Spiritual Direction nyc

June 13, 2018

The Dandelion Days of Summer and God’s Unconditional Love

20180508_171735

If you have allergies like I do, and like my kids do, the arrival of warm weather in New York is like a birthday party and a mildly horrific movie wrapped up into one. We love the sunshine, taking out bikes and scooters, shrugging off the coats and sweaters. We love far less the itchy, swollen eyes, stuffy noses and clogged throats, eczema, sneezing, and chemical dependency on every over-the-counter remedy in the known universe.

The other week as I tromped to the drug store in search of antihistamine eyedrops with my son (13) and younger daughter (6), I was struck by how utterly and completely themselves they both were. Deise (pronounced “Daisy”) was in ecstasy over the dandelions populating our neighbors’ lawns. She wanted to pick all of them and bring them home. She kept saying, “They’re so beautiful! Look how beautiful they are!” Daniel, however, was impressed neither by his sister’s enthusiasm nor by its objects. “They’re weeds,” he pointed out. “They’re an invasive species and they’re bad for the rest of the plants. You shouldn’t pick them.”

20180508_171844

If you know my kids at all, these reactions typify their personalities. Deise lives in an enchanted world of play clothes and pretend. She’s been sleeping at night in a multicolored tent in our living room, surrounded by the stuffed animals that “I love so so much, even though I know they aren’t real.” I took her to her piano lesson not too long ago and the trees by her teacher’s apartment were in full bloom. She was enthralled and spent time gathering not only tree blossoms but more dandelions. She named each one of her blooms: Blossom, Berry, Cherry, Pitter, Patter, Packer, Mrs., Droopy, Goldilocks, and Bitter (because it was small). She also picked up individual petals from the ground and gave them the catch-all name “Hatchling.” She is the embodiment of joie de vivre.

(Her names reminded me of the classic children’s book Make Way for Ducklings, with its eight siblings Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack.)

Screenshot 2018-06-13 at 1.10.33 PM

Daniel, my chess player, mathematician, and pessimist, is interested in facts, strategy, and planning for worst-case scenarios. (Also, Marvel comics.) When Daniel looks at a dandelion, he sees not “scope for the imagination,” as Anne Shirley would say, but an invasion waiting to happen. His response to dandelions is to leave them alone lest anything worse come to pass.

(Sophie (16) wasn’t with us that day, but if she had been, she would’ve had a snippet of a Broadway song and a playfully sarcastic comment for all parties. Her spiritual gift, like her father’s, is snark.)

What I felt as I watched Daniel and Deise respond so differently to the same environment, and even as I waded in to stop them squabbling over their different perceptions, was an overwhelming wash of love, acceptance, and delight in them, exactly as they both are. And I also felt God’s love for them – unconditional, perfectly knowing, perfectly celebratory of their uniqueness, gifts, and potential.

20180508_171942

I think this is how God loves each one of us: whether we are imaginative and sunny or rational and gloomy, an Anne Shirley or an Eyore.

Screenshot 2018-06-13 at 1.31.03 PM

Sometimes I think we are afraid that he has rankings in his head, that he prefers one type of personality or one set of talents over another, and that whoever we are is far down the list. But the truth is that God delights in each one of us exactly as we are. Zephaniah 3:17 tells us that:

. . . the Lord your God is living among you.
    He is a mighty savior.
He will take delight in you with gladness.
    With his love, he will calm all your fears.
    He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.

If your insecurities are snarling at you today, spend some time meditating on this Scripture passage and letting its truth sink in. You are as beloved by God as the brightest summer bloom. You bring God joy! What could be more beautiful and freeing than that?

September 28, 2017

Our Outing to Outhouse Orchards

20170922_104359 Last Friday, my husband and I took our three kids and two additional munchkins apple and peach picking at Outhouse Orchards, located on Hardscrabble Road. Given that infelicitous pairing of names, I halfway expected to drive into a tunnel and come out on the other side to find the technicolor world of Westchester, NY had faded to a Depression-era black-and-white farmstead, complete with dust clouds and some gaunt looking cows – the reverse of Dorothy heading to Oz.

