Nora’s spring dance recital with Manhattan Youth at PS89.
Park Study Culmination songs, from this morning at school:
Party Time
I celebrated my first state-side birthday the other day. And more importantly, I hosted my first state-side, no, it needs to be noted- Manhattan- kids birthday party on the weekend.
Everyone is still standing and talking to each other. And no kids were lost. In either celebration.
I was spoiled rotten.
I like to act as though I really don’t care about my birthday, but truthfully, it feels really nice to have a day where people shower you in well-wishes and happy thoughts. It just does.
I remain really, really uncomfortable with blatant and prolonged ‘centre -stage’ time, and somehow the network of people I’ve become integrated into in this new home of ours recognized this. There was a coffee awaiting my arrival at work, there was a really, really sweet singing of ‘happy birthday’ with a petroleum-iced ( my favourite kind) cake accompanying it, there was an insistence that I wrap the day up from home and enjoy the evening after volunteering at my daughter’s school (that’s a whole other delightful treat for the day), there were TWO beautiful bouquets of flowers awaiting my arrival at home, and there was Mexican food (and drinks) to wrap it all up in a nice little package.
And somewhere along the line in there my we went for mom and daughter mani-pedis.
Spoiled.
As for Nora’s 6th birthday party…?
Well, according to Brett ( I was too busy sweating and saying ‘what a f$&*ing GONG show this is’ under by breath for the full 2 hours to notice, really), the kids had a blast.
We officially attempted integration into every day life here, by throwing this damn party.
And we made our little girl feel pretty special.
Still, neither kid gets the insanity of having the Freedom Tower as a backdrop for your party hosted at the goofy golf on the pier overlooking Lady Liberty. Maybe when she’s 21 and looking through old photos she’ll giggle at it.
But right now, she’s feeling full and confident and happy that her pals were able to come and play and get sunburned and full with cake and pizza ( NY pizza.)
I’ve gotta admit- I didn’t quite realize how much anxiety I was feeling as a result of this damn party. Maybe it’s a case of ‘too much time of my hand’ for that to honestly cause me stress ( I’m calling bullshit right now on claim because I don’t feel idle…!), but the new logistical challenges this presented (no car, no house to host it in, no dollar store to pillage, and no clue what these kids and their parents would expect from a party) coupled with my maternal instinct to ensure that my baby felt like the most special kid for a day… I was stressed.
The 100 degree weather might not have helped. And yet, the bike pizza delivery guy arrived on time. And the rose I smuggled in was enjoyed by the moms who stuck around. And even the broke actor I hired last minute as an actual ‘mommy helper’ sure helped. What the EFF has happened to me?
The 6 extra hands from my amazing family helped too. I would have definitely said many more swears without them. And would have definitely lost a kid. Maybe on purpose.
Next year I think I am taking Nora on a boat ride for her birthday instead. We’ll wear fancy dresses or something.
Or, I’ll do this whole party thing all over again. Because she’ll ask me what we’re doing for her birthday this year, Mommy, and I’ll say ‘having a party, of course, babe!’
Eli’s is in September- time to start planning how a four year old celebrates Manhattan-style. I wonder if the Freedom Tower has a party room…
Dogs, Tears and Motherhood.
First up. Dogs. This one of the most moving films I’ve ever seen. I expect everyone that has ever met, loved or cared for a dog before, will be in tears by the end. Happy and sad tears. Absolutely brilliant. Disclaimer: it also deals with cancer, so it can be terribly difficult to watch for some… but it really is beautiful. Denali was a wonderful fellow.
Denali from FELT SOUL MEDIA on Vimeo.
Next up Motherhood. This piece is one of my first attempts at art photography. Not abstract, nor fancy, nor geometric, nor portrait, nor landscape, or exposure… more meaning. I will be getting it developed for Sara(for her birthday!).
“There is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” -Christopher Robin (Winnie the Pooh)
Taken from the observation deck of the Freedom Tower, a mother is teaching her children about the world. More than half of the shot is shrouded in the fog of life; the unknown. The rest of the photo reveals the complexity, difficulty, opportunity, awe and beauty we all face. The quote above sums up what we try to impart in our children. Such is life.
-Brett
Hector Happiness
We watched a movie last night the our friend Netflix recommended for us.
