The Kitchen Table

All You Had to Do Was Ask

Mister and I had been using instagram regularly (me, maybe too much) until Facebook announced its $1B buy-out. Mister deactivated his account, but I continue(d) to use Facebook and instagram.

Instagram has been one of the best and most fun ways to share pictures with our friends. I can post to instagram, which works faster than camera+ or flickr and a is more satisfying because I know more people on it. I can copy the photos to flickr for longevity and easier searching or to facebook for those friends to see, and I can tweet them. My nieces and one of my nephews recently joined instagram. I'd been doing an alphabet photo project with a friend, checking out photos of friends' kids and food, following strangers who post incredible shots of the bay area, dublin, ireland, and other places.

I have this blog. I have a facebook account. I'm on ravelry, pinterest, quora. Intellectually, I know that our content is not ours because terms of service for most social networks (barring flickr, as far as I can tell) gives those services digital rights. I'm not sure when we all became okay with this, but we did, the collective we of people who post photos, snippets of life, lesson plans, stories, poems, paintings to the internet. We said, sure, you can have access to all my creative personal work so that I can Like my friend's photo of her pug. 

A couple of nights ago, with dramatic flair, Mister showed me instagram's home page and the series of screen shots that included this one: 

There's our girl. One of his coworkers pointed it out to him. He was shocked, and I was furious. We were caught with our pants down. If you haven't had a photo of yours pop up somewhere unexpectedly, especially one of your child, this is largely theoretical. Of course we know it happens, but it left me sputtering. 

Mister and I are not on the same page about privacy, but the differences are complex. It's not as simple as Mister believes in privacy and I don't. He's more conservative about his privacy than I am. My father would have loved him for many reasons, especially this. My dad wouldn't give out his SSN to his doctor wihtout a fight. He resented being asked for his phone number or driver's license. I don't disagree with Mister's position. He was the CEO of a company that dealt with extremely personal informaiton and did everything he could to build a system that would protect that information. He didn't take shortcuts. It may have cost him the business when faced with competition that didn't have the same standards, but he wasn't going to break trust with his customers or himself.

I tear up credit card offers, but do I shred as a I should? I would tell my students and my nieces and nephews that photos they take on a cell phone and send to a friend are no longer private. A photo on facebook isn't private. They can be copied and redistributed. 

A couple of days after my major freak out and fury, I realize that I didn't expect a company to pick up and use our photos. I've worried about identity theft and security breaches, not my daughter's image being used for marketing a company. 

But, my daughter is 3 1/2. While I appreciate seeing who "likes" pictures of her and Rabbit and think it's kind of cool that a guy at instagram followed mister and liked a few of his photos, including this one, couldn't they have asked before using it? When does the Terms of Service ownership crap preclude doing the right thing and asking if it's okay, really okay, to take a photo that's seen mainly by friends and occasionally by others and largely flies under the radar, and using it on the front page of a company whose billion dollar acquisition was headline news for two weeks (we were in California at the time, and it was the only news people were discussing). 

To be fair, when we talked about it again last night, Mister said, "I could have done the same thing inadvertently, used a photo from someone's profile on the home page [user photos scrolled the top of his company's website for a while to demonstrate the community of users], and not asked." Most companies could do this based on Terms of Service including Google, Facebook, (we think not Flickr) and many others because users post avatars and projects and the list goes on. If you're excited to share, you might just share without considering ramifications. 

When I initially bitched about it on twitter and facebook, a couple of people unhelpfully reminded me of terms of service agreements (typepad has rights to this content, too). Wouldn't it have been amazing if Kodak and Polaroid said we own your photos, too! Who would have stood for that?

One of the trade-offs that comes with the digital socialization of our lives is the dissolution of common courtesies. Salutations in emails. Proper greetings via cell phone. Actual birthday cards. Actual thank you notes. Actual acknowledgement that while your company claims rights to all content that passes its transoms, asking or at least notifying people you're going to use their pictures is a nice thing to do. In truth, I would have been thrilled to have a sneaky little peek at my girl on instagram's home page. 

But no one asked so in a snit, I cancelled my instagram account and deleted all my facebook photos (except for profile shots which I can't figure out how to delete, stupid facebook, and NO please don't leave me directions on how to do this, thanks). I sent instagram angry emails. I considered dumping facebook.

Immediately I felt lonelier way out here in New York. I was out with Bama and Rabbit the next afternoon, playing in our amazing garden, and thought, why bother taking a photo? I won't mail it to anyone. No one looks at my flickr pictures. My connections to faraway felt tenuous. And there's the rub. I'm willing, like we all are, to give away rights so that I can like a photo of my friend's pug and they can give thumbs up a photo of Rabbit eating broccoli. And I need to be okay with that. 

I cracked and went back, creating a new instagram account. 

A Failure to Screen

Bama reads a lot of books. A lot. She picks up a half dozen every trip to the library, and wants to read many of them at that moment. A more competent parent might screen all those books before getting them home. Me, I'm happy I've got all three of us, haven't inadvertently dropped extra (not checked out) books in the bag, and haven't fallen down the treacherous stairs from the children's room.

My wilding, or irresponsible, approach to reading has brought us Zathura (lots of brotherly fighting), Cosmo and the Robot (name calling), Earth to Clunk (more name calling), among others. Sometimes, as with Cosmo and the Robot, I edit out the name and carry on because there's more in the book that I like. Zathura, I put aside for when she is older.