To be honest, we picked Outhouse in part because it seemed like a lower-key experience than some of its neighboring farms boasting McMansion-sized bouncy houses, pumpkin slinging, and draconian payment policies. (“No, parents may not watch their kids bounce unless they also have purchased tickets.” “Yes, you are required to buy all $108 dollars of apples you picked, even though you thought you were picking Galas, not Guccis.) With seven of us and a budget, it didn’t make sense to try to Disneyfy the experience. We just wanted some fruit and cider donuts.

Outhouse turned out to be an ideal place to get both. We arrived ahead of most of the crowd, so many times we were the only people in sight. Just us and the apple and peach trees.

For months, it’s felt like New York has been unable to pick a season, but Friday was a dream of an early fall day: Sunny, but not hot, with a light breeze and blue skies. Part of the orchard was nestled in a valley, so we hiked down over a green ocean of rolling tufts of grass.

20170922_101159

No dust-clouds in sight.

The kids took turns wielding apple picking poles or looking for low-hanging fruit in search of the most beautiful apple in the orchard. There was a lot of good-natured apple trash-talking before this one won by virtue of showing up with its own crown.

20170922_104833

After we’d filled half our bag, we hiked back up the hill and still further up (past the corn maze, past the raucous school groups getting tractor rides) to the peach orchard. From there, we could see rows of saplings below low-slung clouds in shades of lavender gray.

20170922_110605 It was late enough in the season that the trees were surrounded by fallen fruit, meaning a lot of squishiness underfoot, but nobody minded. We unanimously agreed that while the apples were good, the peaches were divine: plump, rosy, and sweet.

20170922_111841

One tip for fellow harvesters: You can buy either a $10 bag or a $25 bag. We chose the latter, but short of a bodybuilder in your party or a wagon that can navigate bumpy terrain, I would not recommend going quite that big. We gathered more fruit than my husband – our designated pack mule – could carry comfortably – and more than our mesh bag could handle. It began splitting on the way down the hill from the peaches, and we barely made it back to our vehicle.

All that walking, reaching, and climbing was appetite-building! Fortunately, Outhouse sells what my sister (an apple picking connoisseur) calls the best cider donuts she’s ever eaten. She was right – they were piping hot and dusted with sugar. The pumpkin spice donuts were nothing to sneeze at either. We left with tired feet, sticky mouths, and happy taste buds. (Although we were still hungry enough to stop by Mama’s Empanadas on the way home.)

And yes, true to the orchard’s name, there was a row of porta-potties conveniently placed at the bottom of the hill.

September 7, 2017

The Noguchi Museum, the Socrates Sculpture Park, and the Goat Days of Summer

Screenshot 2017-09-07 at 10.20.47 AM

Every first Friday is free admission at the Noguchi Museum in Astoria, Queens, so last week I took my three kids with me to wander around. One of my friends joined us with her two-year old.

Isamu Noguchi was a Japanese-American of mixed ancestry. (His father was a Japanese poet; his mother an American writer.) He was a sculptor, designer, and activist on behalf of Japanese Americans interned during World War II. It’s a testament to his influence on modern design that his paper lantern designs look like something you might buy at Ikea.

ceiling-lamp-model-40xp-11

The museum looks like nothing much from the outside – gray brick, low-slung, industrial, flanked by power lines, the Southern Astoria waterfront, and Costco (which my family visits almost as religiously as church). Inside, it is minimalist and modern: long, spacious rooms with clean lines, white walls, polished wood floors, and impeccable lighting.

isamu-noguchi-museum-building

As you enter, a mini-lobby leads immediately into the first exhibition space, an open-air high-ceilinged brick room that houses several monumental pieces carved from granite and other stones. It opens into the sculpture garden, a serene, Zen-like space. With its high walls, gentle landscaping, stone sculptures, an abundance of trees, and benches it would make a great place to bring a book or a sketchpad any time you needed to get away from it all without leaving the city. (Presuming that the things you could get away from included your young children, which was not the case on our visit.)