It gets pretty mixed reviews and while there were plenty of sweeping generalizations, cliched (and possibly insulting) stereotypes, and overly-architected (predictable and contrived) relationships, we both appreciated the general sentiment and the interesting style in which it was shot.
Told-before story of a (early) middle-aged man, faced with the sad reality that he’s passively watching his life pass him by; he’s jolted into ‘finding what it is that makes people happy.’ Got it.
Through his journey he captures the following lessons- they’re scribbled into his notebook, which is projected over the scene- here is what he had to share- some good little nuggets in here:
Making comparisons can spoil your happiness
A lot of people think happiness means being richer or more important
Many people only see happiness in their future
Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story
Avoiding unhappiness is not the road to happiness
Happiness is answering your calling
Happiness is being loved for who you are
Fear is an impediment
Happiness is knowing how to celebrate
If you want it, take it
Happiness is feeling completely alive
Listening is loving
Nostalgia is not what it used to be
Lucky duck
I really do know how lucky I am right now. As much as I f€£%*ing hate that word, sometimes there are no replacements.
I wasn’t aware before arriving here how much of a dream come true this whole experience is for me. Not only to be doing this with my happy and healthy kids, blowing their little minds with all kinds of amazing sights and smells and tastes here, but to also be doing this with my best friend, together fuelled and energized in a similar way.
I really do feel so grateful every day. Maybe, sadly, because like many people, I know what it also feels like to be completely out of control of your life; to have life-threatening, and ultimately life-ending circumstances dictating your every move. Treatments and recovery and appointments and tests and results all ruling your moments. The idea of a taking in a NYC-weekend, left to a combination of fate and mom-blogs to plan, completely unavailable.
I try to be keenly aware of how my good fortune may make others feel. I know the idea of fortune is for me to evaluate ultimately and to some I most likely appear to be pretty average- that’s fine. For me I feel right now like Ive cashed in my winning lottery ticket, and I am doing my best to enjoy every (experience) cent as fully and happily and thankfully as possible.
And I worry that because these ultimately are my experiences to feel, I am not yet sure how to share my good fortune. Talking about it in the wrong way, at the wrong time, and with the wrong tone might make me seem like a boasting, self-absorbed jerk. Even though that’s really my way of showing how grateful I am to have these experiences to share.
I know that my intentions are always good. , but it’s a challenge to be excited, while also being aware and sensitive to what others are going through.
And yet Mondays still do manage to shake the sparkle and jazz and enthusiasm in a consistently icky way, regardless of location…;)
Jerky time
A fair warning: there is nothing rocket sciencey about the following statements.
At all. Clearly. I just used the word sciencey.
The relationship between age and experience is a bit of a jerk.
As you get older, you hope you gain more experience. With this experience, you are able to take advantage of more opportunities- for personal and professional growth.
In parallel, as you get older your life becomes more complicated, with responsibilities and relationships placing greater demands on you. Marriages, children, extended families all having more needs as time moves.
So just at that point where you’re in position to really take some big leaps professionally, your personal demands are pulling you in a sometimes conflicting direction.
See- jerk move. And not at all rocket sciencey.
It wouldn’t be growth if it didn’t come with an element of challenge or discomfort or conflict…
But finding a way every day to still push yourself in both realms, while also allowing yourself to say ‘enough; I’m done with pushing today.’
And deciding when you want to compartmentalize the segments of your life vs blending it all up.
I know there are plenty of people advocating for the ‘how could you even imagine separating things in your life? If you love what you do for a job, it is your life, alongside your family and your exercise, and your rest…’ way. And at some points that does make things more efficient, transitioning without fuss or recalibration from one world to the next. At other points I think my circumstances lately have just forced me to separate, because what I feel like I’m being pushed for, both personally and professionally, are challenging and intense and very different from one another right now. It’s refreshing and stimulating and exciting, but just not always lending of itself to a blended life.
So today my day has shifted from my usual early morning work world at home with a jug of coffee…. To an unexpectedly early interruption from cute sleep-face kid #2. Launched into the typical morning-readying scramble. To a short pause (and stop off for a delicious Flat White) to do some emails before heading to cute kid#1’s school for a family walk for some save-the-kids fundraiser ( I should have fit in time to read about it so I knew wtf I was walking for.), then it’ll be a mad dash up to work world. And then a complete arsehole move to go out on the town- the the GD RANGERS game 7. Arse.hole. And so excited.