We've also brought home The Widow's Broom (loved the dark brilliance of it), Gossie (and all the gosling books), the beautiful friendship of Toot & Puddle, the humanist All the World, When Carmen Learned English, and the list goes on. Many are way above her comprehension level (Two of a Kind, Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride), but she's curious and asks good questions and uses the pictures to sort out some of what she doesn't understand. A friend said, Oh, you didn't read the books ahead of time? Not always, no. I wish I did, but I don't. Sometimes, we sit and read and there you have it. Me, editing out "stupid" on the fly.

Today, after a night interrupted by wet beds, teething, sheet changes, and sobs we had a play-date and whirling trip to the library. I almost never say yes to television, but today I offered it. Something new, and sweet. I flipped through netflix screens hoping she wouldn't spot an image like Dora and ask to watch it. Babar! Yes! 

Babar, King of Elephants. How bad could it be? We already knew about Babar's mother murder and that the king dies from eating a poisonous mushroom. Yeah. Except in this drawn out version, Babar's mother is shot while he's on her back.

(image: cinemotions)

As she falls dead, he's hurtled from her shoulders to go bouncing through a jungle clearing. He goes back to her, calling to her, finds her dead. Birds chirp louder, the monkey screams, and the hunter returns with his double-barrel shotgun. Babar, in a panic, runs, as he does in the book. But in the book, he runs for a page and finds himself in the ciyt with the kindly old lady. In this movie, he runs across a desert, through mountains, in the night, into a cave (to be chased out be a leopard), into another cave (to be frightened off by a cobra), swept away by a flash flood. Each element sent Bama into new panic -- he's never going to stop running! What's going on with the water? Why can't he run? What's happening? 

Later, I explain that some snakes are poisonous and will bite things to hurt them -- this after the kindly old woman is bit by a cobra. Bama thinks snakes are nice. I do not, in fact, want to dispel her of this idea. Ditto spiders. I'd like her to be interested in creatures that generally freak me out in part because I think my own oogies are lame, in part because she's a girl and I'd like her to be of hte 1% that doesn't get creeped out by bugs and snakes.

Then comes the rhino battle. Doesn't bother her, we move ahead. Cornelius' house burns down, the old lady is bit, and Alexander --- one of Babar's children -- nearly drowns. Mired by worries, Babar has a nightmare. 

The second the video showed a glowing door I told Bama to close her eyes. Too late. 

See the scary thing on the far left, the white thing with the nose on the back of something? She saw that before I got it together and turned off the television. She's been asking about the ghost on the alligator all night. Would it come to our house, would it live here, why did it go to Babar. She didn't see the sequence, when the elephants chase the demons away, but I tried to tell her Babar chased it away.

Then she read Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. A book I chose, but wasn't 100 percent about and had set aside. She found it and gave it to Mister, who hadn't read it but thought it must be okay if I'd brought it home from the library and it was sitting around.

(Image from Sam and Boo Book Reviews as well as a good write-up and discussion on this as a banned book.)

Anyone read Sylvester? He is an only child, a collector of rocks. He finds a magic pebble that grants wishes. An encounter with a lion, he wishes to be a rock so the lion doesn't eat him. Bam. He's a rock. His parents don't know where he is, the police can't find him, he's vanished. (Sylvester needs to be touching the pebble to work its magic.) In the end, after a long while, the pebble rolls near enough and everything works out.

But when they read it, I was out of the house. It was enough for our girl and sent her over the edge. Dead mother? Scary ghost things? Babar running endlessly and nowhere? A goddamn rock?

There are growth moments here, somewhere. But now I need a new safety trick for her, because I'd relied on magic rocks as her security (under the pillow, in her pocket) and after tonight, I'm not sure she'll be so keen. The big takeaway? It may be as easy as no TV, but could be watch everything first.

Doesn't that idea just make you retch? 

Clearing the Air

I had coffee the other morning with the mother of a boy in Bama's class. It was an unusual outing because parents tend to scatter to the corners after drop-off, each with errands to run, work to do, quiet time to enjoy.

We had delicious coffee at a place she frequents, tucked in from the morning's bitter cold. We talked aobut babies and blood tests; a friend of hers had a child with Down's Syndrome. We marveled at how much can be seen, and how much is still unknown, in ultrasounds. I described the differences in our CVS and ultrasound findings in the two years between Bama and Rabbit. When Bama was born, she had a small hole in her heart (undetected in utero), so they looked carefully at Rabbit's heart in utero. There was a possibility of something they couldn't see, but not likely. His heart was and is solid. She was born, I added, with velamentous cord insertion -- her umbilical cord's veins and artery were incorporated into the placenta. To me, the placenta looked like a sea fan, with three thick cords parsing the delicate web of the placenta. Kind of like this: 

(image from http://www.globalrums.com/diving.htm)

I joked about what our doctors said when Bama was born -- that we made a good choice (as if we had one) about the C-section because her head was so big.

"That's not true," she snapped.

And thus, the conversation took the inevitable course that most talks between women who have had C-sections and women who had vaginal births, especially those who went natural or birthed at home. It went to pursed lips on her part and irritation on mine.

I will concede at this moment and not again that my reaction may seem defensive, and maybe it is but I no longer see it that way. Here's how I see it.