Since we had little ones in tow, the museum was not a leisurely experience — we careened through the museum at a break-neck pace suited to the first-grader and toddler — but it wasn’t stressful either. It’s a kid-friendly place, with family guides and pencils provided for children and small enough to be manageable in an hour or less, although it would absolutely reward several hours of your time and attention. Noguchi’s sculptures are varied and visually and texturally engaging, and they’re not roped off, so kids can get nose-to-nose with them. While I can’t say my brood came away with much intellectual knowledge gained, they had fun identifying sculptures (none of them have identifying plaques, so you have to match them with their photos and names in printed guides) as well as making up their own names based on what they thought each sculpture looked like.

noguchi-museum-4

All things considered, I was pleased with their level of imaginative engagement. We also had a brief discussion on the way out about who decides what constitutes “art.” Is it the wealthy who control the art market and dictate taste to the unwashed masses, as my worldly-wise high-schooler asserted, or is there something more transcendent at work? What if you don’t enjoy looking at a painting by Picasso (as my son put it, “that guy who makes the weird faces”) but you have an understanding of what he was trying to do, or vice versa?

(Also: if you are six and you wear a scarf printed with Van Gogh’s “Night Cafe” wrapped around you like a sarong and tucked into your underwear, is that a sign of good taste to come or bad?)

This discussion proved prescient as we trooped over to the Socrates Sculpture Park, a free outdoor space just across the street from the Noguchi. Socrates is a hoot because you can never be sure what you’ll find there. On this day, it was goats. Lots and lots of goats. All life-size, except for one gargantuan head-on-a-stick that looked like the world’s most diabolical cake pop.

20170901_110833

(Fun fact: Goats and other mammals with hooves are called ungulates. You can read all about them and their unguises on my new favorite website, Ultimate Ungulate.)

The smaller goats all had bizarre appendages – sticks growing out of their back or a mangy coat of hair – and at least one was upside down. It was all quirky, eye-catching, and also vaguely disquieting. I immediately thought of pagan rituals like the Israelites worshipping a golden calf before God literally made them eat it. I was unsure what the exhibition was “about,” so I wandered around taking pictures and considering a few important questions, like a) whether the Billy Goats Gruff got royalties from the exhibition; b) if all the garden gnomes had fled in fear for their lives and sanity; c) whether the giant goat bell (not pictured) really did look suspiciously like gonads or if I had spent too much time reading Freud as a graduate student; and d) if all six us could split a Costco pizza for lunch.*

As we left the park, I picked up a guide that someone had helpfully discarded, and learned that

[Nari Ward’s “G.O.A.T., again”] examines how hubris creates misplaced expectations in American culture. Ward recasts tropes of outdoor structures – the monument, the playground, lawn ornaments, architectural barriers, and the advertising sign – into surreal and playful creations. This expands the artist’s ongoing exploration of cultural identity, social progress, material histories, and our sense of belonging . . .

Before that day, I had not been familiar with Ward or his work. My ignorance didn’t prevent me from appreciating the exhibition in a bemused, visceral way, but I was glad for the framing and the opportunity to learn more later. (This piece in the New Yorker is a brief, light-hearted sketch of the exhibition and the installation process.)

While we were at the park, however, most of our focus was simply on enjoying the last Friday of summer. The kids, whose observational skills and brain power had already been depleted by the Noguchi, shared fig bars, cheese, and crackers and lounged on stadium seats plopped in the middle of the park. It was a beautiful, sunny morning punctuated by a sharp breeze coming off the water. The red and gold “Apollo” sign — several miles from the original in Harlem — stood out against the green grass and shrubs, the backdrop of the river and the Manhattan skyline, and the bright, blue sky.

20170901_110725

*For those keeping track, the answers to those questions are: a) no, and it’s a crying shame; b) wouldn’t you?; c) yes, and yes; and d) yes, but we ended up ordering other things too. My son is inexplicably a fan of the baked chicken cheese roll, even though it tastes like someone stuffed microwaved pasta Alfredo into a hot pocket made of cornstarch packing peanuts.

Image Credits:

Noguchi Museum Garden

Noguchi lantern

Noguchi Museum(external shot) tribecacitizen.com

Noguchi interior howcreativeswork.files.wordpress.com

Noguchi Museum Garden 1.bp.blogspot.com

Segmented “Worm” sculpture lostfoundremembered.files.wordpress.com

August 22, 2017

Wonderland in Bloom: Chihuly Sculptures at the New York Botanical Garden

20170806_173346

Two weekends ago, some friends took our family to the New York Botanical Garden to see the Dale Chihuly exhibition.

Chiluly’s name sounds like a portmanteau of a lily and a Chihuahua. The lily part seems appropriate for a man who sculpts flowers. I don’t know how to connect the Chihuahua part though.

