Royal Wedding Hype

Yes, when I was seven years old, my sisters and I sat plastered to the TV watching Diana marry Charles. I don't remember getting up exceedingly early to do this. I suspect we watched the rerun version on the major networks. We absolutely loved it and spent years reenacting every detail in games of dress-up and pretend.

I love a lot of things about the Brits, like they do have the better flag, and tea time, Charlotte Bronte and Dickens, dang good fish and chips, Cadbury machines in the Metro stations, martinis and so on. They also have a frickin' lot of mushy peas with everything, and other than the fish and chips and any other menu item brought in by immigrants or citizens of former colonies, I can't say the Anglo-Saxon nations are exactly known for their food.

But they do have royalty, and we do not. I mean, that's kind of the point of America. We were founded on notions of religious freedom and being anti-royalty and anti - the accompanying class system (not that we were very successful on avoiding that last one). And while I know the Royal family has fallen out of favor with a good chunk of the British population, I can't say I have much of an opinion on them.

So as the Royal Wedding hype has circled around, from friends touting the Royal Wedding Blog, or other friends flying to London just for the event, or others saying they just don't give a damn, I've felt a bit like that a  middle school pre-teen faced with peer pressure - is this a bandwagon I want to jump on?

I've hesitated, remaining curious, but not wanting to get swept away by the hype- as I sit with child, with a certain degree of anxiety of if it's a girl, how do I raise her and not get overwhelmed by all the pink and princess crap - it's even invaded Sesame Street. What if I can't find shoes that don't have glitter on them? Will I be like other moms of girls that I see on the playground, reading Peggy Orenstein's  Cinderella Ate My Daughter on a park bench, while their pink sequined off-spring skips about with a tiara on her head and demanding some poor innocent boy child to be her frog? If I have a girl, how many princess dress-up costumes am I going to have to make?

I love fairy tales and mythology. Fairy tales with their happily ever endings and their dark under bellies of dungeons and histories were my first choice subject of study in grad school for English Lit, but I like these stories firmly between the two covers of a book. When they seep into the mentality of girls who think they don't have to work hard or push themselves intellectually because they'll simply marry well, or will just grow up to be a princess just like Kate did or grown single women who view themselves as "less than" simply because they haven't gotten married, I start to have a problem with fairy tales and princess endings.

While keeping in mind, that I loved watching the Royal Wedding of my childhood, and that a certain degree of make believe and pretend is fine and healthy, and even keeping in mind that I do love that the Queen always wears a hat and that she makes her own tea for tea time, I don't know how to reconcile these simple loves with the explosion of pink princess that has splattered into the socialization of little girls.

But Kate Middleton? I can't help it. I like her. And I love that this wedding isn't so fairy tale - that Kate and William have known each other and even lived together (gasp!) almost 8 years. Granted, once she marries, her primary goal is the same as every other woman who marries into the family and that is to reproduce (but at least her in-laws are honest about it. Many in-laws act nice when really they're just interested in your womb and its potential and how soon they'll see the fruition of that potential). Still.

So will I get up hours before sunrise to gallop into the city for an elaborate celebration in some fancy hotel with bunting and clotted cream and tea to watch the Royal Wedding?

No.

But when I do get up, will I enjoy the scones and clotted cream I made the day before and Google images for Kate Middleton's dress and flowers?

Abs-a-frickin-lutely.

Easter

This week, my husband and I had our first discussion of how we should - or if we should - celebrate Easter. We've been married almost 6 years, but of course, this year is different because our son is now old enough to participate in Easter related activities. This in itself isn't a big deal. A couple weeks ago, I signed my 2 1/2 year old active explorer up for the neighborhood yearly Easter Egg hunt in Fort Greene park. He had a great time looking for eggs (I thought he would, which is why I signed him up) and even got his picture in the neighborhood paper.


