The First Bird I Saw This Year
It was on the afternoon of January 1st. I went outside to take a run after an extensive ebelskiver breakfast. I was underdressed and, as it happened, brimming with spherical pancakes, so I decided to take a brisk walk instead.
On my brisk walk I saw a blue jay. It was hailing a bit at that point, wee scratchy rocks tumbling down from a steely gray sky, and I was surprised to see such a bright hopping creature in the midst of the tumult. Hop, hop, hop down the driveway of the house guarded by a pair of Library Lions. The blue jay was the first animal I’d seen all year.
Maybe it meant something!
I have done a bit of research on bluejays.
They stand for loquaciousness, communication, expression, assertiveness, creativity, confidence, vitality, loyalty, solidarity, and the will to protect.
Other attributes I see are: resourcefulness, fearlessless in regard to protecting loved ones, and the ability to make the best of their environment.
I’ll take it!
Bunny, tiger, octopus, let’s welcome a new totem into the menagerie this year — the blue jay.
Readers: do you have an animal totem?
Happy 2013!
Happy new year! After a long and varied trip for the holidays, I write to you from my living room, which is full of my formerly splendid and fragrant Christmas tree, still ornamented, however now a loosely held together collection of angry, droopy, barely-green strawlike bits after I left town for 10 days and did not arrange for it to be watered.
Also, the living room is full of thousands of tiny Legos, for the most part arranged into tableaus (ahem, tableaux) of police with fancy vehicles catching bad guys sporting all different sorts of hair, as well as some plastic safari animals that I bought yesterday in the hopes of making a diorama of the African plains with my soon-to-be 4 year old, because the weather is cold and will be cold for the foreseeable future and projects! We need projects!
We also have a large cage in here, either to cage the baby in away from the tiny Legos, or to cage the Legos in away from the tiny baby, and it’s hard to figure out just how to do it. Mostly we have to watch her.
Yesterday, she did not eat a small refrigerator magnet, but only because her hero of a brother moved it out of her reach. I dreamed last night that she ate some coins, and that was probably not a dream that portended prosperity, but rather one that expressed anxiety over caring adequately for her busy, bouncing, beautiful, increasingly exploratory self.
She does not have the same relationship to the word “no” or more specifically, our preferred phrase “not for babies” that her brother did. If I say no, she will smile big and wag her little head back and forth, an exaggerated imitation of my no, as if to riffle the small flat raft of yellow hair atop it. Then she will cheerfully resume doing whatever it was she set out to do that provoked the no. Like licking the bottom of a shoe. As in:
No!
Big smile,
Head shake,
Lick.
Repeat
Etc.
Soon, the baby will turn one. I have not posted about how she started to eat actual food, more than six months ago, and how she is a natural born eater, whose favorite foods are breakfast sausages and huge quantities of soup. (Have you ever tried to feed soup to a baby? Put it on your bucket list. Or, put a bucket under the baby.) I have not recorded how she expresses excitement, like when she sees a cat, for instance, by throwing one arm up into the air and attempting to trumpet like an elephant. Or about how she got me up every two hours for the better part of a year, because when that is happening, the getting up, it is like stepping on a one of those cartoon hoes, and getting thwacked in the forehead with the handle, and your eyes turn into x’s, and your relationships turn into x’s, and things like blogging and personal hygiene and the ability to be civil whisper drily away like leaves of a coniferous tree that one has neglected to water for the better part of a fortnight. It leads one to do things like misspell the word “from” on the Christmas present tags, or record one’s son’s name as HERNY in places where the judging eyes of others will see it.
I have three posts I have not posted because, they are written, but then, I forgot that I wrote them.
One is about chicken and how I figured out the best way ever to roast a chicken. I’ll clue you in on that, don’t worry. Another is about how no one lets me sleep, and hopefully I just complained about that enough. Another is about some boys dancing on the subway.
I just wanted to check in and say hello, and Happy New Year, mine seems pretty happy so far and I hope yours is as well, and can someone help me shove this tree out of the window?