Walking among his glass sculptures is like being in an enchanted world, where everything is uncannily close to what you know . . . but not. The giant lemon, chartreuse, and white bloom above, with its crazily twisting spirals and shells, looks simultaneously like an anemone dancing in the ocean currents; an ecosystem of corals, mollusks, and eels; or Medusa’s hair re-interpreted as a topiary or a joyfully vibrant dress-up party hat. In its excess of size and movement, there’s both beauty and a touch of the grotesque. As a flower, it looks just wild and untamed enough to be dangerous – the kind of bloom that might beckon an insect in before devouring it. (And that sentence sounds like Freud trying his hand at a romance novel. I already regret writing it.)

20170806_182058

Among the towering flora, I felt a little like Alice in Wonderland after she had shrunk to the size of a mouse. Even among the more “normal” sized sculptures, I half expected the flowers to insult me, the Mad Hatter to drag me to a tea party, and the Red Queen to stride in bellowing “Off with her head!” Maybe even a baby that turned into a pig. (Fun fact: The word “portmanteau” was coined by Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, writer of the Alice books, and friend to the real Alice Liddell, who as far as I know did not actually babysit pigs.)

alice-and-pig-pwxlg

Although we never encountered the White Rabbit and his pocket watch, we did spend many minutes observing the fuzzy honey bees, boisterous and laden with pollen.

20170806_184442

My kids and I were equally fascinated by super-sized koi fish, mouth agape, cruising for crumbs in the lotus pond. It reminded me of a baby plugged up with one of those see-through pacifiers.

Not the actual mouth we saw

My son gave the fish pieces of sandwich bread, which I am sure is not allowed. However, I am also sure someone has been feeding that monster more than just carp food. It looked one growth spurt away from starring in the next Godzilla sequel.

Someone definitely tried to feed it a cell phone. We saw groundskeepers dredging for it among the lotuses.

20170806_174848

Inside the greenhouse, the sculptures and their settings conjured up a paradisical jungle, with luminous white “belugas” (that looked like alien pods straight out of a horror movie), white and indigo flamingos, and perfectly constructed leaves, with the striations and variations in the glass mimicking a real leaf’s vein. Some leaves looked so like their real counterparts that only the informational placards called attention to them.

We left the Garden tired, content, and hungry, and our friends took us to SriPraPhai in Woodside, Queens for authentic Thai food. While everything was delicious, what I remember most is the dessert: salty, sweet, and warm sticky rice, served with a fresh cold mango in a swirl of coconut milk. It was the perfect combination of flavors, temperatures, and textures, and a fitting end to a day in Wonderland.

Image credit:Koi: http://www.japanshakuhachi.com

August 16, 2017

It was My Anniversary . . . and a Bird Pooped on My Head

Screenshot 2017-08-12 at 12.24.04 PM — Not the guilty pigeon

There I was, minding my own business, walking with my husband to a restaurant to celebrate our 19th anniversary, and the next thing I knew, I had pigeon poop in my hair.

We were out the night before our anniversary, because, on our actual anniversary, my husband took our son, his best friend, and two other guys to Six Flags for the day.

As many of our friends and family members already know, this is not the least romantic thing my husband has done on our anniversary. That would be the year he planned to go to Mets game with 10 guys from church, found out the game was on the day of our anniversary, then bought the tickets anyway.

They got rained on though, so I feel like karma was on my side.

This year, the kids jaunted off to Shake Shack with their godparents, and my husband and I drove to Jackson Heights, an area of Queens that makes understatements of the terms “urban density” and “diversity.” We parked and walked several blocks towards a small second-floor restaurant that serves Thai hotpot – all you can eat within ninety minutes (there are overage charges). It was while we were standing at a corner under the elevated 7 line tracks, waiting for a light to change, that a pigeon left me a present.

I can’t remember the last time I was pooped on. By a bird, anyway. I remember loads of times (pun intended) I was pooped on by a kid. Mostly by my own, although just last week the neighbors’ newborn leaked all over me.

I’m not really sure why, of all days, a pigeon singled me out on my 19th anniversary, but I am hopeful that was not a portent of things to come. Although, didn’t getting pooped on by birds get Diane Lane her own villa in Under the Tuscan Sun?

Please, can I have my own villa?

6_3893

No villa materialized, but we did have a great evening together, once I scraped and washed everything out of my hair and hands in the restaurant bathroom, then dolloped on some hand sanitizer for good measure.