The issue was more about what would we do at home. Before having children, we didn't celebrate Easter at all, except for one year when we stayed with my aunt shortly after my uncle's death and we all went to Easter morning Mass in his honor. Honestly, Easter is one of those holidays I love simply for the reason of its brunch potential. I also, I admit, love Easter baskets. I love them so much I wish my mother still sent me one. I don't even like candy. I just like the idea of a pretty basket full of small gifts inside.


It's my love of the Easter basket that had me assume, that while we would do nothing else for Easter, of course, we would color eggs, have Fyo search for them, and give him a non-candy oriented (aka sugar sensitive child friendly) Easter basket.


My husband disagreed.


"Easter? Why?" He demanded. "The commercial aspect doesn't resonate with us and the religious aspect doesn't resonate with us at all."


This is true. Of all the holidays in the Christian calendar, Easter is the hardest for us to wrap our heads around. I'm all for the Pagan origins of the celebration of the Spring Equinox (which is kind of how I was raised in my untraditional-question-everything-Liberal-Portland household) and love the idea of new beginnings and celebrating blooms emerging on tree branches after many months of being submerged under snow. It's the crucifixion of Christ for the sake of your sins that my husband and I have a hard time with.

I know. This is one of those things you aren't really supposed to admit in mixed company. And yes, I know, if I was a member of the Puritan clan on the Mayflower, my disbelief in this seemingly minor detail that actually is fundamental to all of Christianity would have me condemned as a witch or heretic and I'd be burned at the stake, drowned, or beaten with stones like Asian village laundry.  But really, the whole died for our sins thing, I can’t even begin to grasp the interpretation. 

Not that it matters, I wasn’t raised in a church going family, and while my husband was, he is like many friends of ours where they don’t identify with the religion they were raised with. Still, even as living as secularists, it can be a challenge to not bump our heads on the origins of holidays, and to question our celebration of it. 

And Husband is right, we’re not the types to trade in the religious significance for the commercial aspect, especially when it entails loads of cheap hydrogenated palm oily cancer causing sugared treats. And it can be hard to ignore the holiday all together. And do we really want to, given its brunch potential? And given that it could actually be warm enough for some quality time outside searching for eggs or just playing in the yard while enjoying good food? And honestly, I love holidays. I love celebrating and I love doing things to get ready for them. 

So what did I say to my husband? Simply, that I thought it would be fun to color Easter Eggs with Fyo and I think it will continue to be in years to come, even all the potential there is now in terms of coloring Easter Eggs (did you know that Martha Stewart alone has 43 pages of ideas of how to color eggs?).  I even think it could pass as educational in a pre-schooler elementary home-school chemistry kind of way. 

Husband agreed. “Oh,” he said, as if he had never encountered the notion of coloring eggs before, “it would be fun.”
I realized we do this with all the holidays. That most the holidays on the calendar have origins in things I don’t necessarily believe in. Columbus Day has been used to celebrate and promote such patriotic ideals as supporting war, the importance of the loyalty to the nation and celebrating social progress, though the arrival of Columbus essentially resulted in the European colonization of continent and the death of 99% of the indigenous population either through wars or diseases. Not that we do much to celebrate the holiday, other than marvel at the skewed US history that gets fed to school children in the production of Columbus Day plays. Thanksgiving is seemingly benign as it essentially celebrates a bountiful harvest at the end of the growing season, but again, it’s the mythology around it that we celebrate in elementary schools when we depict the Indians and the Pilgrims having a potluck, and the Indians teaching white people how to fish and grow corn. Right before, the white people killed them all of course. July 4^th again, is a great excuse for picnics and barbecues, but yearly I get turned off by how it gets spun into the patriotic-why-we’re-so-superior-brouhaha.


Near as I can tell, the best way to reconcile myself to all these holidays is to stay focused on the food – the brunch potential, and the enjoyment of partaking of such feasts in the lovely lively company of friends.  You know, as the Bible says, “Eat, drink, and be merry.”
Easter morning? We colored eggs and made bread pudding. I even made fresh challah (a nod to Passover in the name of religious diversity) the day before for the cream soaked dessert-y tasting lush brunch we enjoyed. My husband and son worked in the yard on our raised beds, so we can plant our garden. Over brunch with friends, we got tips for gardening in Brooklyn, in our yard, with our amount of light, the things that grew the best and so on. We stayed focused on the aspect of the holiday that does resonate with us, the one of new beginnings, of potential, the opportunity in all things growing.