Then Sunday a departure for meetings next week in a generic (maybe i’ll be surprised?) mid-west town.
And on the cycle goes. Like it does for so many of us. And I’m so grateful that we’re at a time where this is the kind of stuff to be consumed by. Normal day-to-day balancing stuff.
We’re doing alright.
Now and then
In between…
This week marks the 9 month point of living in NYC … In some ways it feels like we just got here, but more often it feels like we’ve been here longer… We’ve been so fortunate to have embraced this adventure with a (more or less) common attitude of simultaneously ‘taking care of business’, (setting up camp, figuring out the basics, establishing some routines) and of also ‘taking it all in’. (exploring and tasting and hearing and photographing as much as we can just because we can…)
It’s weird though… When we first signed on for this, we committed to 2 years. And having never done this before with our family, we really didn’t break it down any further than that, other than in calculating what toys the kids might actually be interested in upon our return at the end of these 2 years.
We had no idea what to expect in terms of what living ‘in between’ might feel like…. Revelling in the fact that every weekend felt like a holiday, but also getting the chance to feel ‘like a local’ during the week as we schlepped ourselves very manually from one obligation to another ( school to work to school and home. Rinse and repeat.)
Revelling is one way to think of it. But anxiety enters as well…. What’s going to happen after 2 years? When do we start thinking about that? We just GOT here, and are just now starting to feel like the intensity of a move has been replaced with day-to-day living… We really need to start thinking about what’s next already?? When can we just ‘live’ for a bit? When can we change our plans next?
When we’ve had these opportunities for this kind of adventure (or reboot) in the past, it was just us dummies. We didn’t even have a dog the last time something this substantial happened.
We also hadn’t experienced the breadth of highs and lows yet that life tosses your way, the longer you get to stick around this world. We didn’t yet really know the pain of losing someone, nor did we understand the pure joy ( and intense responsibility) in welcoming a baby into the world.
So with this perspective, being in this ‘ in between’ means something, or rather, we actually feel it because of this perspective.
This weekend we had extremely different days.
One of us went fishing with (an inspiringly interesting uncle) in Jamaica Bay, leaving the apartment by 4:30 am to get on the subway to get to the spot for sunrise. Exactly every part of that statement is completely new to us.
The other one spent the morning at a birthday party for a 2 year old that could easily have been off of a TLC show (not because the company was bad in any way- quite the contrary in that they were extremely welcoming and generous)k. I then headed out to eat Cuban food and go do a dance festival in Tompkins Square Park with the kids. Exactly every part of that statement is also completely new to us.
Who knows where we’ll be in a year. Of course we’ll think about it every day.
And our circumstances are different and a bit more complicated as both the kids and our working visas grow older. But so too has our perspective….
Mother’s Say
Mother Day- in NYC.
This weekend is Mother’s Day here.
Not sure that there is much significance to that fact that I’m in New York for this year’s day, other than that again, any kind of these firsts or milestones in a new place again make you ( allows you the excuse to) give pause to where you are, and how these new surroundings are affecting you…
I miss my mom every day. Having the chance to reboot so many elements in my life with a move like this ironically makes me even more sentimental and reminiscent, for a chance to share my experiences with her. At least once a day I have a little sparkle where I think of how my mom would have felt about this thing that I saw, or this way that my kid reacted to that, or… She would have been happy. And proud. And encouraging.
She was at a point in her life where it seemed like she was excited to explore her identify, beyond being a mom. She did this throughout her motherhood life, I know, but it was seeming that she was starting to be able to actually actively, intentionally, and excitedly embrace this, guilt-free and maybe even with a sense of duty and responsibility- that it was important and necessary to be doing this.
I know how fortunate I am to have had the previous generations of women establish so much, to allow me the opportunities to even consider being a loud and proud (and tired and stressed and conflicted) working mom… Multi-dimensional, with the many hats hanging out of my work-and-kid-tending-appropriate bag… The office hat probably smeared at times with yogurt raisin mess, and the mom hat stinking a bit like spreadsheets at other times…and then the aspiring-to-create-something-and-be-healthy hat dusty with goldfish at still other times…
I think of how much my Mom did, without seeming to ever acknowledge how many different many hats she was swapping. She just did it. And did so much more than I’ll ever know. There wasn’t the discussion about the struggle. There wasn’t the open debate about where her energies should be going, or about what she was sacrificing in exchange for something else…
A stoic wonder. Without guilt. Without disappointment. Without angst.
