on either side of it, as well as OUR HOUSE and the houses on either side of us, because we're right across the street. I'd tried to get a hold of the mom whose house he'd stayed in, to warn her about the situation on our block, but she didn't have her cell phone with her. She knocked on the door and came in, announced that she'd left him on the corner with a policeman while she checked to see if I was here to receive him. Once she found me here she left to fetch him. I watched from the top of the stoop as she escorted him back down the block to me--as the crime scene tape was lifted so he could duck under it, clutching the shoebox of baseball cards. My son returned to his house, to me, smiling awkwardly at the attention he was receiving, walking bravely.

This block has almost always seemed so ideal for young children, if a city block could ever be ideal. The postman really walks by and delivers the mail, our lemonade stands do well, people hang out on their stoops and look after each other, dragging garbage cans in for neighbors, sweeping leaves off each other's sidewalks. It's a vibe I didn't get on my dead-end street in Ohio, even though it was a very friendly town and we all had magical grassy lawns. This place felt like Sesame Street to me. I don't remember crime scene tape on Sesame Street.

It was Thursday, and the public schools were closed for Rosh Hoshanna. My daughter had had two friends spend the night the night before, a belated granting of her only birthday wish. And in the morning we walked Piper to (her Catholic-affiliated non-Rosh-Hoshanna-observing) preschool. We had a great eggy breakfast at a diner and then made our way home here slowly, laughingly, up the sidewalk. The girls had learned some funny hand-gesture-style game at school the day before and were doing it, almost conga style, as they walked. Hello, hello, hellohellohello! they giggled and then twirled and pointed and found a 'new partner' and found a new way to face, wiggle, and continue. I was taking pictures, it was so cute. Such a magical morning. At 11:15 we piled in the car to pick Piper up from school, since we were also in charge of Piper's friend Fifi. At 11:30 I was herding the 5 of them to the van, and then heading home.

Our departure from the van was typical--I tossed the keys to Etta, told them to get out of the car on the sidewalk side, and then stayed behind grabbing up lunchboxes and stuff. We were a slow parade in--there was probably a moment where I was leaving the car, the two three year olds were swinging on the front gate, and the three 7 year olds were dribbling up the steps. Once in, I had everyone take their shoes off and wash their hands. The two little girls aimed for the tv-which had been promised to them. They were in the phase-in period for school and an hour had just been added to their day--this being their first week of school and all. Fifi's mom and I agreed that some tv downtime would be perfect for them, as they'd been together after school the day before and had been tired and cranky with each other. They sat in the front of the living room (little heads visible from the street through the big front windows--curtains open--only flimsy cat-screens between them and the street out front) and watched The Backyardigans. The three 7 year olds tromped upstairs to introduce their tamagotchis to each other or to play with the karaoke machine or something...I headed for the computer.

As I typed an email to a friend I heard two loud cracks. Those loud cracks always sound like guns I thought as I typed but I didn't even look up. I'm not easily spooked and have often felt safer living in a city than I ever did in a tiny town where a dark forest filled the windows at night. Piper appeared next to me a second later and said she needed a bandaid; she held up her mosquito-bite-riddled arm and showed me the one she'd scratched open. I scooted my chair back and stood up to get a paper towel to staunch the bleeding (amazing how those scratched-off mosquito bites bleed!)--as I reached for a paper towel I heard it again--crack crack crack. This time a feeling of dread swept over me and I stepped back to look out the front of the house--all I could see was the stoop across the street--directly across the street from me. A black man in a blue tee shirt and jeans was lumbering quickly up the steps holding a gun out with his right hand, shooting crack crack crack. It was electric--sharp, urgent, desperate, sloppy. Like the moment in a movie theater when the film turns brown, crackles and burns, and melts before your eyes, and everyone in the theater is kind of jolted out of their suspended belief and back into reality. A minute ago we were swept away by a story, and now we're just a bunch of strangers sitting in the dark together. My heart-raced.

"Fifi go to the kitchen sweetheart, right now, Fifi right now, go over to Piper in the kitchen" I said, gliding past her to lock the front door.

"But I want to watch Backyardigans" she murmured looking over her shoulder at the tv as she obeyed me anyway.

"Girls!" I called upstairs--in a sing-sing voice that was sharp, but not alarmed (kind of like if there was a big colorful bug I wanted them to come see, quick, before it crawled away)--"Girls come down here right now, right away girls, Right now I need you to come down!"

Someone leaned a head over the banister, I was already in the back with the little ones holding a paper towel on Piper's bloody arm.

"But we.." someone began to protest.

"No girls, I need you down here right now, all of you right now. Just come."

They galumphed giddily down the stairs and came into the bathroom on the back of the house.

"What Mommy" Etta said--

"Umm Piper's arm is bleeding, can you help her get a bandaid?" I said, not having thought this far ahead, but still needing Piper's bloody arm to be tended to.

"But why did we..." she asked as she headed to the purple cabinet that holds the bandaids. Her friends leaned in to check out Piper's arm.

"There were loud noises sweetheart, I just need you to help with the bandaids." I shut the door to the bathroom and dialled 911. Dead silence, static, clicking. My home phone had been losing its dial tone every now and then. After a minute I realized this was the case so I called it from my cell phone.

"911 what's your emergency?"

"A man's shooting a gun on the street" I said.

"You heard it?"

" I saw it, right now, he's there with a gun, shooting into the house across the street" I said.

"Maam we'll get a car over there right now, what's the address?" She asked. I didn't know. I gave her my address, my name and phone number even though those last two bits were optional. She asked if it was #22--"I don't know" I said. She asked if the man was still in the house. "I don't know" I said. I got off the phone and put on a pot of water to boil, as if some lady on Little House on the Prairie had just gone into labor.

Within minutes the nose of a police cruiser nudged into view. The seven year olds disappeared back upstairs, never questioning the urgency of that stupid bandaid and why it required all three of them plus Fifi to help put it on. By then I was able to take little steps to the front of the house. I could see some neighbors milling about, almost everyone on phones. I thought back to the other shooting I witnessed here, from this house, nine years earlier. I was pregnant with my first, and I had some neighbor kids over for a kind of dance party--they were 3 and 4 and enjoyed coming over to paint and stuff and it suited my maternal nesting urgings just fine. A man ran up the street firing a gun crack crack crack and we all ducked, I called 911 and the lady said "wow your block is really involved-you're like the 30th call we've gotten about this in the last few minutes." Good block. Nice block. No one had been injured in that last one, it didn't make the news, and that's kind of what I assumed this time around too.

The most noteworthy part of the next hour or so is that I was alone in the house with 5 little girls--60% of whom weren't my own. They needed to eat lunch (ramen noodles that I kept messing up--if that's possible--served with ketchup, and cranberry juice that my daughter called 'cherry whatever you call it' which cracked us all up). They needed to watch television (Dora, Diego). They needed to play dress-up. They needed me to get the dominoes. What I needed was grown-ups to talk to, and a home phone that was working (my cell phone was perilously close to our minutes-limit for the month and the penalty for going over is enormous). So I made a huge pot of tea and kept looking out the window, hoping to catch the eye of someone who'd think to come tell me what was going on.

I watched the police knock on the door across the way, I watched them run sideways up the stoop with guns drawn, I watched one neighbor in a tan shirt being led down the block in handcuffs, saw another woman crying. Eventually the handcuffed guy was released (silly policemen, the shooter was wearing blue), more neighbors were crying. An ambulance pulled up quietly and EMTs went in. I called my husband to share the story with him and he offered to leave work. I told him there was no need to come home, that it would probably blow over by the time he could get here anyway. When I was on the phone with him I heard more shots down the block, and watched the police race away. It was a dramatic street-emptying, like someone had tilted our block that way and all the blue and white marbles just rolled off. Detectives still milled about, Police helicopters hovered. The EMTs brought a man out on a stretcher, a few yards away from where Piper and Fifi watched Blues Clues. I pulled the curtains closed.

"That's silly so many people outside," Piper said, peeking out the window--she and Fifi liked to hide behind the long curtains so drawing them closed really only served to attract the girls to the windows. "I gonna go tell those people what they doing out here," she said, walking purposefully to the front door and flinging it open. I nudged her back into the house, blaming all the mosquitos. "Too buggy out there, Piper. Let's just stay inside."

And stay inside we did. I was in email touch with a friend who owns a store down the block and she was able to fill me in on what she was hearing. Another friend had been in that store, saw all the commotion, and called to see if I was okay. Eventually I learned from people who weren't on the block that the guy on the stretcher had died. I was shocked, because, of course, my only other experience with a shooting on the block had been just that, shooting. And once a year my friend's neighbors on Clermont shoot guns into the air at midnight on New Year's Eve. Somewhere in all of that victimless shooting, I'd kind of lost the connection between bullets and dying. Shooting just came to mean shooting to me.

My son came home from his sleepover (the little limbo with the crime scene tape), and then another friend offered to stop by, with her three children. I was eager for the grown-up company so I encouraged her to come. Now we had nine children in the house, and 66% weren't mine, and when Fifi's mom and brother came to pick her up there were ten kids in the house, and 70% weren't mine--but the adult to kid ratio had improved dramatically, so I was feeling fine. Plus the block felt ultra-safe now, swarming as it was with police and anchormen, and undercover cops wearing Mets jerseys-which was fun for my son to see.

Eventually the kids fell apart--too much togetherness, too much being inside, too hard to continue to negotiate. The moms who were here drank up their tea and shuffled off with most of the extra children, leaving me over-caffeinated and in a house where only 25% of the kids weren’t mine. Isadore’s grandma was in the hospital being tended to by her mom, and wasn’t going to be returned until ten that night.