The restaurant we chose, Jaew Hon NY, was eclectically and colorfully decorated with light fixtures made of umbrellas and colanders and a painting of the recently deceased, beloved Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

20170810_200739

It was a family-friendly spot, with several families with babies and young children crowded into the narrow space. (As the night progressed, the crowd shifted to adults.) Many of the babies and toddlers were vociferously not enjoying themselves, and no one seemed to mind. They were also sitting mystifyingly close to the in-table heating elements.

The heating elements turned out to be (mostly) child-safe inductive heating surfaces that stayed cool while keeping the broth inside the hotpots boiling at a consistent 390 degrees. From what my humanities-tilting brain can tell from a quick perusal of some diagrams on Google, induction heating works through magnets and, um . . . magic?

Regardless, I came away wanting an inductive cooker for our apartment, because turning on a stove during an NYC heat wave is akin to using a blowtorch in hell.

20170810_193422

If you’re not familiar with hotpot, it’s found in many Asian cultures. In Japan, it’s called shabu shabu, a name that Wikipedia informs me may be an onomatopoetic representation of the sounds made by cooking and stirring. It consists a variety of vegetables, meats, fish, dumplings, tofu products, and noodles that you cook in boiling broth right at your table. According to the Thai friend who recommended this restaurant, Thai hotpot is distinguished from Chinese hotpot by its dipping sauces and broths, all made with Thai spices like Thai basil (spicier than the Italian variety), lemongrass, and galangal (related to ginger).

20170810_204143

For our hotpot, we ordered marinated beef, thin-sliced beef, squid, and shrimp, then chose items from the fresh bar: several kinds of mushrooms, bok choy, Thai basil, squash slices, eggs, tofu, tofu skin, pork and shrimp dumplings.

The shrimp came with heads intact. I made my husband deal with them. I don’t like it when my food stares at me with its bulgy, beady, pleading eyes. Or with any eyes, for that matter.

n5tv42ae64nmanya1v5k — The face of nightmares

We finished off the evening in Astoria Park, looking out at the Manhattan skyline through the lattice of the 59th Street Bridge and eating Talenti Almond Coconut Chocolate Gelato with plastic spoons.

20170810_221522

For a night that started with getting pooped on, it wasn’t all that bad. I’d spend another 19 years like this.

Illustrations from Mo Willems’ Pigeon books. My family is also fond of Gerald and Piggie and Knuffle Bunny.

July 20, 2017

Love, According to a First-Grader (and some Minions)

giphy2

At our church retreat last week, my six-year old discovered an – shall we say – appreciation for her class teacher. “Mom,” she whispered. “I got my first crush!”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, on my teacher!”

“Your teacher? What’s his name?”

“Ben.”

We have some conversation about the admirable qualities of nice, funny Ben before moving onto other subjects.

The next day:

“Mom, guess what? I told Ben I had a crush on him, and he said he has a crush on me, too!”

“Wow, that’s great! So does this mean he’s your boyfriend now?”

“No, Mom, I can’t have a boyfriend! I have a husband!”

The tone of her voice tells me she is questioning my mental capacity.

“Oh, really, who? You said you wanted to marry G [a boy from her pre-Kindergarten class]. Did that happen without me noticing?”

“NO, Mom! Jack! Jack is my husband.”

“Oh, right. I forgot about Jack.”

Jack is her imaginary husband of about six months. He started out as a fiancé, and almost instantaneously moved up to permanent status. When she told me about their marriage, she also told me emphatically that he’s an adult, not a kid, and I refrained from commenting on yet another barrier to the legality and longevity of their union.

When Jack first became a part of our lives, she had long, rapid-fire conversations with him on an old Blackberry in Public, an imaginary language first invented by her older brother when he was three or four. (I think he must have heard the phrase “speaking in public” and misapplied it in a manner that actually makes total sense.) Public has no discernible rules, grammatical structure, or consistency, but sometimes sounds like Minion language, if the Minions were only slaughtering Spanish and perhaps Portuguese, and not also French, Mandarin, and a grab bag of other languages.

vslajrw

I’m not sure who the wronged party is in this situation: Jack or Ben. The husband or the crush? But I am relieved my daughter at least understands that adultery is not an option.