Spring!

When Husband and I were living at the equator and in the tropics, the thing we missed the most were the seasons. When the weather is essentially the same everyday and the sun rises and sets at the same time everyday, it starts to grate on you. At least it did on us. We found it oddly disconcerting and noticed that we'd forget a month had gone by, just because all the days were the same. 

In December, we moved to New York, just in time for the very beginning of the Winter season. When we got off the plane at 5 in the morning, and stood outside waiting for a cab, the weather was all of 19 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time we got a cab, I had a long list of things to knit before next Winter.

Still, we loved the snow, that quiet that descends when it falls, and that feeling of magic, when you wake up early to see everything white - before anyone has gone outside to walk their dog or plow a street. It's still one of my favorite moments in life to look out the window after a snow storm or blizzard. 

While New Yorkers around us complained about the weather, Husband and I glowed, layered in sweaters, wool socks and boots. We soon noticed that New Yorkers didn't really appreciate our appreciation of the weather, and that we were better off keeping our seasonal jubilation to ourselves.

Then on March 1st, I decided I was done with Winter. I was ready for Spring. I planted vegetable seeds in pots along our indoor windowsill for our outdoor summer raised beds. I started knitting baby sweaters. I started writing new stories. And I started baking. I thought I was celebrating Spring and all it represented in new beginnings: a new home in a new city, new projects, new recipes to try, new libraries and museums to explore, a new baby on the way...

Really, my husband pointed out, it was just pregnancy nesting hormones finally kicking in. It took the weather six weeks to catch up with my declaration of Spring's arrival. But this week, all the trees look like this:

The weather is still getting used to the idea - I moved some of my seeds outside a tad too early and they drowned in a rainstorm or two. But we've had some gorgeous days. On one of them, we drove up to Beacon to see the Richard Serra sculptures at the Dia: Beacon museum. My son found the weather too enchanting to be inside, however, so he and I spent some time outside watching trains go by.

My Aunt Cleo Retires

Thanks to my cousin Kevan, our self-declared family chronologer and geneologist, who keeps us in the loop on important happenings in the family, we were able to follow the events around Aunt Cleo's retirement, from her utter dread (she wanted to drop dead in the middle of her job, as Kevan said, her hair perfectly done, her scarf just so, and of course, in her signature 5-inch heels) (I think actually once Cleo hit 85 her heel height dropped three inches) to her gradual acceptance and welcoming of a new chapter of her life opening up.

No one in our family actually thought Cleo would retire. We did think she would die doing something she absolutely loved, and even the joke went around the family that we would all know Hell had frozen over the day Cleo retired.

Alas, worry about the future of your soul no more. Hell has frozen over. Cleo has retired and is taking a day off. After 73 years. Her parting gift from Macy's? A framed copy of her application from when she was sixteen, and a framed copy of her letter of recommendation from her grandfather, Joseph Hutchinson.


There are many ways that Cleo is an icon in our family: her red hair, her heels, her short skirts, her refusal to discuss her age. Some have thought she was a bit childish to not want to talk about her age, but I have to say as I grow older, I totally get it. That if you're doing what you love and have a life you love, your age doesn't matter and it doesn't describe who you are - especially if you can pull off a mini skirt and heels. Her age has never been relevant to who she is. Just an example, ten years ago at a family wedding, we all danced until one in the morning, and Cleo was the last one standing. She had danced us all under the table.


I also admire her because she is unabashedly herself and always has been. When I graduated from high school, she pulled me aside to give me her view of life: your hair could never be too red (and my natural red could use some highlighting, she pointed out in her way), too thin, or too rich. She also told me, that those who got me, got me, and those who didn't didn't and to forget the rest. At Fyo's baby shower, she came up to me with tears in her eyes and said honestly, "For the life of me, I can't remember your son's first name, but I love that his middle name [Harrison] was my dad's. It's so beautiful." And then she turned around and flirted with my husband.