A friend called me from a nail salon to report she'd just recognized my minivan on the news. Our tenant called from work to see if I was okay. And googling 'shooting in Fort Greene' started to yield more than the film-related events whose version of shooting (the Hollywood kind) has come to be more common in these newly gentrified but still Pratt-influenced artsy parts. The articles that were popping up described our block as being 'tree-lined' which sent pride surging through my body. Ten years ago this block would not have been considered 'tree-lined'--you had to live in Park Slope or the Cosby's Brooklyn Heights to earn that pastoral description. Fifteen years ago you would not have walked down this block unless you had to (or so I've been told). We're tree-lined now, woo-hoo. It's official. It took a murder to make me realize that we’ve finally arrived.

By the time I headed outside to drive Isadore home, the stoop across the way blazed with candlelight in memorial of the victim. The news people had left, but the cops were still in their car, which was facing the wrong way on the street, which continued to be eternally amusing to my 3 year old. A parent emailed concern about the event on the neighborhood list-serve. I looked at the email's first sentence 'does anyone know anything about the shooting?' and didn't even consider responding. I respond to things like 'help! can anyone recommend a roofer?' and 'we're expecting a son in a month and would love to hear thoughts about circumcising.' all the time. But this one didn't interest me at all.

September Born

2007-09-12T22:17:00.001-05:00

There were so many wonderful things about having a baby in September. Amos and the new television season came kicking in at roughly the same time, and so there was ample opportunity for me to laze around in bed nursing and napping and getting hooked on all the new shows (Will and Grace, Sex and the City). Fall is a great time for beginnings, that crisp snap in the air, cooler air whipping everyone into better moods, no more mosquitoes. The shift in local characters as fresh art students hit our part of Brooklyn, bound for Pratt. The desire to hunker down and snuggle, or to wear a baby close in a sling, fully supported by those chillier months. There was all that wintry bonding, and then he was crawling on Mother's Day, taking his first steps on the sand in the summer. Very cute, all very wonderful. No complaints.

Even those first few years of birthday parties were perfect. We could count on lovely outdoor celebrations with apples and rustling leaves--a final outdoor bash before we'd all be retreating into indoor heated spaces. There seemed no better time to have a baby, to celebrate a birthday. Until he hit school and September proved to be a real puzzle.

Hmmm. Even a really early September birthday would be less crowded with complications. But a birthday firmly rooted at the end of the month means several things. A guest list comprised of LAST YEARs friends--some of whom, three weeks into the next year, might have already begun to drop off the radar (sometime after the invitations were sent out). There's the promise of all those new friendships, but of course the dust hasn't settled enough by the third week of school (or the second, when the invitations really should have been mailed), to know which friendships to invest in.

In his kindergarten year, Amos began a new school and, crippled by shyness, wanted me to make sure that in his classroom on his actual birthday--though I'd have sent in cookies or cupcakes or something lowkey--nobody would sing the birthday song to him. His was the first birthday of the year and he didn't want to do be the kid who did it first, didn't want to do it at all, really. Didn't want the attention. Didn't want any attention. I was the one who insisted on sending in some kind of treat (peanut butter and chocolate buckeyes, a delicious risk in this day and age of nut allergies, even though I was assured there weren't any in the room that year). And, determined that his birthday could be a chance to reach out to some people in this new school community, I asked him every day at pick-up if he'd met anyone he'd like to invite to his party. Lee was who he talked about after the first week, so we sought out his address, and added him to the list. Seb started to be mentioned at the beginning of week two, and Joey was added right at the last minute. All three families came. Well, really Seb and Joey's families came and were lovely additions to the festivities. Lee was dropped off (at a 5 year old's birthday party, which seemed kind of drastic since we'd never met his parents) and was a whirligig kind of nightmare--cheating in games, stealing from goody-bags. Gentle almost comical 'bad seed' stuff, but still, a nuisance and one, it turns out, we never really should have had to endure. Five years later Amos and Lee have a nodding relationship, but nothing more. In so many ways it feels weird that we'd thought Lee was Amos's first big new buddy at his new school. That's what you get for having to figure it all out when you're 3/185ths of the way into the school year.

The following year, in first grade, we repeated the process, asking Amos to make the same sort of strange determination at the start of the year. Anyone new you'd like to invite? We'd ask, hovering at pick-up to get a gander at the new faces in the room behind him (or more importantly, of the parents of those new faces--why not nudge him to befriend someone with a mom I think I'd like, right?). Aldo, his top pick, couldn't come on account of Rosh Hoshanna (the existence of which has come to make Amos curse the timing of this birthday, since that same holiday trumps his birthday every year), Cane came and was cute and then swiftly faded into the background for the rest of the year and then moved to Pakistan before the summer. We didn't kept in touch. By that spring though Amos had bonded with Ned, Luka, and Ashland and went to all of their parties. And by then it was weird that they hadn't been to his.

Then there was second grade. Amos was assigned to a table with a group of boys--two of whom he already knew and planned to invite to his party. One of whom was brand new to the school. I suggested to Amos that he invite Giannini, and he said no. He had no interest in this new kid. I let the subject drop, for a bit. Until one day in the car on the way home Amos said that the two other boys had mentioned the birthday party and Giannini turned to him and asked straight out 'am I invited?' When he told me this in the car, he beamed, proud of his truthful but still non-answering answer--"well, we haven't exactly sent the invitations out." But then I made Amos invite him. It just seemed so cruel not to. He railed against this, but I insisted. I taught him about karma-told him that this was just 'the right thing to do,' and that if he did this good deed, the universe would send something in return. He grudgingly agreed, adding that I'd better be right about the karma thing.

Giannini arrived--another unexpected drop-off kid. Turns out his family had as much interest in bonding with us as Amos did in bonding with their son. He was such a nuisance. He ate every single petite-quiche--the spinach and cheese ones, that is--his being a vegetarian and all, and then hounded me to heat up more (hanging out in the kitchen heating petite-quiches had not been my party plan--144 quiches should have been sufficiently ignored by the hordes of children, leaving plenty for the adults--I never intended to have to break out the other box). He kind of niggled his way around the edges of the party, mostly just annoying grownups. And then his parents got lost on their way to pick him up (new to the nabe and all) and we had to entertain him for an extra 90 minutes once the last cherished party guest had left. A week later he was pulled out of school to be homeschooled--his mother deeming our colorful little progressive place unable to meet his high academic needs. (I have to point out here that, after months of whining when remembering about Giannini and the karma that never happened...Amos finally spent the $10 comic-book-shop gift certificate Giannini had given him on a pack of Yu-gi-oh cards that ended up containing a much-sought-after rare-ish card--score one for Mommy and the karma...even if it did come a little late). But every birthday since, when I'm making my gentle suggestions about how to spice up his last year friends with a few from the new class he gives me a certain look and mouths the word 'Giannini' and I back down.

As if the trauma of the early in the year party isn't enough, the rest of the school year then shakes things up even more. He ends up being invited to a slew of birthday parties hosted by other kids who've moved into his life at some point that year. While I'm sure no one's measuring this stuff, it does seem perverse by the end of the school year to see which of Amos's best friends he hadn't invited to his too-early-to-tell September party. To think that last year's Mets game hadn't included Chandler and Roy is strange, given the intense baseball bond that grew between them by springtime, when they were having birthday parties that would never have NOT included their new pal.

This may not be high-stakes stuff, but it is bizarre-o land timing in a terrain that, even in the best of circumstances, can be really awkward. Who's invited, who isn't. Last September six-year old Etta was given a last minute invitation to an old pal's party--talk about tense. Understandably, Norene had NOT BEEN INTERESTED in inviting Etta to her early-September party, when she and her mom made the guest list in the summer. Great. No problem. Big deal. But then Norene verbally invited her (tell your mom to call my mom so you can come) the day before her party, when they reconnected at recess in the first week of school. It was a clear last minute addition, that no one seemed to mind, once the two moms got over the awkwardness of the 'my daughter claims to be invited to your daughter's party that we've otherwise heard nothing about, is that true?'/'my daughter didn't want to invite your daughter when we made the list, but must have changed her mind yesterday' conversation. But the whole thing could have been avoided had Norene been born a month earlier. Parenting is like high school all over again, but the conversations have to be had, not ignored...since the social lives of helpless little powerless hostage-like children are at stake.

So now it's Etta's no-strings summer birthday that seems really wonderful (and makes the morning sickness at Christmas and the ready-to-pop-in-the-hundred-degree-playground pregnancy worth it). Any kind of party can happen, any kind of grouping, any amount of including, any crass omission...it's all fair game. Time isn't measured in 5-day non-party days and two party-possible afternoons, like it is in the school year. It's just a big blob of time that no one else has to know anything about. Even my toddler's otherwise formidable (born in a negative windchill week) winter birthday falls nicely within the school year's bookends. It can just be about who she's friends with now, and doesn't have to reach too far into the past, or make ridiculous predictions about the future. And it lacks the pressure of the 'should we have it outside?' question.

But it's September now, and the party's planning is well underway. I have an idea of what the invitation will look like, and my husband's working out some activities. We know where we'll be and what we'll be doing, we just don't know who will be invited, even at this point, 16 days away. He's lucky to have friends, we're lucky to be able to create these lovely little celebrations for him to share with them. And everything's fine. But September birthday's still can make me feel this way.