So, this morning, as we’re snuggling in bed, we revisit the subject of Ben, for the benefit of her older sister, who wasn’t at the retreat with us. “Why do you like Ben again? Is it because he’s nice and funny?”

“No! It’s because he has big arm muscles!”

She shows me how big with her own arms. Somehow, she has become a shallower person at six years and one week than she was at six.

“But he’s not your boyfriend. Because of Jack.”

“Jack?”

“Your husband?”

“Jack isn’t my husband! He’s my friend.”

“I thought he was your husband. Remember? First he was your fiancé?”

“Oh, right. But now he’s only my friend.”

“Why? Is it so Ben can be your boyfriend?”

“No! Ben can’t be my boyfriend. He’s married.”

Pause.

“Can I be married to both of them?”

“No, you can’t!”

Pause.

“I can’t keep one a secret and not tell anyone?”

So much for the morals of a six-year old.

July 17, 2017

Sunset Over Manhattan

Manhattan sunset_201734

It was a good friend’s birthday today, so she and her husband, and many of us who love her, celebrated at Anable, an outdoor bar and grill on the Long Island City waterfront. The drinks are simple – bottles of beer and cans of Perrier citrus sodas – and the furniture consists of polished wooden picnic tables and umbrellas, plus assorted metal and plastic chairs that look like they were filched from Generic High School USA. The view is undeniably beautiful, and by city standards, peaceful, with a few helicopters flying by and the occasional speedboat. It’s a good place to sit, watch the sun slip down between the skyscrapers, and, depending on your personality and tax bracket, either reflect on the beauty of the New York City water and skyline, or nurse a serious case of real estate envy.

Anable serves a variety of meats – cevapi, chorizo, kielbasa, bison – with pitas and the appropriate toppings (sauerkraut and mustard for the kielbasa, some kind of red pepper relish for the cevapi). I think they had salad on the menu, but no one in my party bothered with pesky details like balanced meals or fiber consumption. We had cake and cupcakes, after all!

The piped in music is lively and the crowd tended towards the young and pretty, although no one availed themselves of the ample space for dancing except a few of the kids. With the adjoining pier to walk or run on and the casual setting, it’s a very child-friendly place, although you will have to make sure yours don’t hurl themselves from a table bench over the railings into the East River. I was also afraid that mine were going to make themselves sick eating the green peaches from an overhanging tree, but no one has complained or puked (yet). In any case, this may be the closest they’ll come to eating the fruits of an urban garden, since I can’t seem to grow anything but weeds and poison ivy. (I even kill cacti. It’s a gift.)

Besides the need to keep your little ones from taking a swim, there are a few drawbacks to Anable. One is that they don’t give you water pitchers, although my kids had no trouble getting individual plastic cups of water or ice. It was hot outdoors, even after 5 pm, and we were all a little dehydrated by the time we left around 8. The other is that it’s outdoors, so there’s no smoking prohibition in effect. If you’re a smoker or don’t mind others smoking, this won’t be an issue, but if you don’t want your kids hacking up a lung, you may have to change tables at some point. The last sticking point is the bathrooms. There are no paper towels or hand dryers provided, so the floors are wet and slippery, and it’s hard to tell if what’s down there is water . . . or something else. Enter at your own risk, and don’t wear your shoes in your house when you get home.

A final danger to Anable is large, laughing groups of people making idiots of themselves by taking lots of pictures using selfie sticks and singing horribly off-key renditions of “Happy Birthday.” I plead the fifth on that one.

Note: My 30-day writing challenge to myself has officially ended, hopefully with some momentum built and discipline discovered. I will continue posting on a regular basis, but probably not everyday. My goal is two “Summer in the Psalms” reflections a week, plus at least one additional post.

Thanks so much to everyone who has been reading, liking, and following my posts. Now that I’m back from vacation, I will do my best to stop by all of your blogs and say hello, if I haven’t already. You’re all the best!

July 14, 2017

‘Tis a Gift to be Simple . . . and Sugary: My Son’s Vacation from the Food Pyramid

Day 29 of my 30-day writing challenge
blah-balloon

My son is made happy by two very simple things: sugar and toys. When he was five, we took him to Disney World. He enjoyed the day, no question, but the thing that made him happiest? A Mickey-Mouse ear-shaped balloon inside another balloon. He was semi-anxious the whole day until we bought it, and as soon as we did, he was content.