Hurricane Recovery
Tonight we are having a blizzard. A “Nor’easter,” they call it. It’s a cold wet storm, but I have everything I need: heat, hot water, electricity, food, and people to share it with. Not so for many of the people still flattened by last week’s Hurricane Sandy.
My New York City of 2012 is not Broadway and the Met: we live deep in Brooklyn, and it’s preschool and pizza and park and playdates. I spend most of my time being a mom, and we take a lot from the different communities around us out here, and many of them were hit very, very hard. Both the diversions I’m about to describe, but more importantly, the people (and animals) who live there.
When my son remembers his early childhood, I imagine that he may mention the dinosaur museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, but he will definitely mention the amusement parks of Coney Island, along with the aquarium there.
He’ll cite the big beach we go to — Jacob Riis Park — in the Rockaways, in Queens.
What will probably come first, though, is our favorite grocery store on earth: Fairway in Red Hook, where we can (could) shop for pretty much anything I want, but also stop at the outdoor cafe-mid shop for a snack and a chance to play outside, exploring an ancient cable car, watching police boats, barges, tug boats, the Statue of Liberty, birds, all while breathing in fresh air and a bunch of nature’s blue — sky, water — and having a pretty good ham & cheese croissant, or lobster roll, or pastrami sandwich on Fairway-baked rye, with a side of fruit, coffee, chocolate milk.
It might be weird to admit that you live in the cultural capital of the world and that your favorite part is the cafe at your grocery store, but interview me or my 3 year old, and there you have it.
But what do these areas have in common, other than our love and loyalty, other than being waterfront, other than being destroyed by a Hurricane last week?
Lots and lots of NYCHA housing. That’s New York City Housing Authority. Forty five percent of NYCHA housing, in fact, is in low-lying hurricane evacuation zones. And it is full, on the best of days, of people without a lot of money, or resources, or hope.
We watched from afar, in horror, as Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast and seemed to leave the poor behind. Now, it is happening here, too. Some people chose to live in those areas, and for the losses and hardship they will endure for their homes, I am terribly sorry. Many others have no choice but to live in those areas. And people without youth or money are less able and likely than say, I am, to be able to prepare for a storm, whether that means evacuation, or getting the sorts of things ready that are necessary for long-term indoor camping. (I had to quietly hide from my husband the quantity of shelf-stabilized milk I bought in anticipation of Sandy. It’s just that I can’t breathe when I think about not having enough for my children. Don’t worry, it’s been redistributed; lately, I can’t breathe when I think about other people not having enough for their children.)
Last night, 60,000 homes and businesses that had just had power restored lost it again, and thousands and thousands of others did not yet have it restored. Things are bad. Things are bad. Things are bad. It is cold, it is wet, there is no food or light, I don’t know what else to say. I am going to link to a first-hand account of trying to help in Coney Island by a friend and neighbor. Meanwhile, there are tons of charitable efforts happening across the region — and Long Island and New Jersey have been similarly affected. People need warm clothes, food, and materials to clean up.
This link has ways to help, if you can find it in your heart or wallet or busy day to do so. In particular, Occupy Sandy and the Red Hook Initiative are supposed to be doing wonderful things. I can attest that they have both been working tirelessly for more than a week.
Or you could help the animals at the New York City Aquarium.
Thank you for reading.
As Ever
The sun is going down and I am remembering the same sun going down two years ago today on a fall afternoon, when we said goodbye to my sister Beth for the final time.
Our complex, funny, frustrating, and ultimately loving relationship is very much the reason I wanted a sibling for Henry. They shape you, right? Additionally, you get a partner in rolling your eyes at your parents. I want to equip my children well for such things.
So, today brings a lot of nice things for me: a wide-eyed baby scarfing buttery waffle chunks, and a small boy in tiny spider pajamas sitting rapt on the couch, listening closely to identify the animals in “Peter and the Wolf” for the very first time.
Still, a renewed sense of confusion and loss when I consider that it’s not just me who can be happy and sad at the same time, it’s all of the adults. Who isn’t sad or confused about something serious? Cancer, a drowned house, a relationship that’s run its course. My memories of this time two years ago are sad but they have an admittedly little warm rug of memories underlaying them. It’s like the thing I always forget to buy for the rug. The rug pad. The rug pad of memories is so functional. The rug pad of memories is better than a magic carpet.