Women who were lucky enough to get pregnant (because it's luck, sisters, not a skill) and have a vaginal birth (see my first parenthetical) shouldn't crap all over those of us who didn't. I wanted a vaginal birth, I did. Mister and I suffered through a 10-week Bradley class with an insufferable teacher whose primary instructions were to lie to our doctors about anything labor-related. I'd seen the effects of pitocin and heard horror stories of the contraction-inducing drug. I didn't want it. I wanted to do it with Mister by my side but no drugs. I wanted to sweat and scream and spread my legs and have all the juicy goop that goes with delivery. I wanted my babies to climb up my belly like joeys looking for a warm pocket and some milk. 

It didn't work out that way for me. I did what I was supposed to do. I walked, I stopped drinking alcohol, no black tea, no sushi, I swam, I went to prenatal yoga classes. My hands cramped up, I was Violet Beauregard after she eats Willy Wonka's gum except that I was filled with water. So full that my doctor was sure Bama at 32 weeks was already weighing 9.5 pounds (she wasn't). When my water broke, we stayed home until evening, per my doctor's suggestion. We checked in with our doula. I napped on the couch. I read.

And nothing happened. Laps around the hospital floors and garden did nothing. My cervix shrugged at the two nights of cervidil. I was tired from the pitocin, but I never had contractions. None. Our incredible nurse, who set up my room with a rocking chair and chucks everywhere and snagged one of two telemetry units (a walkable monitor) said it was likely, at hour 54, that one of three things would happen: a different cervix softener (we rejected this); break my bag of waters again (my cervix was solid, the doctor wasn't getting in there); C-section. We took option three.

My girl was comfy at the top of my womb and wasn't coming down. They had to pull her, big head and all, out. 

 

 

(Bama, being turned. Mister took all our birth photos; all copyrighted.)

None of this mattered to my listener. When I described the placenta, and its unusual markings, the doctors sent it to pathology because it was the most intricate either had seen, the woman's lips continued their pursed judgement. And I wondered, what the fuck is wrong with you?

 

(The nursing crew. Alta Bates. Our doula on the left in blue, the charge nurse on the right in black,
Bama latching on. We are in recovery, waiting for my legs to move.
You can't leave recovery until you can lift yourself from the bed.)

When it came to Rabbit, she said, "Oh, well, NY is C-section only. No one does VBACs." And I disagreed. I found several VBAC-friendly doctors, including my doctor. He wasn't thrilled, but he went along with my VBAC plan. Other women I know through my various mama lists have had VBACs (vaginal birth after Caesarean). Her lips went white as though I was lying, to myself or to her I'm not sure which she thought or which would be worse.

"Women who have second C-sections are twice as likely to hemorrhage as women who have a VBAC," she declared. "No, they're not," I responded. "Yes, they are!" she said. "No, they aren't," I replied, feeling petty and smug. "I have the articles to prove it!" Everyone has articles, I responded. She began packing her things up immediately after.

Look, I don't know who's right in the percentages, and I didn't care. What I was done with was having someone who wasn't there be obnoxious about my deliveries and declare them invalid.

Because that's what women like her do. They purse their lips and think to themselves, "Oh, you didn't try hard enough."

Right. 

 

(Rabbit, being lifted from my belly.)

 When I told Mister about this conversation, he said, sadly, "Women aren't very good to each other." And we aren't. It's fucking hard to get pregnant and a miracle, yes a miracle, to stay pregnant. Miscarriages, stillborns, inability to conceive, whatever. Those things plague us, even in  2012 and even in the medical first world West. Why would you look down your nose at someone else's delivery as though it wasn't a proper one? 

I told this story to Tia B who had, like me, had a first delivery that didn't go as planned and turned into a C-section. Her second was a planned C-section, given the complications of the first she and D decided to skip the 15 hours of useless, exhausting pushing and go straight to delivery and healing.

She was telling me about the upcoming C-section for one of the mamas in our group. I love these women and their babies (now todders becoming little girls and boys), but even within the safety of our group, there was still the notion that those who had vaginal deliveries had triumphed in a way those of us who hadn't would never understand.

In our mom's group of 11 women, who still write and get together and support each other, three of us had C-sections (I think three). Three of us had fertility issues (not the same three). Many of us used doulas. A couple were adamant they would not have C-sections. This sentiment is echoed across Babycenter and mama support groups and at La Leche League meetings. Before I had Bama and was swimming at a public pool in Oakland, a woman literally stalked me around the locker room until my friend cut her off, telling me to stay away from Alta Bates because they would force me to monitor the baby. They would force me to have a C-section! Ask any woman you know who has had a C-section and she will say that more than one other mother has declared, "I was going to push that baby out. No way was I going to have a C-section!" 

 There are women who have C-sections because they don't want to go into labor, they have a party planned and don't want labor to muck up the schedule, they'd like a tummy tuck after because they are already cut open. Caesareans are seen as the result of lazy doctors and lazy mothers. We must not have tried hard enough. We must not have had our priorities in line. 

I'm pissed, my feelings are hurt. An uncountable number of friends and strangers have said, "I would NEVER have a C-section!" or "I'm going to have my second and it might be a C-section but I don't want to!" What the fuck. We're willing to stand on our heads to get pregnant. Take drugs. Use turkey basters. Have sex after taking our temperatures. Do whatever it takes to get pregnant, but delivering the baby only counts if it comes out the door?