Six years later, you might think his tastes had grown more sophisticated.

You’d be wrong.

He had very little pocket money to bring with him on our vacation, because he spent it all in the last two weeks on cheap motorized cars, fidget spinners, and a lollipop the size of his head. He is, however, very sweet and generous with his money. He shared his cars with his godfather, and he gave one of the fidget spinners and a foot-long unicorn pop to his little sister. (Because when you’re sharing the love, you might as well share the tooth decay, too.)

Yesterday, the teens at our church conference — all 500 of them — went to a local water park. Because the trip was so poorly organized, my son only rode one waterslide the entire day. I thought he’d be devastated, but he was pleased with how the day had gone. As he explained, he’d brought a bag of gumballs along with him. He sold gumballs for 10 cents each, making $2. He also sold a free tee-shirt he’d won that morning for $3. He made enough money to buy something he’d been coveting all week. It was a can of blue soda! That lights up! And, he had two dollars left over!

He also came home with two tubes of squeezable SlushPuppie sour cherry candy, one won in a game, and one given to him for no reason. You can see why it was a good day.

I should explain that my son that the instincts to be a killer entrepreneur. He had a nice side business going at his school this year. He bought fidget spinners, sold them for a profit, and then bought more fidget spinners and sold those. Just as the fidget spinner craze was dying down, his package of fidget cubes arrived from China, and he also made a profit off of those.

maxresdefault

I should probably have been upset that he was selling items that were banned from school in school, but I was too busy being relieved that someone in my family was showing some business sense. Between the two of us, my husband and I have a pile of degrees in ministry and the humanities, and (clearly) not a lick of financial acumen. It’s nice to know that our son will be able to take care of us in our dotage.

This afternoon, Grammy and her husband took my son and I to the movies. He brought his two tubes of sour candy, but didn’t feel like that was enough. So he talked Grammy into buying him a theater-sized box of watermelon SourPatches.

By the time Spiderman: Homecoming was over, every last bite and squeeze was gone. (Full disclosure: I did eat several of his sour watermelon candies. After the first one overloaded all the sour taste receptors on my tongue, the next seven or eight were surprisingly good.)

In summation, let us count the sweets that my son consumed this past week:

Friday (on the plane): Five mint chocolate Oreos. A bag of chocolate chip graham crackers shaped like bunnies. The caramel-flavored tea cookies the flight attendant handed out.

Saturday: (Brunch buffet) Mini muffins in chocolate, blueberry and banana nut. Waffles with syrup. A mini s’mores cake. A chocolate croissant. A fruit turnover. Later in the afternoon, a scoop of rainbow sorbet in a sugar cone.

Sunday: (At Grammy and her husband’s anniversary party) Chocolate cake with chocolate and white chocolate mousse filling. Fun-sized Hershey bars.

Monday: Pancakes with high fructose corn syrup maple syrup substitute. Two scoops of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie, plus bites of Cherry Garcia and Berry Berry Sorbet. Leftover chocolate cake.

Tuesday: French toast with high fructose corn syrup maple syrup substitute. Three kinds of frozen yogurt — pineapple guava, watermelon, and mango — topped with gummy worms and mango boba balls (juice filled-gelatin spheres that pop and squish).

popping-boba-juice-boba-juice-ball

Today: Part of a chocolate doughnut for breakfast. Two tubes of sour gel and a box of SourPatch watermelon. A can of light-up soda. (It turned out to be flavored like a Cherry Sprite.)

Oh, and I hardly ever let my kids have soda. This week, because we ate at so many fast food places, I relaxed my restrictions. In for a penny, in for the Gross National Product of China, right? I would not be surprised to learn my son is running on root beer instead of oxygen and hemoglobin.

At least we decided not to stop at Krispy Kreme on the way home from the movies. That might have been the only restraint we showed all week.

image credit: Dad’s Guide to Disney World

July 12, 2017

Warning: Possible Sightings of Extraterrestrials in Mankinis

beach

Day 27 of my 30-day writing challenge

My husband and I took the kids to the beach this morning. It was perfect beach weather – bright and hot, low humidity, no haze. But the water conditions weren’t great for swimming or, much to my son’s disappointment, for body boarding. The surf was rough and shallow, and the lifeguards were warning swimmers away from a riptide. We still enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, but we also got knocked around and scraped across the sand a few times, even those of us who stuck to the water’s edge. And we all ended up with an unholy amount of sand in our bathing suits. I hadn’t seen my daughter’s bottoms that full since she was a nine-month old with a guacamole habit.