The reason getting older is supposed to be easier is that you learn to embrace things all at the same time. Is this an advantage, or it is numbness? It’s like food — lots of things make you gag when you are a child: they are impossible to swallow, just as a lot of things emotionally flatten you. Then as you get older, you can handle more sadnesses with aplomb, and you stop picking the interesting flecks out of your food. Is maturing the same as deadening? Is it giving up?
Now I seek a bit of bitter in my food, and when it’s there, I appreciate it more. And while I don’t look for bitter in my life—or I like to think that I don’t—I do realize that it is part and parcel and that all experiences can furnish a bit of enrichment and enlightenment. I want to distill these things from whatever is offered to me. Sadness is part of living a whole life. It’s just true.
I’m still mad, though.
I love you, as ever, my sister.
A Current Favorite Dessert: Gelato; Sour Cream; Salt
There is a brand of gelato called Talenti. It comes in a fancy-looking clear container that one might mistake for a glass jar before they dropped it and it did not shatter. I normally do not buy it; we are a Haagen Dazs family. (Our affiliation is likely because we do not plan to eat ice cream, we just realize that we need it late at night when we are walking by the deli down the block. And at the deli, it’s Haagen Dazs, which I am not complaining about)
But one day I shopped at the food co-op, which is expensive and annoying but of course, has a great selection of organics and new-fangled ice creams in aesthetically pleasing containers. And I came upon a Talenti’s Belgian Milk Chocolate gelato, which I thought my husband would really love. (I tend to go for French roast, dark chocolate, peppery juicy zinfandel, but he really appreciates medium-body coffees and chocolates and wines and cheeses and I’ve developed more of a taste for the subtle goodnesses, too. Also, gelato makes me crazy; I love it.)
I bought a container of Belgian milk chocolate so we could have it during the debate. I have been cooking real dinners to eat together during the debates, because 1. solace from dystopian thoughts about the future (present?) 2. it’s a fun way to spend with Matthew, who gets home from work at about the time they start, but which is unfortunately just about my hour of expiration for civility and good conversation and 3. our teething baby automatically will not sleep if there is a debate on, and if I am watching politics with a screaming, wiggly zero year old—albeit a lovely, lively, adorable one—I need a double dose of solace.
I thought that having a good dessert might help.
The dessert is indeed good; Matthew and another friend with an excellent palate tried it and gave it the thumbs up. It’s really smooth and chocolatey though not too rich. It’s a great base but by itself, it’s a little one-note for me. In my ice cream as in my life, I like to have a lot going on. For dinner I’d made little personalized vegetarian enchilada casseroles (butternut squash, spinach, mushrooms, broccoli) , and that meant that there was a bit of sour cream in the condiment bar I’d set up on the coffee table.
So I added a bit of sour cream on the top of the gelato to get a little acid in there, right where you might put a tiny bit of whipped cream, which I’ve honestly never understood as a condiment for ice cream. (“Hmm, I am having a cold slippery sweet thing. Perhaps I should top it with a . . . cold slippery sweet thing?”) But the sour cream added a tiny bit of contrast in mouth feel and taste. And then I added some Maldon salt flakes.*
And suddenly, I had the best ice cream thing ever. The sour cream freezes into a little slidey glacial sour chunk that offsets the complete smooth of the flavor and the salt, well, see the asterisk down there.
This is a good thing to eat during the debate. Ice cream, a bit of sour cream, Maldon sea salt, and you may as well get a blindfold, because the debates are sort of scary. Perhaps some earplugs to drown out the baby.
Oh, and Mitt Romney’s lies.
Try some tonight!
*If you have not had this salt, and you are seeking a cheap and cheerful way to immediately escalate your quality of life, try it. Even the 3 year old licked a finger and put it into a little bowl of Maldon the other day and said “Mommy, this is REALLY GOOD SALT.” And he was absolutely correct; all salt was not born equal; no, no it was not.
Church Avenue Chomp 