Mister and I had a birth plan we gave to anyone who passed by. It is laughable to think about how much work went into a document no one read (which is part of Bradley thought -- the hospital doesn't care about your natural birth wishes, I get that). My doula and my doctor bickered over the right way to have a baby. I kicked them both out and told Mister I didn't want to see either of them.

When we agreed we needed to have a C-section, 60 hours after my water had broken, Mister and I had 15 minutes alone at my request (a suggestion from a friend who'd had to have a C-section after doing everything right, she thought). I wept for the loss of my legitimate birth, my change in plans, my failure as a woman to deliver my baby. How fucked up is that? A C-section has become synonymous with not being a real woman and mother and we've all bought into that bullshit. 

We tried and it didn't work, for whatever reason. You're right, Bama and Rabbit didn't shoot out of my vagina into Mister's arms in the warm water bath in our own apartment. They didn't slip down in a sluice of vaginal muck into my doctor's arms at the hospital. Both were pulled from my belly and then handed to me wrapped like swaddled apple dolls. They are beautiful and healthy and alive. That was and is what was paramount.

But, none of this matters to those who purse their lips and sit in judgement because you will see conspiracy in all of this and you can't reason with a conspiracy theorist. So, fuck you and your pursed lips. I don't have to reason with you because you don't want to hear anything but what you already believe.

(Note: The unlucky person in this post is not the sole object of my post. She happened to be the last straw for me on this topic before I burst.)

on my mind

There's been a lot going on and a lot of not much going on Chez Kitchen the last few weeks. I'm spending less time on the social network world (less? how is it possible to do less?) because it's a time suck. But that time was sucked up by Words with Friends -- I play with two people, my mother, and Bird's mama. Really. Nine games on average going simultaneously. Houston, we have a problem.

Mister started his new job at etsy and WOW are we so happy he's there. He's happy, challenged, interested, surrounded by smart and creative people. His hours are longer, and we are suddenly in a new kind of papa-under-water time. When we had Wesabe, it was his company in his hands so lots of stress and he only had a week off when Bama arrived. With Daylife, more stress, but shorter days with longer nights, and a week off when Rabbit arrived. Now, he's out the door during breakfast and home during books, sometimes bath, always hungry and looking for five minutes of solitude which he can't have just yet.

We're adjusting. I can't say I handle it all as gracefully as I'd like, but days are long for everyone.

Our friend Megnut, who's a blogger and a writer and a mama and a lot of other things was here last weekend with her daughter for dinner (son and papa were hitting the slopes). She said that she was wondering what to do with her afternoon because she didn't want to be on the internet and she didn't want to do chores. That's me everyday the last couple of weeks. I want to knit and read and drink a hot cup of tea from beginning to end in a room that isn't covered with blocks and not feel guilty about dishes in the sink. 

I am somewhere in the middle.

I'm a clutterer. There, I said it. I can't have surfaces without photos and tchotchke on them, though I aspire to that aesthetic. I can't abide dirty. Clutter and dirty are different things, so while I can (sort of) handle six or seven winter scarves dumped on the stroller because I don't know where to put them, I can't handle the pile up of dishes in the kitchen. I admire, sort of, the mamas who do, who let the dishes wait so they can do projects with their children, make mounds of fresh pesto from their homegrown, hand-selected basil sewn with their unschooled children in the spring.

Or, I'm lying. It's a kitchen, clean that shit up.

Anyway, we are in the midst of terrible nap schedules with Rabbit sleeping two and a half hours in the morning AND afternoon (at least) if we let him. Poor guy doesn't always get such a good morning nap because Bama's drop-off and pick-up schedule conflicts with him napping in bed. I could take the 1950's route and just "run an errand" because "what could possibly go wrong?" I stay up too late so I often nod off with Bama when she lies down for her rest. (She refuses to call her afternoon nap a nap. It's a rest. Don't try to make it something nappish, she'll blow.)

We are settling in to Manhattan for the unknown long haul which means I am, finally, missing home in a new and deeper way. It's not lonely missing like it was the first fall we were here and knew no one and Bama played alone at every playground we went to, but it's the missing something you're not getting back to anytime soon and will not be the same when you do. The Captain is six weeks younger than Rabbit and we won't get to have them grow up together which had seemed a pretty great idea when Aunty Cake and I were pregnant at the same time. I miss Fairyland and the fog and pizza. (New York, your pizza is terrible. Accept this and move on.) I miss the beach and the ocean and the bridges. Which is bizarre since I'm on an island surround by water and touching the ocean and linked to the mainland by bridges. I miss having a car at my fingertips, which I resented at the time, but it can be a real pain in the ass to schlep one or especially two kids around New York.

If I sound glum, I'm not. We are in flux. Because on the other hand, I'm in a book club, no, two! Mister takes Go lessons once a week with an honest-to-golly Go master. I've got friends I knit with and a knitting group I enjoy and I play D&D once a week and I've been invited to a cook book club. And, yet, I cast about during the day for a solution, a plan, a system that allows my children to be nurtured, get some fresh air (poor Rabbit), learn, grow, all those things that are part of their job.