Empty Next

2007-09-06T08:51:00.002-05:00

Probably, nothing will change.

A year from now I might look the same as I do now, I might be forced to wear the same soft clothes, my brain might be wired the same way as it is today.

But maybe, jusssssssst maybe, I'll have completely transformed.

Maybe people will ask me what my 'aha' moment was and I'll look back on the time the regular sized towel the masseusse laid out for me (on my first real massage in over a year) didn't quite cover my whole body. Or the time the pants bought in haste at a Wal-mart (yes, a Wal-mart) that were meant to be a bit on the big side (so I didn't even try them
on--too big? who cares!) turned out to not even be able to creep up past my thighs.

All year I've been doing the countdown. This is my last October 18th home with my youngest...my last November 11th, March 31st, you get the point. In a matter of weeks (don't even get me started on the two weeks of phasing in: two hours today, two tomorrow, two hours and oop! fifteen minutes today, three hours tomorrow...)I'll be an empty nester. And not a pregnant one like the last time. A true, omigod, what am I going to do with myself empty nester.

Amos will be in 4th grade, Etta in second--both in the bigtime (and maybe even on the schoolbus to boot), and Piper, dear Piper, will be in a special long day--5 hours a day/five days a week--reserved for older threes at our local little preschool--the handful of January and February children who missed the cutoff by mere weeks, and who have to wait until the next year to join the masses in real school.

Like the Monday morning diet, the preparation for which involves all sorts of binge-eating on Saturday and Sunday, I have been completely indulgent in all ways but the healthy ones all summer long--hell, all YEAR long. Why start an exercise program now, when I'm home with the little one? Why start trying to eat healthy with all these carb-swilling kids swirling about? Why even get any momentum going? Why not just eat another brownie from the bakery on the corner and muse about how toned I'll be a year from now? When everything just snaps into place.

When I might find out I have reserves of energy I never knew I had.

When I might find out I'm really good at long-distance running?

When I might discover how good it feels to NOT have a heavy full feeling in my tummy after every meal?

When I might discover that days are lovely and endless when NOT measured out in television increments of hours and half hours.

When I might unleash the joys of routinely walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to a yoga class five miles away, or maybe I'll be the lady who bikes everywhere! They'll interview me on NPR. "When did you make the commitment to begin biking all over Brooklyn and Manhattan?" "When did you discover you really liked biking?" "When did the seat stop hurting?"

When I might build a little art studio in a corner of the kitchen and churn out amazing artwork?

So much might happen!

Maybe, just maybe, Regis and Kelly won't have any interesting people on their show; Whoopi Goldberg might suck on the View and my interest in the Hot Topics portion will disappear. Maybe I won't peek in at Days of our Lives just for a minute one afternoon and recognize enough of the characters or their names at least, to get hooked on it all over again. Maybe Oprah will bum me out because all I'll do when I look at her is remind myself that 'she' has a personal trainer AND a personal chef and wouldn't we all be fit and healthy if we had those things.

Maybe I'll do all of the grocery shopping and odds-and-ends-errands and our weekends will be totally free...

Maybe I'll discover how satisfying it is to have a really clean kitchen sink, to fold laundry and lay it lovingly in my children's
drawers...to roll back all the rugs and mop, to throw away piles of mildly interesting completely unfile-away-able things.

Maybe I'll read all those novels I ordered on Amazon just to tack on enough money to qualify for super saver shipping!

Or maybe I'll turn back into who I was before any of this domestic/kid stuff happened...

The fun thing is no one knows.

No one can tell me I won't drop four sizes in clothing, and get a jazzy new haircut to show off my newly uncovered cheekbones. If such a thing *could* be, then surely it would be?

Of course I might have to celebrate my first few days of empty-nest-hood by actually lolling lazily about the empty-nest. We
wouldn't want me to NOT come face to face with its true emptiness, would we? Probably I should be forced to wander from room to room, talking on the phone about my feelings, thumbing through magazines, trying out different beds like Goldilocks. Just to get a sense of it all. Like viewing the body at the funeral--we wouldn't want me to be in denial, out there in a downward-facing dog in Chelsea--would we?

And then it might be silly to get all ambitious before the holidays.

I've always heard it's easier to lose the first twenty or thirty pounds than the last five. Why not give myself a few more of those delicious gravy-smothered easy-to-lose pounds?

Why not see what little murmurs happen in my head in the emptiness of my house, on those soft pillows, near those
glossy magazines. Maybe there's a little bit of genius there I wouldn't get to hear if I'm out biking all over the borough.

Maybe I should just take it easy a bit longer.

I wouldn't want to set the bar too high, come out of the starting gates too fast.

Come to think of it, January might be a better time to start.

Sleeping Beauty

2007-07-16T12:42:00.002-05:00

There's something about the moment that Piper falls asleep. It's one of the best feelings in the world. And not just because I spend the entire day being so challenged by her. I think I even said I hate her out loud today, to my friend Rana while we sunbathed on the deck.

Piper had come up to me with a tiny plastic jug of coffee milk--something she shouldn't have been able to get by herself--and something that she probably shouldn't even be drinking--two things I was willing to overlook since her rummaging around for it had bought me the fifteen minutes of uninterrupted peace outside in the first place. She asked if she could drink some and I said sure!--happily forgiving the fact that she was going to drink straight from the jug. I aimed my face back up at the sun and closed my eyes, smiling into the warmth. Glug glug...pause...Glug glug...pause. Then, shake-a shake-a shake-a

SPLOOSH!

Cold sticky milk dropped all over my left side--soaking, sticking. I was furious. I hate her I seethed (under my breath, but still...) in the direction of Rana. I glared at Piper-got up--and stormed away to clean up.

Later in the car time stood still while we awaited Piper's decision on where to sit-which meant that anyone of the other children might have to be reshuffled to her satisfaction. Three year old Sudoku. Has to be next to her sister, has to be in the booster seat, has to be on the same side as the llama we'll drive by has to be...and so on and so forth.

Then she had a complete meltdown in the lakeside restaurant we'd chosen for dinner. Happy families dined peacefully at picnic tables overlooking a marina of sorts. Seagulls held court atop big posts and sloped tin rooftops, cars ootched up at angles on the gravel lot. Butter-colored sunset beyond the trees.

When her brother wasn't done with the blue marker at the exact moment she needed him to hand it to her Piper began to fuss and cry.

I will take you straight to the car and wait there with you if you don't stop fussing this instant, I hissed at her. She reached over and yanked the marker from her brother's hand. I grabbed it and gave it back, scooped up the now wailing child--new to the world of actual consequences.

It was a teensy bit of a scene--me gripping her in a sloppy hug-like hold--her legs dangling, her wailing--but I felt proud with every ground-up crunched-shell step--I whisked her through the maze of outdoor diners (happy families all--did I mention?) and into the unlocked minivan. I tossed her in through the sliding door and then shut it even as she attempted to body block it from closing all the way, like trying to reload a particularly stubborn jack-in-the-box--minus the tinny-creepy music. Then I hopped into the driver's seat and pushed the automatic lock button and closed my own door. Not in time--she was pulling her door open--the lock hadn't caught. I got out and shut her door again and locked it, and shut myself in the driver's seat. She tried to get a grip on the little peg lock--pulling it up--difficult to do now that it's a gripless nub, not the shiny golf-tee shaped locks I grew up with. I kept an eye on her progress and a finger on my own auto-lock button, ready to override her first smidge of success, all the while reminding her, calmly and patiently, that if she could stop the crying and fussing and promise to stop fighting over the markers we could rejoin the crowed.

Eventually she cleared--the cloud passed--and she nodded in compliance. Just as I confirmed the agreement-she pulled the lock back up-and I opened my own door and the car must have just had enough because it started doing the most obnoxious security alarm--Meep Meep Mep Meep Meep Meep!--blaring directly at all the peaeful eaters (some of whom were sitting at picnic tables inches away from the front of my car). I reached for my keys so I could press the little red security button and realized that I didn't have them--they were back at the table in my bag. Meep Meep Meep! we blared away--I caught the eye of Rana, back at the table with the other kids.

My keys are in the bag! I yelled, and she began to grapple for it. Meep Meep Meep! Everyone stared. I was stuck--there was nothing to do. My own minivan thought I was breaking into it, from the inside I guess. And no button I could press would convince the car otherwise. Just as my keys were being delivered to me, seagulls flying away, diners clearly pissed, the honking stopped. On its own.

Phew.

I opened my door to get out, smiling with relief at everyone who was frowning at me. And then Meep Meep Meep! all over again. I could stop it now by pressing the red button on the keys, but my car was still confused. It happened twice more in the time it took us to exit the car. I'm sorry, I couldn't stop it. I'm sorry, I said in the direction of all the people who hated me and who might have preferred one tantrumming toddler to all the Meep Meeping. But it was clear that my attempts at eye contact and grovelling was just making them hate me even more.

Two hours later, after some ice cream and some tv, and after a naked toothbrushing session where I discovered lazy trails of pee on the insides of her legs (!!)--she and I were in bed reading a book. After the book (Two Crazy Pigs) she requested a round of Baby Beluga-then she nestled her head on my shoulder and just...let...go.

I always know she's asleep before I can see that she's asleep. It's like a little light goes out. It's like 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.' It's like the Wicked Witch's sister's red and white socks have shrivelled to empty and pulled themselves out of the ruby red shoes.

We all look at Piper when she sleeps and we wonder where she's gone. What's going on in her head? Do little pings of what's important fire off in there? Chocolate Milk, Phoebe, Lukas, Dora, Blue Marker, Llama...? Or is it all quiet in there. An empty shell. The squishy turtle just walked away.