But with dignity. Pride. Responsibility. And love. Ultimately with love and care forever at the core.
Maybe all of those struggles were ultimately at play. I’m sure they were. But we either didn’t have the opportunity yet in our relationship to discuss these, or she chose instead to rationalize or work through these challenges without her kids’ involvement.
Nothing earth-shattering here. I suppose on this Mother’s Day I am reflecting on the kind of Mom I hope to be… To pay tribute to the kind of Mom I was so lucky and blessed to have had, and to pause and think about what I can be lucky enough to try to impart on my kids.
Love and care. With my own fashion show as well of forever-swapping hats…
Bratty weekends
My problem is that I’m a morning person. And a night person. And that means that I dont sleep a lot. I ‘do’ a lot. But I don’t sleep a lot.
I’m not unique in this dilemna, and two factors- having young kids, and living in NYC ( both from the activities/ inspiration/ exploration factor, and from the 2 bedroom with 2 loud kids factor)- look like this pattern of minimal sleep will continue…
Another consideration is that our weekend time is predominantly up to us to manage- right or wrong, we don’t have the kids enrolled in a bunch of activities yet, and have instead made a choice for this spring to put that planning of activities on us. They both spend long days away from us right now, and both get a nice exposure to other kids, and through their childcare programs, they’re involved in semi-organized extracurricular activities. (I can taste the guilt and doubt seeping into my words, as hard as I try to be confident in our decision…!)
As a result of these circumstances (I say ‘choice’ maybe a bit too generously as part of this is again a result of us just falling into certain plans because we’re still adjusting to living in this new place, and might not be as proactive as we had been in our previously home), our weekends are here for us (me, as a spaz, I know) to sort out.
And I know how fortunate I am for that luxury. And I f$&$ing love it.
But again, that only means that any stress I might feel in juggling on the weekend is my own fault. What a stupid thing to even think about!!
So- with that, you can either perpetuate the anxiety of needing to ‘make the most make most make the most’ by feeling like you’re never going to be doing or seeing or tasting or hearing enough…. Or, you can actually unselfishly and genuinely ENJOY and appreciate the luxurious position you find yourself in, a wealth of experiences, as big or as small, as new or as old as you like.
Tomorrow will come. And change will happen.
So let’s see what today is all about.
Holiday Hues
Is it possible to bring the feelings from vacation into your other ‘every day’ life?
Where I am in my life, vacations represent rest. And calm. And ease. And unstructured, unplanned, unscheduled days, blending into more similar days.
There is no alarm, no choreography of lunch-making, outfit -picking-out the night before, of hurriedly shovelling in toast, of shuffling to a make an already late drop-off, to elbowing through a commute… All before 9am…
There’s a wake-up to the body’s alarm, there’s a lazy sipping of too many cups of coffee, to turning off the surveying, the thinking ahead, the planning… And just letting the days happen.
There was a time when vacations represented an opportunity to fill my creative buckets, to be inspired by new senses, taking in new foods, and smells, and sights until I’d collapse in a happy exhaustion at the end of each holiday day, the exciting experiences of the day replaying in my mind as I drifted off.
Maybe it’s living in New York, maybe it’s having two young kids- maybe it’s a combination of both, but I’m at peace with my new ‘unplugged’ version of holidays.
So to carry any of that calm, that rest, that suntanned glow forward to ‘real-life’ … Is that even possible? Isn’t the point of a holiday to feel something so different from the rest of your days? That’s kinda sad from that lense. We slog along for 346 days, to then get 7 days in the sun, and then return to the grind and survive until the next 7 day rescue period…?
Nah.
Maybe there is a way that you can, without it feeling too calculated and too over-processed, to still reflect on what it is about a holiday that can make you feel so good, and weave elements of it even into the rest of your days…maybe it allows us to evaluate how busy and stressed and tired we are feeling and either take steps to cut some of that out of our lives, or find ways to embrace the positive elements that it brings…
Maybe there’s a way to talk to others in a more relaxed, less frantic, and less demanding manner. Maybe there’s a way to build little boosts of holiday highlights into our days, even if that’s as small as stepping away from the busy to feel some sun on our skin for 5 quiet minutes.
Maybe.
I’m taking 5 extra minutes this morning to get a treat coffee as a mini spring break…;)