I avoid many of the mommy-blogs for exactly this. I am not one of those people who are in awe of the woman who can homeschool, sew, knit, blog, make money, dress stylishly, and have it all. I resent the hell out of those, mmmm jealous?, who churn out post after post of sunshine. Who cleans your kitchen? I’ve swept chunks of banana and crusty waffle out from under the table for the third time today, what? I should leave it there? This last week I checked in with Dooce, whose blog I also do not follow regularly, but enough to know she’s gone paleo, was in SF wearing a sparkly dress, and is also having challenges with her daily life. A two-year-old steeped in two-ness predlicitions, stuff to shuttle to and fro, nothing that on it's own is the end of the world, but tossed together like dominos in a sack, suck. I don’t revel in the agony of others, but I appreciate, holy hell do I, that someone says, wow, I’m knee deep in shitty, y’all.

PS: Meg's also kicked off a personal quest to not acquire anything new for herself, but to make do with what she's got. It's tough, because we are in a consumer-driven society, and we live in NYC, which is full of preening, hot-boot wearing women with Brazilian blow-outs (I hadn't heard the term until we moved here and had to check it wasn't a) something about sex or b) a wax job). We're on our own makeit.do simply because we've been budgeting for a while. Lots of consignment, lots of reselling. It changes how you look at objects, and in SoHo, we're surrounded by objects, but you are forced to really think about what you need vs. what you want. Wanting something is not bad, per se, but if all you are is want want want, watch out.

Next on my agenda: the new york scene.

Stretching

 

 

I was lucky enough to be invited into a book club last year. I'd been casting about, hoping ot find one that worked for me in my pregnant, temporarily in NYC state, and our friend started one with her soon-to-be-cousin-in-law. 

It's a huge group, with anywhere between eight and 15 people showing up to talk about books like Cleopatra (universally hated, only one person got past page 45, and she finished it out of sheer will; the NY Times is full of gas) and Super Sad True Love Story,  which I missed but am reading for a different book club.

What I like about book clubs is that they force the members to read. I haven't finished every book. In fact, there's a rule with our club now that if you don't finish at least 75 percent of the book, you probably shouldn't show (I might have inspired this rule, but I had a newborn!). It's a big group, as I said, and the chances of us getting off-topic are high, especially with that many members.

But the downside of book clubs is that you don't always read books you're interested in, even if you suggested them (Cleopatra, you charlatan). Our group had selected Isabel Wilkerson's Warmth of Other Suns, but kicked it after another failed non-fiction selection (Precious Objects, best described and read as a collection of vignettes that are individually (more or less) interesting but as a whole not as cohesive as could have or should have been). 

Several of us were disappointed by its dismissal. A couple of people had started Warmth of Other Suns, a couple had purchased it. I suggested a splinter group. Gasp! A splinter group. We met last night, four of us, in a tea shop near my house. Over creamy mushroom soup and shared pots of rooibos and a lovely white tea, we talked about structure, language, narrative, and the importance of voice. What Wilkerson did with this book is give an event, the Great Migration, and 6 million people who left the south and all they knew behind, faces and a voice. 

Voice. Stories. Narratives. These personalize and legitimize the incomprehensible. For example, we can be horrified to learn that a lynching, which I knew was commonplace, occurred every four days. Every four days. Then apply personal stories to the lynchings. Young teens like Emmet Till, men old and young, all seen as guilty of an infraction, therefore tortured and killed. (Wilkerson uses stories from people she interviewed; I mention Till because his story became widespread after the documentary cited was released and his name may be familiar.)

What I appreciated about the book and about meeting with friends is that I am reminded to stretch and that I can stretch my knowledge, my empathy, my vocabulary. Reading, and why it was important to teach it as well as I could when I was teaching, and to read as well as I can on my own, allows us to become better people on many fronts. 

And, selfishly, for two hours, I'm not a mama. I'm a reader.

When to Call 911

It's a winding tale, but worth the time.

 

Washington Square Park is one of our home bases. When we moved here, the eastern third of the park was closed for renovations, but we loved walking the paths, listening to jazz bands, watching the dogs queue, and playing in the sweet, but tiny, toddler park. I love this little spot, I really do. Bama and I went many late afternoons to have a last play, and once a week, we met up with Aunty Zobot.

(Aunty Zobot with Rabbit, Central Park, 5 July)

We stared at the cordoned off section of the park, eyeing the giant playstructures, wondering what else was behind the layers of fences.

When it finally opened in June, we were thrilled. Sand, swings, water, slides, shade. All the components necessary for a good time to be had by all.

Exploring what's in front of him.

 

Hiding in a tunnel with Uncle Bryan.

Swiftly riding into the sunset with Bird.

We love this park. It's convenient, I can get tea beforehand, we can get (the only good) burritos (in NYC) afterwards. We can listen to jazz. We can watch the juvenile red tail hawk (yes, hawk) learn to fly and hunt. We can practice flower identification.

There's an incredible, and incredibly famous, fountain.

In which we can wonder at double rainbows.

Splashing in the fountains with friends as we spy the colors in the spray.

.......

But with the east end of the park reopening, the climate of the park has changed. Sure, there were dope dealers on the west end, but those guys never said anything to me or to my kids except, "Hey little mama!" or "Look at that scooter!" 

Enter the drunk meth heads who sprawl across the main plaza. The fountain is closed to waders, swimmers, splashers because of public bathing, urinating, and who knows what else. The day before this incident, there were guys sitting in the fountain, drinking from beer bottles. Broken glass?  Because the fountain is off limits, I avoid rolling through the plaza even though its a fun place to people watch. Bama wants to go into the fountain and talks about the fountain for the rest of the day, wondering why she can't go in. I've told her that the rangers don't think it's safe, want it clean, whatever. Should I say, "Because dirtball drunks have ruined it"?