It's a beautiful thing when she drifts off--when she lets go. Mostly because she holds on so tightly--with such ferocity--all day long.

She sleeps, sweaty, breathing deeply. Her body doing what it needs to do--what it knows how to do. Gearing up for tomorrow--a day when everything might go her way.

What's Important Changes

2007-06-27T08:09:00.001-05:00

On the first day of camp last week I slapped Amos’s camouflage baseball hat on his head as he walked out the door. He’s not that much of a hat kid but we didn’t know the system yet---weren’t sure how much outside time/sun time they’d be having, so I tossed the hat on him just in case he’d be needing a bit of shade for the day. When I picked him up I was surprised to find him frolicking in the enormous bouncey-ball pond with the other kids, with his hat still on. All the kids' shoes and various accessories were in a pile outside of the pit, and the kids were tumbling and rolling around like puppies, leaping off of things, laughing. And Amos was in the midst of it all, fussing to make sure the hat was still on his head.

It was clear to me in that moment that the hat had become an important part of his identity. He was the kid from Brooklyn with the hat in this Soho mishmash of kids. The giggly little Asian kid, the buttoned-up geeky kid, the 8 year old with the mohawk and the rock ‘n roll shirts, the scraggly Belushi-like kid, the freckled tomboy girl...

Every morning we’d find the hat on his way out the door to camp. Sometimes we’d forget (him not being a hat kid, after all) and seconds after he and Joe said their goodbyes and left we’d hear the metal gate slam and a jangle/fumble at the door --he’d point out that he needed his hat, and we’d always manage to find it.

It reminded us of the lego table. When he was three and went to preschool, he spent the first few minutes on the very first day of school sitting at the green lego table silently stacking plastic pieces. And we all just assumed it was his favorite thing. Boy, he sure loves legos! Midway through the year when he’d gained lots of confidence and loads of friends we arrived to drop him off and he stood frozen in the doorway. The lego table wasn’t there.

‘Oh we thought the kids might want a little water play this morning’ his teacher said, gesturing at the water table that stood in the center of the room.

Amos glared at her, and at the spot where the lego table used to be.

We all made chipper noises about how cool the water table was and, as if to illustrate this, several kids ran into the room past Amos and splashed gleefully. Until that moment we didn’t realize that the lego table was really his only way to enter the classroom. We didn’t know he couldn’t walk into the room if he wasn’t walking towards the green lego table.

Of course he was at a very sweet school with lovely teachers, and while I was prepared for this to be a major big new experience for him--one for the record books--one of the teaching assistants knelt down in front of him and invited him to come help her drag the hunk of plastic out of the store-room. He went with her, hand-in-hand to retrieve it. Needless to say, it remained in the room for the rest of the year.

So now here we were five years later with a new security blanket in the form of a camouflage hat from a restaurant we’d visited in Austin Texas a month earlier. It got him through the week and then was forgotten again over the weekend (did I mention he’s not really a hat-wearer?), and no one was paying much attention to the camp departure yesterday morning--Monday. He and my husband scooted off; a seemingly uneventful return to the routine.

Today, Tuesday, I was responsible for camp drop-off. As we neared the industrial block where his camp was located, I looked in the rearview mirror at his blond moppish head and asked if he had his hat.

‘No,’ he shrugged light-heartedly. ‘I forgot it.’

‘Is that ok? ‘ I asked, bracing myself for a cloud of worry to pass over his bright eyes (and foreseeing the same horrified doorway-stall I so vividly remembered from five years earlier).

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I forgot it yesterday, too.’ Then he added. ‘Since I already made it through a day without it, it doesn’t seem so important anymore.’

‘Funny how that happens,’ I mused, realizing that this moment--alone in the car with my kid--could be the kind of teachable moment the anti-drug commercials tell us about. I should comment on it in a way that might help this moment become mom-wisdom that he’ll always remember. I could remind him about the lego table. I should sound cheerful and matter-of-fact. If I sound too preachy he'll catch on...

But before I could scrape something together he continued...’it’s like when we’re playing Rummy and I’m collecting Aces and Aces are like the most important thing to me and then you put down, like, Ace two three four and then someone else puts down, like Queen, King, Ace..and all of a sudden the two Aces in my hand aren’t as important to me anymore. Sometimes things that are important just aren’t that important anymore. That’s how it is with my hat,’ he said.

He had beaten me to the greater wisdom of the situation, and he explained it better than I ever could have.

Like Friends Should Be

2007-06-19T10:12:00.001-05:00

">I love you, you love me, we're best friends like friends should be. Barney sings that every morning. My children watch, and I cringe. Not the usual stuffed-purple-Barney-hating cringe. Its the like friends should be clause that gets to me. Why is a best friend something that friends should be? What's wrong with being good friends? What's wrong with being likeable, having lots of friendly acquaintances, and several solid confidantes? What's the big deal about a best friend? What's the agenda here?

From what I can tell a best friendship is a contract--an agreed upon commitment of sorts, like marriage. Two regular friends agree that they are best friends. Someone must have to take that first chance, like lean in for the first kiss, or say the first I love you. And then, if the other agrees, you have a best friendship.

Until college I'd never had a best friend. I was great at being friends with lots of people. I wasn't bothered by those strange couplings that were the best friends in my high school; I enjoyed my free-agent status. I could be flattered and pleasantly surprised by invitations and attentions, and I seldom felt left out or jealous since I wasn't in an official committed friendship with anyone. Of course the concept of one best friend wasn't new to me, the opportunity had just never presented itself. I knew it was an important bond, but without having ever had the comfort, support, and knowing safety of a best friend, I didn't know what I was missing. I enjoyed dipping in and out of different sorts of intimacies with different sorts of people. I was good at that.

You're my best friend! declared my freshman roommate within a few weeks of moving in to our college dormitory room. I was flattered and surprised. She already had a best friend whom she spoke of all the time. Dianna (two ns) wrote weekly letters and mailed them in best friend-ish decorated envelopes: hearts, squiggles, happy faces, little bluebirds like the kind that circle Cinderella's head. We went to visit Dianna, she came to visit us. I honored their best friendship.

So there I was in my dorm room, seventeen years old, and all of a sudden I was someone's best friend. Someone wanted to hitch their wagon to me. It felt good; could I be that special to someone? What a rush! Dianna's flowery envelopes started to look pitiful, hopeful--so did the pictures of the two of them gripping each other drunkenly. Dianna had been dethroned and I was never sure she had been properly notified. Surely she would have cared, this best friendship being so big and important and strong and powerful.

The college roommate and I were best friends for seven years. People mistook us for one another when we answered the phone, and lumped us together in all situations. We served as seals of approval for each other; like having a your own personal notary public sign off on and/or vouch for every intimacy or transaction. Our public claim to each other must have served as insight into deeper parts of our personalities--(hmmm, she seems kinda crunchy, but her best friend is so stylish,--or the reverse--she seems so materialistic but look her best friend's sooo laid back!). We told each other everything, finished each other's sentences--we were formidable when paired together in games like charades.

And then it was over, almost as quickly as it had happened--taken away as effortlessly as it had been bestowed. Her move away from me was emotional as well as physical; she left the friendship and the city in a hurry, and without satisfactory explanation. A lot of people were shaken up by the break up (think Simon and Garfunkel, think Laverne and Shirley, think Paris and Nicole--); ours had been the ideal friendship in the eyes of others. Everyone became a Monday morning quarterback: maybe she was jealous of you? maybe she thought people only liked her because she was best friends with you? maybe some psychiatrist told her she was too dependent on you?

No one knew what happened, and no one knows to this day. Eventually, mutual friends stopped pressuring her for reasons. I could write a novel about the wheres and the whys and the hows of the end of our friendship, but in a nutshell, that was that.

There was some relief. She was a social worker who instigated long monotonous TALKS in order to smooth over small jealousies. I could certainly live without those. But there was also devastation. How could the person who knew me so well want to stop knowing me at all? Weren't best friends supposed to stick together no matter what? I felt insignificant.

I've gotten married, had children, and made many new friends since then and there's still a part of me that remains vulnerable and wounded when it comes to the subject of best friends.

No man is alone (or is it poor?) who has friends, right? Isn't that the moral of Its a Wonderful Life? That's the kind of moral I found myself bumping into all the time back when the break-up was still fresh. Curiously, it still seems to be the pot of gold at the end of every moral rainbow. I know now that my one best friend wasn't the healthiest introduction to what a best friend could be (it occurs to me that she was sort of a 'you're my best friend' junkie). But our connection was real. And it's part of my story now. There hasn't been anyone else.

From what I can tell best friends come easily to young children and a lucky few are able to preserve that best friendship forever. The first days of Elementary School, Middle School, High School and College all seem to be good times to claim a new best friend. People don't tend to come to those phases of life saddled with other responsibilities, and a great sense of importance and meaning permeates everything in these typically cloistered academic environments. But what's a twenty-five year old to do to find a best friend? How about a thirty year old? Do I still have a chance at finding a best friend at forty? Do I want one? (Barney thinks I should have one)

I picture a nursing-home-widows, bridge-partner kind of best-friendship as a possibility for my final years. But what about the thirty years between now and then? What happens if you don't have a best friend because your all-consuming best friend just up and left you? What if there was no obvious friend to be a bridesmaid so you just finagled something tasteful with your sister and sister-in-law-to-be and walked, best-friendless, up the aisle. What then?