She's also an icon as she is a rare bird of her generation, in that she didn't see what she wanted, so she blazed her own trail and created her own position.

Style and wardrobe consultants that are all the rage these days? Yeah, she invented that. And she did it in Portland, Oregon, which isn't exactly known for its fashion. We should all be grateful for her services and should even consider her a public servant given the usual fashion in Portland. The Oregonian wrote a fantastic article on her, click here for the ariticle on the woman who was so determined to wear silk through the Depression, that she got herself a job (she was never one to let circumstances like an economic slump to get in her way.)

I think we should all be so lucky, to have something we love doing so much, that we never want to quit. What a gift of a life-

Pre-School In New York

http://www.slate.com/id/2288402/Even before I moved to New York, I had heard about over the top the search for pre-school is in New York and the lengths that parents go to in order to ensure the future of their child's education, whether it's giving their 3-4 year olds IQ tests or just the number of applications one has to fill out and the inevitably of waiting lists. I admit, when I heard that mothers were putting their unborn children on their child's potential school's waiting list, I thought they were exaggerating.

It turns out they weren't exaggerating.

We moved into our house in Fort Greene, Brooklyn on the first of February. I immediately started researching pre-schools in our area, having heard that it was not something to wait until the last minute for. I quickly found - by the middle of February - I had missed all the deadlines for Fall 2011 pre-school classes for 3 year olds (or those almost 3). I protested at the school I had found I considered completely ideal, but the coordinator insisted that she had already made the roster for Fall. She left me standing and stammering in the hallway, "But this pre-school, not early admission for the Ivy League's."


I have since joked that I'm just going to enroll my child into Columbia University in Manhattan, that I think it would be easier. I have been told, that actually, it would be.

But the obstacles to my son's potential Fall pre-school education had me start thinking. I'm not one of those parents who has a house full of Leap Frog DVDs, so my infant could learn the alphabet and numbers (in English and French and Spanish).  We have loads of books and read to him a lot, but we don't push the alphabet or intend him to read by the time he's three. In general, I think there is something bizarre about Americans that push their kids to read by the time they're three, but don't toilet train them until four.

And my son - from interactions with us, other kids, and as we go around the city - picks this stuff up. He's learned letters and numbers from the subway trains. I started to realize that I shouldn't even worry about it. That honestly, he's learning things on his time line, and honestly, I want him to play and interact with kids. I started to realize that in his education in general, I want him to learn how to learn, what his interests are, what his process is, and that he can learn just as much from himself as the mentors he finds in life.

I started to relax about whether or not he'd be in Montessori, Waldorf, or the school down the street that's based on the philosophy of Gandhi. And I started to realize those schools aren't really for us anyway, that ideally, we wanted a school that was 3 hours a day. For us, five days a week, from 9 - 3 seems like too much school for our child and our family - and given we don't need the childcare, we were hoping to find a school that had hours closer to what we envisioned. Brooklyn Waldorf is the only one, and it looks fantastic, but it breaks down to $30 an hour for pre-school.

I'd rather save the money and just stick him in a play group.

And then this article from Slate. It sealed the deal. I no longer feel any pressure to engage in the bizarre conversation around pre-school in New York. I'm now busy - taking my kid to the park.

Self-Soothing

I was recently in the midst of a conversation with a friend where we were talking about a variety of things related to parenting - co-sleeping, baby/child sleep in general, setting boundaries, indulgent parents who don't, strict "discipline" vs talking to children about consequences - the whole spectrum.
While we were in the sleep portion of our conversation, my friend said something along the lines of that children at some point need to learn to sleep on their own and to self-soothe. This we've all heard a million times before - that it's important for children to learn to self-soothe and to put themselves to sleep. It's one of those things that permeated my own childhood, that generations of parents have just assumed to be true without ever questioning it.