Everyone needs a place to go, and just because you're homeless and a meth head doesn't mean you shouldn't get to be in a wonderful park like Washington Square Park. However, I'm not interested in chatting with NY Jets-shirt guy whose teeth are falling out about what a great dad he is (to a son who lives in Atlanta, GA). "His mother and I aren't together anymore." Really? Go figure.

Most of the crew that's hanging on the lawn keeps to themselves. They are like a little family. But a few stand out, like the scary crazy guy who sat near us while Bama danced to a jazz trio near the toddler park. He stared at her and me the entire time, calling me a fucking cunt and bitch, among other things. Low, but loud enough for me to hear him. When we rolled on, the musicians looked embarrassed, sorry, uncomfortable.

So, this week. Scary guy was in the plaza, which against my better judgement, I rolled through.  The dude is sitting on one of the stone benches near the fountain, sees us, and puts up his hand and mimes machine gunning us as we go by. It's hard not to want to call him a mother fucker, but I've got Rabbit strapped to me and Bama in a stroller. I'm not nimble and I'm certainly not willing to get into it with my six-month old strapped to me like a shield. We walked on and into the park.

Where we had a fabulous time with Bird and Aunty N. The girls played in the sand, went on the swings, ran through the sprinklers. Then we sat down to lunch. There is a high fence around the park, and then trees, shrubs, flowers, then a knee-high chain rope (think velvet movie rope but heavy links and low to the ground), some wooden benches, a path, and backless stone benches (the benches are effectively in two rings around the plaza and fountain; it's pretty). Drunk girl we see whenever we're there gets into it with drunk boy, also a regular. F bombs are dropped, and then she jumps him and starts pounding his head. Scary dude leaps up and pulls her off, sits her down, and tells her to cool it (thus revealing he's not actually crazy, that he knows right from wrong and how much he can get away with which makes him all the more menacing). She continues to rant, telling her tale of woe to anyone who will listen. Two Japanese women move closer to watch the action. A nanny sitting with her infant charge also stays put (I'm not big on nanny-narcing, but I'd fire this one). 

Enter this guy (you can see how the fence, landscaping, and so on are laid out). He climbs over the chain, then proceeds to walk up to the big tree in the middle, while unzipping his pants. Aunty N and I are sitting with our girls and my boy, there is a French family of five next to us, other toddlers are zooming around, some are playing nearby in the water and in the sand. Lots of visibility. "Oh no," I yell, "Turn yourself around. Don't you pee on that tree. There are public bathrooms over there." I yelled more. He stepped back and peed on the fountain side of the tree, peeking around at us. Now, I'm at a loss. Which is weird, because if we had been in Oakland, I would have yelled and called the cops (a decimated police force that would have shown up, nonetheless) immediately. There I am, casting about for a park ranger (I can seem him near the little dog park), we're talking about whether to call the police or someone else, and he charges up to the fence.

Where do your dogs pee? He asks, rheumy blue eyes looking at me. (Okay, so he's calling my kids dogs, which I didn't get until later, but my response, "I don't have dogs. I have children. They pee in the portable potty I carry with me, or in a bathroom" worked.) He swore at me, said pee is pee, yelled at us, always careful to stay just far enough back. I told him it wasn't okay to pull his penis out, that no one wanted to see it. He grabbed his junk a few times, then he broke a branch off the tree and threw it at us (it hit the tree, don't throw tree branches drunk). 

The guy stumbled away, packed up his stuff and moved to the other part of the park. Bama's in tears, caught on video because the tree branch episode scared her, the French family looks stunned, and I'm still sorting out to call the cops or not. 

 

Aunty N might remember more of the exchange, I was left feeling angry at him for threatening my children, embarrassed for creating a situation that threatened my children as well as Bird, frustrated at how trapped we were by the fence, the park paths, my ergo (babycarrier with Rabbit in it). 

When a young male-female couple comes in the park without kids. Always noticeable. "We called the cops for you," the woman says. Not only that, but they gave a detailed description of the guy. Now, we can see the cops have come into the southern entrance of the park and the dirtbag is doing his best to be inconspicuous in his bright red hoodie. But we see another woman talking to the cops, gesturing, and then they move in on him. And move him out of the park, not without incident. And a third woman comes up to the fence and says that she'd also given a description of events to the cops and pointed him out. Wow.

The couple, Aunty N, and I have a long talk about calling the police, something Mister and I did with unashamed regularlity in Oakland. People will say that Oakland is dangerous, and I can't argue against its high murder rate. However, I never felt threatened in the parks. I didn't encounter people sleeping on benches, throwing beer bottles around, whatever. The parks aren't perfect, we found unsavory items a few times on arrival at our local park, but I didn't think about avoiding our parks. On the other hand, had something happened, I'm not sure anyone would have called the police. In San Francisco, I'm positive no one would bother. I am thankful that so many people did something that day. (Note: not one person in the children's playground said anything.)

Reenter drunk girl and drunk boy, continuing to fight and harrass people. He climbs a tree, breaks a branch, comes out a bit later. 

After watching her charge up to a woman sitting on the bench, who throws her hands up like "okay, back off," I'm done. I call the cops. The police car, same cops, comes in from the north side of the park this time. The first officer spies the girl, then the guy, who has climbed over the chain rope to hide from them. Yeah, good one. She kicks his feet, "Get up. Get up. Get up. Don't say anything. Get up. Get out." And out they both go.