Sure there's the husband as best friend idea, but come on. My sweet husband doesn't want to hear the fifteen minute emotional version of the two second stubbed-toe story. He doesn't enjoy looking for deeper meaning in the words of sales clerks and co-workers. He can't fill in the gaps of a hilarious remember-when story by naming what earrings, whose shirt, and which shorts I was wearing. My husband's a good friend. We do a great job of balancing roles, kids, ideas, conversations, and we also know when to just let things go. But if we stayed up all night sharing notes with the fervor and fever of best friends no one would be paying the bills.

Of course I have lots of friends. Women I adore and feel close to. Intellectually, I know it doesn't matter that I don't have one best friend, but sometimes I wish the world would just shut up about how great it is (that means you too, Oprah).

Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other's gold! Give me a break. Why doesn't anyone talk about the pain of a long friendship ending? Am I really alone in this experience? Why did I have to feel freakishly like I had gone through a divorce in a world that doesn't understand because it's so busy worshipping the almighty best-friend? I already feel like enough of a loser without a best friend. Am I really supposed to be feeling this way?

My son has already had a best friend come and go--he seems fine with it but I watch from the sidelines holding my breath. At four, he seems to be able to handle hearing 'you're not my friend anymore'. He shrugs and moves on. I feel the pain he doesn't.

And I cringe every time my daughter's friend's babysitter chides the two of them for squabbling. 'You're best friends!' she shouts, repeatedly handing the three year olds this potent phrase. During a recent tug-of-war over some small toy, the pal screamed 'you're not my best friend anymore!' Egad. It's the best friend version of the 'maybe they'll get married when they grow up,' thing heard commonly by ecstatic parents as they look on while two infants of different sexes tumble around together. And it's just as annoying.

Given my history with the whole best friend thing, it's understandable that I worry about the trouble this may cause down the road. But I remind myself that my kids might be ok in the long run because they'll get to experience friend-difficulties when they're young--before these best friends get all tangled up in emerging adult identities. Maybe I wouldn't have been so burned if I'd learned the painful lessons as a kid on a playground and not when I was in my nervous twenties in a big city wondering what kind of impact I might have on the world and learning that, in truth, I wasn't even having a positive impact on the person who knew me best.

So at this point it looks like there will be no BFF to deliver a tearful and knowing eulogy for me. There won't be that one unrelated 'aunt' who can see, in my children, all that she loved about me at that age, and embarrass me in front of them. I'm told that time heals all wounds, but fifteen years after being dumped, I'm still baffled by the whole best friend gig. I can't protect my children from being hurt by friendships, and it looks as though I won't be able to protect myself from reliving my own loss and confusion as I send them out into the dangerous world of friend-making and friend-keeping. Sadly, the only advice I could give them--to run the other direction from anyone promising a best friendship--seems futile in this la-la land of buddy movies, happy endings, and sappy lies like 'lovers come and go but friendship lasts 4 ever!' Maybe in the meantime, I should just turn off Barney.

Mothers Wild

2007-06-04T19:07:00.001-05:00

I’m not someone who takes it personally that other women look great or are wildly successful, or both. Usually. I recognize that I have made choices in my own life that add up to who I am now, where I am now, and who and where I’m not. A nice neat equation. Art major + didn’t go to grad school + wanted summers free = Art Teacher. Art teacher + 3 kids = stay-at-home mom. Eats whatever I want to eat + doesn’t work out = soft body, low energy but never hungry. Soft body, low energy + 3 kids + no job= sluggish and sleepy and unmotivated (but never hungry).

I’m basically happy and healthy despite some bad habits and general laziness--and am not threatened by other women because I have no regrets and because I can do the math. Good for them. Good for me. Great.

I know women who work hard to look great. I know women who look great without working hard. I know women who’ve fought for powerful jobs, I know women who just put the time in and reaped the rewards more gradually. I know who these women are and I respect them. I’m not them and that’s okay.

But it turns out I don’t do well with surprises. And I’ve been learning lately that when you befriend women who’ve just given birth and then you get to be really close thanks to all the shared experiences--boredom, music classes, sleepless nights, fights with spouses, meltdowns of all varieties--and when all of that squishiness begins to melt away as everyone (mostly everyone) starts to return to being the kind of women they were way back when--way back before the first baby, back when they were who someone fell in love with, back when they were who they were that decided to live in New York, back when they were the sum of a lot of experiences that had nothing to do with being moms--there’s a lot to be surprised about.

And sometimes I feel a little bit betrayed.

It’s like the mom-version of Joker’s Wild all the time now that the kids are getting older. Pull the lever and...Mother, Mother! Wall Street Tycoon! Mother, Mother! Film-maker! Mother, Mother! Pulitzer prize nominated novelist! Mother, Mother! Skinny Fashion Magazine Person!

Soft women I met when all our babes were six weeks old are now hard. Curves chiselled, wobbles whittled. Bodies snapped back--after a three or four year stretch of fleshy momminess--to being strong and athletic.

Me? I’ve always been soft, just couldn’t wait to have babies to justify it. Imagine how at home I felt in the midst of all these new moms! I assumed we were in agreement about satisfying the chocolate cravings that continued for years after the babies were born. I assumed we were serious about being content to continue wearing big ol’ stretchy maternity underwear. I assumed we were all going to throw in the towel on ambition in the face of such newly imbalanceable lives.

When did they all sneak out and work out? When were they eating right in the presence of all those birthday cupcakes? When did they get enough sleep to get back to their computers? Their art studios?

Our conversations, even after two years of friendship, were so now-oriented (diaper brands, weaning theories) even when literary (‘anyone read the New Yorker article on Ferber?’ ‘are stay-at-home moms doing a disservice to their children?’) that in one case I learned a pal and I had very similar (former) professional lives so late in the game it was bizarre. Turned out in addition to stocking the same snacks in our stroller bags and making the same snide comments about other mothers’ inabilities to set limits, we taught art in similar private schools and knew many of the same people.

I’m proud to know these women. Proud to have breastfed alongside them, navigated the nuances of the neighborhood nannies, pondered the politics of playgroup, glued ourselves to each otoher in desperation, but I could have used a heads-up on who they were planning to return to being when all the babies toddled off to school.

Maybe they could have worn nametags with previews of their lives to come. Dancer, size 2 might have been nice. Val shrunk down to nothing, and revealed a passion for modern dance. I didn’t see that coming. Rich party-girl, size 6 might’ve helped. I tried to keep up with Victoria’s lunching-out habit until I realized she was light-years ahead of me financially and nutritionally. Every time she ate a salad I ate a meatloaf sandwich with gravy. I just thought she was uninspired food-wise, didn’t realize it was part of a get-skinny-to-get-back-to-the-clubs plan. Writer/runner, Ballerina/photographer, Sculptor/athlete. Huh? I’m blown away by who these women have become, and equally blown away by my assumption that I’d landed among soul-sisters in a similar stagnate stage of life.

I had no vision of who I’d be after becoming a mom. I always knew I wanted to be a mom. I was awestruck at the thought of being a mom. Being a mom was my happy ending. My Disney wedding. I didn't give much thought to what I'd do afterwards.

I continued to teach until my youngest was two, then walked away from my career to be at home. I thought I was entering a life full of all the vibrant moms I knew. What a fun mom-house we’d all inhabit together! Like Millionaire Acres in the Game of Life. We’d park our little pretend cars in the pretend driveway, have lunch together and worry together and live out our years together.

But as I was walking through the revolving door on the way in, they were all heading out. Back to work, back to writing colonies, back to skinny jeans, back to shopping at Barneys, back to jaunting off to Europe. Back to who they were before I got to know them and thought they were who they seemed to be--sluggish, sleepy, soft and slightly unsatisfied (like me). I hadn’t counted on this.

My entire life was one arrow leading to motherhood. So I landed here and built a cozy nest with all the other moms--we got all snuggled in, all synched up, and in some cases got pregnant second and third times together. And now they reveal that their arrows continue on, pointing above, beyond, pointing out of the mom-nest. I don’t have these arrows. I didn’t really know they existed.

Last weekend I ran into a dad at a Little League game and learned that his wife, my friend Patty, was running the four-mile loop through the park and would meet up with us later. Running through the park? Good for her! Another friend getting back into the groove. Great. Just great.

Go Fish

2007-05-30T00:28:00.000-05:00

Cheddar Cheese Goldfish when I was nine meant that I was sitting at the curved bar in the Lagoon Lounge in Florida with my grandfather, drinking a Shirley Temple, waiting for all of my aunts and uncles to assemble so we could be seated at dinner. The goldfish were the bar snacks, mixed in with nuts in dark-brown wooden bowls, and I remember picking two at a time out of the mix and letting them dissolve slowly in my mouth, in between cool splashes of red maraschino fizziness. Floor to ceiling aqua-colored curtains cast a weird light in the room and muted the cocktail sounds, and it felt very special to be there, wondering what kind of grown-up I’d be.

Cheddar Cheese Goldfish when I was seventeen meant that I was flying on an airplane somewhere drinking Bloody Mary mix from a little yellow can. USAir served the fish in little white pouches, and it was so much more exciting than getting peanuts. I only regretted the Bloody Mary mix on the bumpy flights, and loved the combination of the thick savory slurry and the little savory crunchies. It was especially good on the flights where they’d give me a cup of ice with the drink because, by the time I’d reach the bottom of the cup, the ice had made that part super cold and had kind of thinned it out a bit, making it easy to down every last bit. I was probably going somewhere exciting like Hawaii or Cozumel or Vermont, and I was likely travelling alone, or at least sitting off by myself reading Glamour Magazine, trying to picture what kind of grown-up I’d be.