In the conversation with my friend, I even agreed to a certain extent with, "Sure kids need to learn to self-soothe, but why not let them do it on their time line, instead of the parents forcing them to learn on the parents' time line?" (meaning when parents let their kids cry it out  or send them to their rooms with their "negative" emotions). But as soon as I said it, it didn't feel right. I even immediately wondered if I had said it just so my friend didn't think I had gone entirely off the deep end - as I am kind of known for questioning everything when it comes to parenting, and my friend and I - while we adore each other - are very different parents with very different circumstances and lives and I sometimes do wonder if she thinks I have already gone off the deep end.

Nonetheless, I caught myself afterward, repeatedly thinking, "Really? Kids need to self-soothe? And is that what we are really teaching them when we put them to bed by themselves or letting them cry alone in the dark?" I even wondered if there had been studies done on if children had actually learned to self-soothe - and doubted it, given how many teen-agers "self-soothe" by drinking, drugs, stealing a credit card and maxing it out, cutting themselves, binging and purging etc. Then I even considered that if I had the credentials of a child psychologist or pediatrician, I might suggest or assert that most issues that crop up in the teen age years stem from NOT having successfully learned to self-soothe. And that when kids are left alone to deal with their feelings - or their fears - I suspect what they are actually learning is that it's not okay to have those feelings or fears. Or that they can have them, but those around them aren't interested in them.

Whether they do or not, what I came back to is that while -as an adult - I am able to comfort myself in a myriad of ways - usually by writing in my journal, walking or yoga, a hot bath - and the ways I comfort myself are pretty much the same as when I was a teenager, my favorite place to comfort myself is in conversation with someone I trust, and isn't that what I really want to teach my children? To talk things through with someone they trust and respect? And when they do this, doesn't this have them learn to be comfortable with their feelings and working through things, so that they are better able to comfort themselves when no one is available?

My son is two and a half, and at the age when his emotions can become a lot for all of us to deal with, but we've been talking a lot about emotions, when he's scared, when people get angry, when people cry because they're sad or frustrated, and when people are happy or affectionate. More often than not, when a kid is mean to him on the playground (sadly, we've already encountered bullies), my son balls up his fists, stomps, says he's angry, and then he's done. That's his "tantrum" or reaction. Then we talk about it, and dealing with what it feels like when people are mean, and that generally, when they are, it has nothing to do with us personally and so on.

It has been in these conversations, though, that I've come to realize that I really do think parents and culturally, we expect children to self-soothe far too young and that it's not because we think they need to comfort themselves, but more often because we're uncomfortable or don't like the emotions they're experiencing  - which is typical of people who were taught it's not okay to have negative emotions (or any for that matter). Just like babies and children don't necessarily need to "learn" how to go to sleep (given that it is human instinct), children will learn what comforts them as they grow up. But in the meantime, it's just as important for them to learn to talk about their feelings and experiences and what's bothering them.

This Week in Education

This week started out with the release of School Chancellor Cathie Black's approval ratings - which hovered around the astonishing rate of 17%. Mayor Bloomberg's response? The approval ratings don't matter or reflect what is important in the schools - that what matters is that people are moving into the NYC school system instead of out of it like they were ten years ago. I don't know what people he's talking about - I meet a lot of people who are actually moving out of NYC because they don't want to send their kids to NYC's public schools. I love living in Brooklyn, but my husband and I agree that our children will not see the inside of the public school building.

And when I heard Bloomberg's response to the approval ratings, I thought, oh crap, that man is firmly entrenched in denial and there is really no hope of him ever getting a clue.

Lo and behold, yesterday, when NPR's regularly scheduled programming was interrupted for the resignation of Cathie Black. My husband sent me a text message: "Black was fired! Happy Birthday!"

I was surprised as anybody that Bloomberg actually got a clue. I still think there were better ways of handling it, but I'm glad he didn't follow in George Bush's example of making a mistake and stubbornly sticking by it. I agree with one commentator (sorry - I didn't catch which one otherwise I'd post the link) who pointed out that Bloomberg missed a valuable opportunity for an educational moment for school kids across the country - that adults make mistakes, and it's best to take responsibility for it and even ask for help in moving forward. Instead of making Dennis Walcott (who also needs an exception and consequently can't start immediately) School Chancellor, Walcott should be the interium, while Bloomberg asked for everyone's help in conducting a nation wide search for the right candidate for the largest school district in the nation, and that local home grown Walcott stood a good chance for the job.