Today, we went somewhere else. The incident creates a quandry. Do I avoid the park in the name of keeping my children safe (my brother is shouting, "YES!")? If we avoid WSP, as we did today, we lose out on a place we truly love. And, if we don't go, and others start to avoid it, then we all lose out because Washington Square Park becomes a park and playground for mean drunks.

At the Big Table!

Rabbit's been eyeing our food for weeks, taking swipes at spoons of peas and forks of noodles. Not for you, yet!

He's five months and four weeks (six months for you smart alecks), so let the food games begin!

We started with a new Tripp Trapp. Bama gets the new one, and he's in the one we had because it has the baby rail and padding we need to keep him in place.

Hello!

Sweet potatoes? Yes! I'll try those!

Oh, Mama, this must be magic!

Um, no. Why do you people keep giving me this orange stuff. No boobies, no milks. Feh!

This week, trying rice cereal. I have to pick up a new grinder to make my own. (The one we had ejected bits of plastic from the inside. Didn't seem a good thing to keep using.)

Reflection

I've been absent for a while, not for a lack of anything to say, but time to say it. The photo thing has gotten complicated. I literally have no room left on my computer. Frequently, I'll be tapping along, watching something, reading something, and BONK, up comes the "you are almost out of memory" message. 

Visuals

So, I've not downloaded hundreds of photos from either my little Canon or our family camera. Mister has some on his computer, and I've posted from those, but that's a bit of a hassle. I've taken to using my iPhone like mad, and posting those to flickr (because I can't sync my phone, yea?), then getting links. Yep. I'm like a tin-cup phone conversation workaround.

Time

There's also less time. Simply less time to do everything. I'm up before the sun with Rabbit (Pickle wasn't working for me) who still isn't sleeping through the night. Much of my day has been focused on Bama and her activities, but her winter/spring classes wound down, and I realized that Rabbit needed some time. Yes, a better mother would have known this from the start, but I'll get to that. Today, for example, up at 6am (not the usual five), back down at 7:45am. Everyone up at 9:40 (how in lucky hell did that happen, I wonder, because that's definitely not our routine), then activities inside because of rain. Rabbit down by 11:45 for nap, Bama and I throw in a load of laundry, make and have lunch, she's down by 1:30 because 12:45 never happens and neither does 1pm. I go upstairs to work on the second half of dinner prep using a recipe from Ad-hoc (more on that later, as well). Rabbit, up at 2:10 followed by, "Hello!" from Bama who never fell asleep. I try to finish dinner, fold dried laundry (not put away), interact with my children, and not drop an F bomb once; required after Bama told the chihuahua on my phone to "stop fucking around." At some point, I'm asking for just five minutes. Just five minutes. It occurs to me that Rabbit is acting like he needs a nap. Because he does. Off he goes, at 5pm (what?) for his last nap. Dinner was ready by 5:45. Beef stroganoff. Time consuming but delicious. Bring me a glass of wine and cup of tea.

The Phone

I'm trying not to carry my phone around everywhere. Tricky thing because it's the only phone in the house, but since reception is terrible, it's not much of a phone. It becomes a thing to look at, tap at, while Bama or Rabbit are sitting with me, rolling around, doing whatever. I'm at home, I'm far away from most of our friends and family, I check in too much at times. What am I looking for?

"Everybody sounds stoned, because they're e-mailing people the whole time they're talking to you" (Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad. p123).

It's true, we do sound stoned when we're tapping away and not talking to the person we're with. Our house is silent so often because we're online. I answer people not with my voice box, but my iPhone. Tap, tap, respond. What must that be like to our children? The youtube videos of kids mimicking their parents on the phone (uh huh, uh huh, yeah, ahahaha, really?) are a dying breed. Now, it's babies sitting in silence, poking their fingers at their teddy bears. (For the record, that's my vision. Haven't found that yet, maybe because it's sad, not funny.)

Inferiority Complex. And I'm Pissed.

I fall down online rabbit holes all the time. Popsicles. Yes, I can make those! Thirty minutes later, I've fot 10 tabs going and a sea of bookmarks. Really? For popsicles?

Those links invariably lead to one of the hundreds of mommy bloggers who I decided are like the (early) 21st Century parent's equivalent of runway models. These are women who chronicle their lives, or a slice of their lives, in a way that makes people like me feel both inspired, but really shitty. I'm sixteen and looking at Madonna. I'm 35 and looking at Heidi Klum. Inspired, shitty. 

They create impossible lives on (paper). I sew! I craft! I have a special room all to myself and my perfectly folded and sorted fat quarters. I homeschool! I can! I grow arugula! I love kale chips! 

Come on. My friends teased me when I vacuumed a week before Rabbit was born. A friend asked how I have time to knit these days (really, I don't. I knit a couple of rows a night). I can tweet, FB, blog my completed projects and look like a righteous mama. But, what about how my eyebrows are shaggy, I never drink a cup of hot tea for it turns cold far before I'm able to finish it off, and that nifty thing I created took days or weeks longer than it should have? 

I stumbled onto a quliter's site. She'd whipped up a pillow from quilt scraps a couple of days before having a baby. Um. And I don't want to name names, but there is that very popular mommy blogger who homeschools her children (she recently had her fifth), maintains her blog, has published two books, and knits/quilts/sews. I'm efficient, she says, and I do a lot of work at night. Who cleans her house? When does she have time to have a conversation with her husband? Who washes her dishes? How does she manage a homeschool lesson, let alone the curriculum preparation?