Cheddar Cheese Goldfish when I was twenty meant that I was in college and that I had the munchies and was probably eating an entire box of Stove Top stuffing mix as well. I’d chew a handful of goldfish up into a warm, wet mushy ball and then remove it from my mouth and eat it slowly. It sounds gross, but it was really really good, and tasted a little bit like buttery mashed potatoes. I got to be really picky about my goldfish then and would memorize expiration dates of the especially wonderful batches so I wouldn’t end up having to suffer through fish that were too salty or not cheesy enough. This was before they stopped using palm oil and I really loved the dense crunch of those fish. There was something special about a brand new bag of Goldfish. You’d have to pry the foil part open carefully so it wouldn’t rip or separate too much from the white paper on the outside. I didn’t spend much time those days wondering what kind of grown-up I’d be. It just felt weirdly liberating to be able to eat anything I wanted anytime I wanted.

Cheddar Cheese Goldfish when I was twenty-five meant that I was babysitting Noam and Eliott on the Upper West Side or Sigmund Freud’s great grandchildren on Sutton Place (and not going to graduate school, by the way). The kids were finally asleep and I could settle on the sofa and drink apple juice and eat goldfish out of the bigger boxes these parents usually had in their pantries, and fold American cheese singles into tiny square stacks and relax. The cheese bits were a nice counterpart to the dry crunch of these palm-oil-free fish, and I often had cheese and fish in my mouth at the same time for optimal mouth-feel. I could hardly believe that the parents paid me to indulge in all those yummy kid snacks and watch movies on HBO. It felt very exotic to eat such kid-centric treats. And when I wasn’t having this wholesome kind of evening I was having a different kind of evening in a bar, or at a friend’s apartment. I thought a lot about what would make me happy on a day to day basis, and didn’t think about the future, or of trying to build towards any kind of goal, because it didn’t seem like I’d ever really grow up like my parents who were married and had already had a baby by now, or like some of the people I'd gone to high school with who already looked like they were middle-aged.

Cheddar Cheese Goldfish when I was thirty-four meant that I was finding old ziploc baggies full of them in all sorts of crevices in the car, in the stroller, and in the diaper bag. I hated the way those crumbly dusty ziploc baggies either disappeared when I needed them most, or multiplied when I was most disgusted by the idea of old, wasted food. We way overfished. The 3-packs of large foil bags I’d buy at Costco didn’t serve the fish well at all. One pouch would rip open too much and force us to store the fish that didn’t cascade out all over the counter in tupperware. One pouch would be opened once and forgotten only to be discovered later, completely cardboardy stale. A possibility that, unfortunately, I’d forget to consider until after I had a handful in my mouth. And by the time we got to the last pouch, we’d recycled the orange and white box, and couldn’t be sure if the now-anonymous foil bag in the cupboard held fish, cereal, or something else. I fell out of love with the fish around this time. We moved onto other non-greasy treats like Veggie Booty and didn’t even care when the fish got faces, got big, or came in purple and green. It was astonishing to me to be in charge of the nutritional lives of my young children--and I breastfed them for the first 18 months of their lives to make up for the lousy habits they’d, no doubt, be picking up from me for the rest of their childhoods.

Cheddar Cheese Goldfish now, at 40, means I’m giving the fish another chance. I bought a bag of them a couple of weeks ago when we were heading into the car for a car trip. I didn’t choose the cereal-sized box that’s probably most cost-effective, and certainly not the overwhelming super-money-saving carton. I bought a regular old-fashioned squishy crumply white bag of fish, with the foil liner. If you pour the fish out at an angle, the corner of the bag acts like a funnel and channels them directly into your cupped palm (the one that’s not on the steering wheel). My three children and I handed the bag back and forth--from the front to the backseat and then back up again for the duration of the trip. They were lucky I shared so much with them. Since my motto is ‘when mommy’s happy everyone’s happy’ (or at least has a chance to be happy), I tend to put my own needs before theirs. I’m a much different kind of parent than I imagined I’d be, partly because I still don’t feel like the grown-up version of me who would look sort of like Mary Tyler Moore and who was supposed to take over for me by now ever showed up. But I don’t think anyone’s suffering too much. The fish taste great. Everthing's fine.

Photosensitive

2007-05-17T09:05:00.001-05:00

The collection of pictures from our Ireland trip could be called “Joe takes the kids to Ireland.” The book of pictures from our vacation in Chile could be entitled “A father and his toddler visit South America.” The smattering of photos from the Memorial Day Parade in upstate New York is, basically, “Joe and the kids and his wife’s sister and her kids watch the fire engines go by.” Our photo albums also contain the following sequences: “Joe and the kids wear orange shirts in a pumpkin patch,” “Amos rides his first horse while Daddy looks on lovingly,” “Large family sans Mommy gathers around Thanksgiving feast,” and of course “Everyone who was at Etta’s first birthday party--except for her mom, who created the invitations, made the cupcakes, planned the picnic, and handled everything including the camera.”

Evidence of Joe’s love for the kids is all over these pictures. There he is spotting Amos on the monkey bars--looking up at him intently, focusing only on his dangling son, hands poised to catch him. It’s a stunning and emotional shot. Here’s a rear view of him, then a side view, then a laughing, twisting picture of Joe swinging Etta around in a circle. You can flip through the small stack of photos and get a peek at the movement, and the joy the two of them shared.

I take beautiful pictures. I am never in them. I am who they are looking at, when the pictures are of smiling full-on faces. I am the one sneaking up on them, when the pictures are candids. I am the one inches away from them, when the pictures are such jam-up close-ups that their sticky faces and personalities explode out of the white borders.

I get credit, I get praise, and I get satisfaction. What I don’t get is ME in any of the pictures.

No matter what happens to my husband, no matter what kinds of people my kids turn out to be, this record of their shared experiences will always be there. And even though they will know, if they pause to think of it, that I was in all of those places too, physical evidence of my involvement just isn’t there. Generations from now, no one will care. I cherish black and white photos of my dark-haired grandmother leaning back sassily on a beach blanket. I study her in them, I don’t think much about my gangly grandfather behind the camera.

“I’m never in enough pictures,” I say to my husband sheepishly. But I know not to say this when the camera is around--since it only initiates an immediate (one-time only) flurry of shots that doesn’t fill the general void in our albums.

“The kids aren’t going to have any sense of what I looked like when they were young. If something happens to me, they won’t be able to thumb through old albums trying to get an idea of me.”

That’s the sort of thing I say.

Here’s how and why it doesn’t work.

Joe can’t ever just take my picture. No one can for that matter. If permission is asked of me, or if notice of an impending shot is given, I often turn it down politely (just like a sales clerk turning down a tip that she desperately wants to keep). If the would-be photographer isn’t insanely insistent--”no, c’mon, please let me take your picture, you look fabulous, please,”--the picture doesn’t happen.

Plus, if I know a picture is being taken of me, I feel obliged to look at the camera and smile. I don’t know how to be the unsuspecting subject. I haven’t had enough practice. I do have a good full-on beam and the picture always turns out to be ok--in a cookie-cutter type of way. It’s the same exact face pulled into the same exact grin every time. Just cut-and-paste and here I am holding hands with Buzz Lightyear at Halloween, here I am at the shooting gallery in the Wild West, here I am in the rug shop in the Andes.

It’s hard to get a genuine candid of me since, as the photographer, I’m always aware of the camera’s whereabouts, and of the camera-readiness of any given moment. No one can take a picture of me that I don’t know is being taken. And that’s the shot I want.

One friend was finally able to put it into words for me, in a way that I feel somewhat comfortable admitting. “You want the picture of Jackie Kennedy and John Jr, the one where he’s playing with her pearls.” Bingo.

I want the impossible. I want someone to capture the real smile I give my kids, or the puzzled look they inspire, or the full on belly-laugh, or the intense tickling session. I’ve tried to act natural in front of a self-timer, but the real stuff just doesn’t come. I end up acting like some tv mom, instead of just being captured being the mom that I am.

Sometimes, my friends and I play the ‘what would you do if you won a million dollars’ game. Over the years my answers have hovered in the ‘buy a private island’ and ‘blow it all on fun creams and lotions’ realm. Well, I’ve got a new wish these days. I’d forgo all of the fancy frills, and pay someone to sneak around in the bushes and document some of my time with my kids. Just don’t tell me you’re coming, and slip the memory stick in my mailbox at the end of every month.

Belly Up

2007-05-08T20:38:00.001-05:00

Belly up. She went belly up. I sat on the staircase sobbing, with my son at my side. We watched through the stair railings as she twitched and yowled her last breaths. Our neighbor had come to sit with us. My husband was entertaining our daughter in the backyard. At three and a half, my daughter couldn’t have cared less. She appeared at the door everynow and then, looked at our tear-stained faces, and declared “I not sad!” with an emphasis on the ‘I,’ before skipping (her answer to my request that she not run) back outside.

Zoe was an amazing cat. Enormous lettuce green eyes. Plushy velour fur. Gray with creamy peach smears. Six Toes. This dying of hers had lasted about a day. She and I knew she was going to die the morning before. When my feet felt fur under the covers as I woke up on the springiest day of the year I had a hunch it meant something. Her tickling whiskers were our alarm clock; we were never awake before she was. Besides, she didn’t burrow under the covers unless it was the dead of winter. She shouldn’t have still been under there while the Wiggles were singing ‘yummy yummy’ on tv on a sunny Friday morning in April.