Before we left for our vacation, I bought a new swimsuit. I purchased it with a very strict set of principles. It had to be small enough that my husband didn’t feel cheated, but large enough so that nothing that was supposed to stay in ended up out.

Here’s the thing: I’ve had three kids. I’m not in terrible shape, and I’m genetically on the small side, but there are certain realities about the post-pregnancy body. If I stand up straight, my stomach looks almost like it did before all my skin stretched out to make room for a trio of watermelons. Once I slouch or bend or scrunch, however, I look like E.T. I might as well forget about a swim and start phoning home so my peeps can come get me.

et-the-extraterrestrial-lifesize-replica-1

As it happened, any bathing suit I could possibly have bought on any planet in the solar system would not have compared to the attire of the person sitting right in front of us, shaded by his umbrella.

It was a mankini. And not just any mankini. A string mankini. A very, very, very tiny string mankini.

I live in New York City. I’ve seen lots of things. So a mankini sighting, while not visually appealing to me personally, was not particularly shocking. Nobody else on the beach appeared to even blink. I just didn’t know this was something people actually wore.

Coincidentally — or at least I hope it’s a coincidence, because if not, I can’t imagine what the universe is trying to tell me — I learned that mankinis existed only last week, after I finally watched the latest episode of Sherlock. I was underwhelmed by the episode itself, but reading reviews of it led me to a delightful interview of lead actor Benedict Cumberbatch by Louise Brealy, the actress who plays medical examiner Molly Hooper. In the interview, Brealy jokes that the Christmas present her character gave Sherlock in an earlier season was, in fact, a mankini. Specifically, a Borat mankini, invented by the actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, and somehow important enough to have its own website. I am not posting a picture of it, because it is not something you can unsee. Follow the link at your own risk, and keep plenty of eyeball bleach handy.

The great thing about seeing everyone so blasé about Mr. Mankini was that I felt I had no excuse whatsoever to feel self-conscious in my own swimsuit. I think E.T. himself would have felt right at home. Even if he had been the one wearing the mankini.

July 9, 2017

Chicken In a Biskit, Jello Molds, and a Bad Word from the Birthday Girl

chickenbisk01

Day 24 of my 30-day writing challenge

After a late night flight to the West Coast, and a day spent celebrating our birthday girl – she turned six today! – I’m sitting in my childhood home, jet-lagged and bleary-eyed. For some reason, I’m eating Chicken in a Biskit crackers as though my life depended on it, even though they taste nothing like chicken, and were obviously named by the same person who taught the Chick Fil-A founder how to spell.

We’re in town for the national conference of our denomination, which starts next week, and to see my mom and her husband, who still live in the house I grew up in. The house looks largely the same as when I lived here – an endearing, goofy mix of Asian porcelain dolls and Christian kitsch, primarily Precious Moments figurines and art with Bible verses on it.

Untitled collage

Contributing to the time-warp atmosphere in the house is the fact that my mother, who retains the Depression-era thriftiness of her parents’ generation – saves everything. I raided her bathroom for nail polish this morning (I needed it after my hair dye disaster two days ago) and found bottles that I’m pretty sure predate the Cold War, as well as enough hotel soap, shampoo, conditioner, and lotion to supply all the hypothetical survivors of a zombie apocalypse.

Most importantly, Mom has saved all of her Tupperware jello molds! All I need is an ambrosia salad and a church potluck, and it’ll be like I never left.

f7d7e0057686a703d2701c95b7c21051

Of course, many things have changed in the past decade, as well as since I first moved away twenty years ago. My mother remarried the year after I moved out of state for graduate school, and my sister and I have also married and had kids, so the old family photographs are constantly being mixed in with new ones. The trees are taller, the house is bigger (it was remodeled several years ago), and my old bed looks smaller.

In the category of new things I could do without: My daughter celebrated her sixth birthday with a some new vocabulary. She was losing a board game to her brother, and decided to express some good-humored frustration with a word we had never heard from her before. She said she learned it listening to Spotify. Is that where the kids are learning their swear words these days?