Walcott is profoundly more qualified than Black. Though, let's be honest, it wouldn't take much to have more qualifications than - nothing. I do hope he's able to make a difference for public school kids, teachers, and parents.

However, we're still not sending our kids to public school. For a variety of reasons. That would take up a whole other series of blog posts.

Where we would send our kids to public school, however, is in Finland. I have long idealized the Scandinavian notions of education (it's mostly Steiner/Waldorf & Montessori oriented), but this article in Time again makes me wish for dual citizenship with Finland. I don't know that what has Finland succeed in education would work in the states. While in theory we have rather democratic notions and would like to think of ourselves as ingrained in the ideas of equality, spend a little time on the playground - or applying to pre-school or pre-K programs in New York where you have to prove why your child would make more of worthwhile contribution to the potential pre-school class over someone else's kid - and it doesn't take long to realize that we are almost as obsessed about our kids getting ahead of their classmates as the Chinese.

My Messy Day

This is my dog, whom I took to the park with Fyo for morning off leash time. For reasons only known to her, she rested and played in one whopper of a mud puddle. (Yes, Beth Hayden, I thought of YOU and how glad you would be you gave us this lovely, sweet pup.)

I told Sis that Finn looked like one of those shortbread cookies that is partially dipped in chocolate. Except that Finn smelled far worse. Far, far, worse. I think she rolled in compost. I'm not sure. But she smelled like a pig sty and, after having spent time in Bali, this city girl knows what that smells like.




But oh, the fun she had. Luxuriating in her own spa mud treatment.



I'm not quite sure how I got her in the house without getting mud everywhere. But I did. And I got her into the tub. Lucky for me -as a 6 1/2 month pregnant woman- she doesn't mind bathes. (When I was seven months pregnant with Fyo, I had to wrestle Zoe into a bath and it was rather un-kosher behavior for a pregnant woman. We both ended up on our tailbones.)

 However, it took so long to bathe her, Fyo and I had to break for tea.

And you know of course, before we finished, she jumped out of the tub, and shook her filthy soapy self all over the bathroom.

Oh, Finn. You are lucky I love you.

In the afternoon, I had promised Kent I would make him chocolate chip cookies (it is his birthday month after all).  We mixed the dry ingredients first, as Ghiradelli directed (because  the recipe on the back of the Ghiradelli bag is the best recipe). Fyo then mixed and stirred the dry ingredients. He sifted and re-sifted. Then he created stacks of flour on the counter. He was having so much fun playing with the flour, that I didn't bother to stop him. But when it came time to add the flour, I had to measure new flour from the bin - as the one we had measured was evenly divided between the bowl, the counter and the floor. Halfway through his flour play, Fyo asked to take off his shirt. Not long after, the doorbell rang. We went to see who it was just as I noticed the state that Fyo was in.

He had a fine dusting of flour from head to toe, front to back. And at the door? The UPS man. The UPS man has this knack. The first time he met us and delivered a package to us, Fyo had discovered his love of green juice (the juice full of vegetables like broccoli & spinach, apples, chlorophyll, spiralina, blue green algae, barley grass, wheat grass - things that are amazing for you except that they most likely taste disgusting - except to my kid who loves the stuff), So Fyo's entire face was green from his juice. Fyo loves the mail man and the UPS man, so he always runs to meet them. The next day, the UPS man came, and Fyo had been playing in the back yard, so he was covered in dirt. The UPS man said, "He was dirty yesterday too."

Yes, yes, he was.

Sure enough, on our messy day, Fyo greeted the UPS man half-naked and completely covered in flour and the UPS man just laughed and laughed and laughed. He said, "Your kid's cute, but he's always dirty."

Good thing he didn't see my dog.