I checked on her several times that day. Still way down under the covers. I’d put my hand on the comforter gently feeling for breathing and her body would press back faintly. During a dinner with friends in a different part of town I forgot about my fading pet. Upon returning home I had a dramatic moment of remembering. I told my family about my concerns as I raced upstairs to check on her--yep, still there. I pulled back the covers to find she’d wet the bed. I stroked her gently and whispered to her in a voice that told her I knew she was dying, and she picked her head up and bobbed it around a bit, squinting in my direction.

I’m curious now to know what I was thinking when I left her there--uncovered on the bed--to go to the computer to find an emergency late night vet. Was I really thinking I’d whisk this fifteen year old cat-at-peace to some traumatic middle-of-the-night waiting room somewhere? This cat, who hated nothing more than change--who turned so vicious when taken in a car and put on a steel table and poked at by a stranger that her last vet had a reminder in his notes to don elbow length leather gloves when handling her? I’m not sure what I was thinking. I’m glad now that the only option available was a ridiculous one--an all-night animal hospital (meaning dogs? maybe ferrets? in the waiting room) serving all five boroughs forty minutes away. I remember plotting out the trip in detail one second, then abandoning the plan the next.

I went back to the bed and she was gone.

“Look” my husband called out, “she’s going downstairs.” I ran to the head of the stairs and watched her pause, gallumph down a few steps, mew (she never mewed), gallumph down a few more, until she got to the bottom.

I helped the kids brush their teeth and turned them over to my husband for their bedtime stories before going downstairs to be with Zoe. A flashlight helped me find her half an hour later. She had settled on the bottom shelf of an inaccessible bookcase in the hallway, behind a scooter, a folding chair, a box of sporting equipment. I couldn’t reach her. This was heartbreaking.

I called my cat-loving parents and they reminded me about hospice. Their reminder to accept this as ‘nature’s way’ and to make her as comfortable as possible gave me something to do. I set a towel near her. I brought her water, I brought her food. I decided that she was where she wanted to be, and went to bed.

When we woke up the next morning we checked on her. She had moved herself onto the towel which made me feel useful helpful meaningful wonderful. She hadn’t touched the water or the food. She was still breathing. I crawled up on my side in the narrow space so I could reach her and stroked her fur, told her she was my sweet girl, and cried a bit.

I visited her throughout the morning. I went back and forth from my children’s breakfast needs, to my cat’s dying ones. French toast with confectioners sugar sprinkled on top. You’re my best girl, stroke stroke, my best girl. Cheese omelette. My best girl, sob sob, my sweet cat. A pancake rolled burrito-like around chocolate chips. You’re such a sweet cat, shh shh, my sweet girl.

At about 11:30 she went belly up. I watched as she twisted her body around, arching her back to expose her under-chin and creamy belly. Her famous front paw (her sixth toe looked like an opposable thumb and sometimes acted like one) hung up in the air. It twitched a bit. It was hard to watch but fascinating too. I kept thinking of a cartoon donkey on its back with legs twitching. Or of some children’s theater production where the kid playing the dying guy kicks his feet up a few times to prolong the humor of his pretend death--trying to suppress a smile the whole time--while the other kid-actors try to play the scene out gravely.

While I watched, she cocked her head forward, her large green eyes open but unblinking, unseeing. She was still breathing.

I called my neighbor to come and be with us. He fed our cats whenever we left town (we had another cat--a small easy calico who quarantined herself upstairs knowingly while her sister died). He knew how amazing Zoe was. I asked him what he thought we should do, even though I knew I wasn’t going to ravage the last few hours of Zoe’s life by taking her anywhere. He dragged her towel out a bit so she wouldn’t be so out-of-reach. When he began to talk about her suffering and how it could go on for awhile and how it might be cruel to let her continue like this my eyes glazed over and I hid my face in more tissues. I let my crying change the subject. I wasn’t ready for my resolve to keep my cat home to be challenged. I don’t know why I asked.

About this time I told my kids that Zoe was definitely dying. My son wanted to come sit with us.

Things got sort of weird at this point. She twisted a bit more and her tongue stuck way out. She made some guttural noises, and involuntary growls. There was some violent twitching and jerking. We watched. I sobbed. And then she was still. Nothing.

We stared at her side for a full minute and agreed she’d stopped breathing. Our neighbor said
he’d leave us alone with her and disappeared into the backyard. My son and I sat and watched her for awhile.

An hour later the five of us (including our baby girl who would have no memories of this cat) drove Zoe’s body to the cat clinic--they’d forward her body to the crematorium and then return her ashes to us. She was wrapped in her death-towel in a spring-green laundry basket. Each of us had stroked her fur for the last time. My husband even did that thing where he used his fingers to close her eyelids. It didn’t work as quickly as it does in the movies. Maybe it’s just not as easy to do with cats’ eyes.

My son and I took her body in. He sat on the bench next to me in the waiting room while I held the empty laundry basket and sobbed out our details. A woman coming from an exam room with a healthy cat watched from a respectable distance. She’d be telling her family about us at dinner.

My cat-loving parents cried over the phone with me. I’m from the kind of family who pays close attention to the hows of a death--we know it’s inevitable and search for the parts to be happy about each time. The circumstances of Zoe’s death made my mother very happy and she kept telling me that. I’m so happy she died in her home,. I’m so happy she died with you by her side. I’m so happy she went so quickly. I’m so happy you didn’t have to make any big decisions. I’m so happy she had such a happy life. I’m so happy you gave her fresh water every day. There were many things to be happy about.

Later that day I took the kids to the playground. I told everyone I saw that our cat just died. I was surprised at the deep levels of sympathy we received. I was also interested to learn that what we did--attending her in her natural death--was a rare thing in this day and age of in-office euthanasia.

My son asked me how to spell Zoe’s name. I told him and he started writing ‘Z-O-E’ all over the playground with a borrowed stub of chalk. On the walls, on the picnic tables, on the rubber mats. His Z’s were backwards. It was a beautiful day.

Truck-spotting

2007-05-03T13:05:00.001-05:00

We take a lot of car trips. Thank God for trucks. Two year old Etta yells “Uk” when she sees her first truck and then adds a “Mo” for each subsequent truck. Sometimes there are so many trucks around us that she sits as far forward as her car seat straps will allow, points her fingers out in simultaneous scarecrow-like directions, and makes the most serious face she can can as a way of letting us know how important she takes her truck-spotting job. Her serious face involves frowning and breath-holding, so she always ends up resembling the Chinese Brother who swallowed the sea.

From their carseats, the kids pump their arms like superheroes to get truck drivers to blow their horns. When the truckers respond we cheer and howl, when they don’t we send up a unified “Awwwwww!” For our humble minivan to suggest something to a rumbling truck, and to have that truck reply isn’t really like David beating Goliath, it’s like David getting Goliath to sing. (What the kids don’t know yet is that nobody can see them through our minivan’s tinted windows and the drivers are gamely responding to my bearded husband’s sweet air-pumping from the passenger seat.)

Amos, three and a half, wants to know what’s in every truck he sees. A past-time that began as a way to keep him distracted through incessant engaging chatter when we traveled with him when he was a small, unhappy passenger (maybe that truck has chickens maybe that truck has mashed potatoes maybe that truck has ice cream) has become an effective time-passer on our car trips.

Recently I drove alone with the kids for about two hours on the Long Island Expressway (alone with the kids seems like an oxymoron, until you’ve been stuck in traffic with a couple toddlers on the LIE). The truck game was especially exciting because there’s a stretch in Queens where the triple-lane-each-way highway is surrounded by eye-level elevated roadways, many of which have their own exciting truck-traffic jams.

Uk! Etta announces.

Yes I see that truck I reply.

It’s yellow and green and red and I see a boat on it, Amos says. What’s in that truck? he asks.

Probably somebody’s furniture I say.

Why somebody’s furniture? Amos asks.

Well sometimes a family might get tired of living in their house and they might decide to live in another house and even though they can drive or take an airplane to get to their new house they have to have a big truck like that one move their things, like furniture.

Oh Amos says.

Mo! Etta says, pointing.

What’s in that brown truck? Amos asks.

Well, that’s a UPS truck. You know when that nice man in the brown clothes brings presents to us sometimes? He’s a UPS man and he drives a brown truck like that. That brown truck is probably full of presents and packages.

Why doesn’t the truck have a door? Amos asks, as we pass and see the driver’s entire body, perched on his driving stool.

Maybe he has to deliver so many little presents that he doesn’t want to open the door every time.

Or maybe he’s hot in his brown truck, Amos guesses.

Mo!

That truck has a picture of potato chips on it, Amos says.

What do you think it has in it? I ask.

Potato chips? Amos says, but why does it have potato chips in it?

Well you know how we go to the store to buy potato chips? This truck is bringing new potato chips to the stores so when people go to buy potato chips, the stores will have potato chips.

Mo! Mo!

This goes on for about an hour. And while it may seem tedious, it’s strangely exhilirating for me. When I was young I took everything for granted. If Rhinestone Cowboy was playing on our local radio station, I thought that meant Glen Campbell himself was in the little antennaed building on the hill behind the Big Bear. I was a faculty brat and , until high school, I thought everyone in the world had a summer vacation. That Pete was still behind the window at the post office, and that Abe was still at the deli counter during summer months just didn’t register in my closed mind.