These mommies are, in effect, supermodels. Impossible standards by which the rest of us scramble to emulate, or at least bask in their completed project, amazing children glow. Oh, I know I sound bitter and fried. But, as I said to my friend the other night, I read through one after another blogs -- it started with a tweet about SewLiberated's book Growing Up sew liberated and an interview with her on Simple Homeschool; soon enough, 15 tabs, several new (to me) blogs later -- "These women inspire me and make me feel wholly inadequate." 

Isn't that how most of us feel when we look at Heidi Klum or Gwynneth Paltrow or (insert name here)? Women who are impossibly glamorous and put together at all times. It's easy to forget that this is what they do for a living: they look glamorous. Mommy bloggers do this for a living: they blog ... about the good stuff. I appreciate that, and I don't need to know that someone else is hand-wiping all of their baseboards while the babies nap as I did yesterday, but there is an impossible standard developing emotionally and socially for women. If it was difficult to be a mother all along, compound it with new visions of Mrs. Cleaver that aren't manufactured by television studios, they are of our own making. 

Do you jam? Do you knit? Do your children watch the telly? When are you buying your first Bamboletta (oh how I would love one of those for Bama and Rabbit)? When are you going to (start and) finish the wee wonderful dolls you bought the patterns for?

Anyway. This week, for the record, I knit several more rows of Bama's Nova dress and another square on the Captain's log cabin blanket (the Captain being Aunty Cake's baby boy whose named, in part, after James T. Kirk). I baked banana cereal muffins from Good to the Grain. I made braised beef short ribs, then beef stroganoff from Ad Hoc at home. I went running three times. I had friends over for a pool party. Bama started speaking French fluently and Rabbit skipped crawling and went straight to walking. (Those last two I made up.) And, I washed the baseboards by hand and mopped upstairs. I did a crapload of laundry.

I was cranky, a lot, and unsure who was benefitting from my quasi-Herculean efforts. I think we all did, to a certain degree, but I think I'll save the braised beef adventure for a weekend. Or when they are in college. 

 

 

Easter in Pieces (and a lot of parentheses)

As with every holiday this year thus far, I've had big ideas and lousy execution. Halloween, no costume, Bama was terrified (!!) of the costumed paraders down the street from our house. Christmas, I got the stocking done, but no photo with Santa Claus. Valentine's Day, hah. Easter, bags for each of them, egg-dying au-natural. 

Thank goodness for Nana and her Easter from California box of goodies. I already had a packet of plastic eggs to fill (she sent more) but she relieved me of the basket responsibility and included some treats, as well. I don't remember getting big baskets for Easter. I know my mom did something (and still does) every year, but the grand affair that Easter is today wasn't my Easter, and I kind of hope it's not Bama's or Pickle's either.

That said, I filled a half-dozen eggs with a few items -- a couple of colorful bracelets, buttons from my button box, a necklace, a spinning top. Also in the basket, a whale nail brush for washing hands after crafts (inspired by the brushes at Greenwich House that help get the paint off tiny fingers), a book for Pickle (That's Not My Dinosaur). No Peeps, no Cadbury creme eggs (seriously? yuck!). Also for Bama, an eraser for her chalkboard and a bag of bugs. 

Why bugs? The girl has nightmares about bugs, sees things on the floor and panics it might be a spider or ant. Mister came up with Emperor Jupiter, a special emperor penguin who likes to eat bugs, as a nighttime aid (she calls to him, quite dramatically, fists in the air - EMPEROR ... JUPITER!). I thought if she had a bag of bugs that didn't seem so scary, she'd find them funny. Tonight, during bath, I asked if these bugs made other bugs less scary. "No," she said.

For the eggs, I skipped boiling onion skins in favor of eco-dyes. I probably won't do the kit again -- $15 (I wasn't paying attention, Pickle needed nursing) was too much. I can do turmeric for yellow and crushed something for green just as easily. They were pretty, but we did them after the egg hunts, at the end of the day. The eggs had to soak for 10-20 minutes depending on the color. You tell your two-year-old to stick around for that. We did updates while they were brightening, but there was no thrill in the process. 

(Bama made the placemat at Moomah with Mister. These projects only reinforce my mama-teacher craving for my own laminator.)

 

Somebody, Please, Stop Me

Any woman who has trimmed her own eyebrows has blown it at least once in her lifetime. You know, you pluck, check, pluck and then you pluck one too many and throw off the delicate balance of your arch.
So you try to fix it.
And try.
And try.

On Friday night, I trimmed Bama's bangs a little. She was starting to develop a little tick as she tried to brush them out of her face. Sometimes ponies helped, but her hair, overall, is a bird's nest. My mother says Bama's hair is exactly like mine was at her age. Curly in the front, cotton candy in the back. Brushing it elicits shrieks of panic.

But the bangs. If only I could snip them back, just a little. So I snipped. A little. Then did a check, and turned her and snipped a little more. Mister came downstairs to observe and said, "Put the scissors down."

Step away from the girl. I nearly cried at the approaching disaster. "We can keep a nice lock of her hair."

Footnote: She does not look harmed, wonky, or otherwise socially damaged by my slight trim. But there's a little on the right I'd like to even up.