In my mind, trucks were just big mysterious vehicles that had nothing to do with my own royal life. I basically sat back and enjoyed a steady stream of pixie sticks and Christmas presents and didn’t stop to realize that this was only possible because of enormous amounts of organization in the bigger world. I probably didn’t imagine that truckdrivers were doing anything other than living out some odd and exotic lifestyle.

Because I feel like I learned so many obvious things so much later in life than most, it’s empowering to clue Amos in on some of the glorious and sensible workings of the world he lives in. It’s exciting that he’s so curious about it. We continue to learn. Every truck is a teachable moment.

Mo! Etta shouts at an armored truck.

Oh great I think, this one will be fun to explain. That’s an armored truck Amos, I say, making sure to slow down as we pass it. See how strong and protected it is?

Like a knight in shining armor? he says, referring to his Fisher Price castle set. What’s in the truck with armor? Amos asks.

Lots of money, I say.

A lot of a lot of a lot of a lot of money? Amos says.

So much money I say.

Then why does the truck look like that Mommy. Why does it have armor on it? Amos asks.

As the explanation bubbled up in my mind, I realized how absurd this was going to sound to him. How absurd the reality of it really is. I didn't answer because I was still mulling it over myself.

Why does it have money in it? Amos asks again.

Well you know when we pay money to the lady at the store? I say. When everybody pays money to the store the store gets so much money and so this truck comes to pick up the money to take it to the bank.

But why does it have to have armor on it Mommy?

I don’t know what to say. I’m thinking of saying because someone might try to take that money? But I can’t figure out how I’ll answer the why that that response would get. Because someone who can’t share will want to get all of the money for free? Because the person who decides he wants that money might try to hurt the driver to get it?

And I can’t figure out what to say.

And Amos says again why does that money truck have to have armor on it?

But then Etta says Mo! and we’re back to ice cream trucks, flatbed trucks, cement trucks, and tankers.

And while a part of me is left wondering why we live in a world where the money trucks have to have armor, there’s no time to dwell on it. We’re rolling forward with the trucks. And now it’s time to learn how cement is mixed and how ice cream stays cold and how garbage is mashed.

We learn so much from our conversations about trucks.

Poop Story

2007-04-26T20:48:00.001-05:00

Years ago, I walked out of a movie called The Road to Wellville because it was about a bunch of people analyzing each other's poop. Yuckville. It was not my kind of humor. That was before I had children.

Now I'm a mom and poop has become a huge part of my life. First, there was the revelation (why had no one told me?) that giving birth feels a lot like pooping--that when they're yelling "push!" to the woman on tv, she's flexing that muscle. Then there was the bizarre public interest in my own poops immediately after I gave birth--a lot of "have you been taking your stool softeners?" and "have you pooped yet"s. There was that creepy pediatrician talk where you have to use that awful word 'stool.' And there was even my love affair with the buttery poop of my breastfed babies--it smelled exactly like gravy from Kentucky Fried Chicken (which, I suppose, I should admit is a positive thing for me).

The boundaries I used to take for granted aren't the same anymore. In fact, these days there are no boundaries. My two small children follow me into the bathroom (when my eighteen-month old daughter actually nods permission for me to go, that is...) and sometimes even onto the potty. My daughter likes to throw bits of toilet paper into the bowl behind me. She also likes to flush--a lot--while I'm sitting there, creating an unpleasant updraft. Sometimes I'm saddened by the realization that it'll probably be years before I'm allowed to poop alone. And then sometimes, lately, I wonder what the big deal about pooping alone is anyway.

My son, who's three and a half, likes to poop with people present. “I want privacy with you and I want privacy with Daddy and I want privacy with my sister (or whoever's in the house).” He calls it 'privacy with company'.

Then there's what he calls his poop...

It started with potty training, and these sweet stories he'd make up while I sat--keeping him company--on a little blue chair next to the grown-up potty. His whole mid-section would be below the rim of the toilet--only shins and chest (superman logo) and head and shoulders sticking out. (Once he lowered the toilet lid onto his back and said “Look Mommy, a turtle on the potty!” --the image was perfect--smooth round plastic shell atop a splay of limbs).

“Peepee and Poopoo are friends.” he said.

That was the first installment. He made this announcement on a grubby toilet in a graffiti-filled stall at a restaurant two months before his third birthday.

I smiled and said “Oh, really” and repeated the revelation to my husband when we returned to the table.

That was all the encouragement he needed. Slowly, regularly, after-breakfast by after-breakfast, the story began to take shape.

“Sometimes Peepee makes bubbles, sometimes Poopoo says splash.”

“They're yucky friends.”

“Poopoo says I want to come out! and Peepee says “Me first!”

“Sometimes Peepee is running away from Poopoo.”

“They talk to each other but they don't have faces, or mouths, or eyes.”

“My body is the house for Peepee and Poopoo. Peepee and Poopoo come out of the house to go to the Potty Playground.”

"Poopoo doesn't want to come out at school. Only Peepee wants to come out."

It would be impossible to recreate the little grunts and strains that stretch some of his words out into multi-syllabic testimonials. But they're there, too--adding emotion, sometimes even desparation, to the little watery dramas.

Poop-reading came next. Once he'd exhausted the basic motivations and orders of departure for Peepee and Poopoo, he began to turn to the poop itself, studying his characters. He'd poop. I'd wipe. He'd scamper off the toilet and describe what he saw. Then he'd flush. It was basic classification. There were snake poops, broken snake poops, family snake poops (mommy, daddy, baby), snake poop parties. There have been tiny rock poops and garbage poops. There was a man poop and some vegetable poop. Once there was a witch-melting poop (he'd just seen the Wizard of Oz, and the water was low in the potty that day).

Lately though the story-lines have been returning and the poop readings are becoming more involved. The other day he pointed out the "daddy going into the backyard poop". And there was a baby snake poop that was hiding (a lot of the poops hide).

We had poop therapy recently when, shortly after an unpleasant evening in which he and his father had to wait for me on a cold, dark sidewalk (while I was caught behind a semi doing an impossible turn from a side street into a parking lot), he discovered “a daddy poop and a baby poop but the mommy poop isn't there because she's stuck behind a truck.” We both gazed into the toilet and shook our heads in sadness. He needed to work out his feelings of abandonment somewhere, why not work them out in the bathroom?

This morning we had the exciting "daddy-going-to-talk-to-mommy-and-falling-apart poop!" which involved one section floating towards another and then breaking off before our eyes. I've been to Alaska and witnessed the calving of glaciers, but the calving of this poop was even more exciting since it was so unexpected. An action-packed poop! The surprise offered a dramatic twist--who'd have guessed daddy could fall apart on his way to talk to mommy? It's hard to believe most folks just go to the bathroom and don't stop to appreciate the drama going on inches beneath them.

I'm guessing some people will think this is extremely deranged (I know I would have-- back in my pre-children movie-going days), and I'm sure others will think this is perfectly healthy (aren't anal people the ones who haven't come to terms with their own poop?). I don't care. I enjoy it. I could listen to my boy describe his poop forever.

I liken poop reading to tea leaf reading. I don't know much about reading tea leaves but I do know that they swirl around in water before being studied intensely for clues to the future. I don't think that he is really looking into the future when he's peering into the potty at his poop. But I hope I'm looking into his future when he does. I hope that his imagination is always this incredible. I hope that he remains unashamed and fearless. I hope he always strives to find creative solutions to puzzling questions. I hope that he looks for and finds the bright and funny sides of everything--even things that are yucky.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like Hollywood-style bathroom humor any more now than I did before I had kids. But I do know that I can say poop, and write poop--and I'm raising a child who can read poop. I am as shocked about it as I am thrilled. I'm in no hurry for all of this business to disappear behind closed doors. Someday we'll all be pooping alone again, flushing away all of the excitement. And I suspect I just might end up missing privacy with company.

Regular Women

2007-04-20T15:40:00.001-05:00

A good friend overheard my six year old daughter refer to herself as chubby in a conversation with my friend's eight year old daughter. And then the friend said that she thought she was chubby too, and that she’d be the fat girl if she was on a tv show.

These are not chubby girls.

We had just taken them to a dance performance by a group of women called Lava. The women were normal-looking in every way. Sturdy, large, more than one size twelve--one that may have been more than that. There were two regular types, one thinnish, one smallish, and the smaller one had a bit of excema that you could see on her belly when she hung upside down on a trapeze--and it made her smallness seem flawed in a really wonderful way. Not in an oh-good-she’s-not-perfect way, but sort of in an oh-good-she’s-not-perfect kind of way.

The performance was intimate--about a hundred of us in a circle, if that many. The performers smiled at us, and whispered secret numbers in our girls’ ears, and made prolonged eye contact with us longer than felt normal--longer certainly than my husband and I have done in years. If ever.

They poured their bodies through hoops without touching the edges, did amazing things on the trapeze, supported each other in all sorts of ways, not the least of which was a sort of upside-down-pyramid thing where one woman stood on the ground holding everyone else up.

The music was cool, the women were cool.

They wore regular clothes, jeans even. We could connect with them. They were slightly stronger, better trained versions of ourselves. They were who our daughters could be if they believed in themselves, if they took care of themselves.

We were all exhilirated by their strength and presence. We gushed about the whole thing as we walked out. So much of it felt special.

But then we stopped in a Claire’s Accessories in a nearby mall to buy hair things. It seemed like a nice way to round out the day out with these girls. And that’s when our daughters compared notes on being chubby.

Had we undone everything?

Could three minutes of browsing in the Mary Kate and Ashley’s leopard-print hair-bow section really erase ninety minutes of powerful real-life women?

I’ve got my work cut out for me. And I've got to pay better attention.