The Ukrainian museum is in the East Village (I hopstopped it -- which means that I went to hopstop.com and put in my address and the address of the museum and I was given directions, i.e. what train to take and what stop to get off). Ukraine is a country next to Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia... and some other Eastern European countries. I seriously had to get out the globe when the kids asked me. The whole Soviet Union, USSR, changing-stuff business has just contributed to my already very tenuous grasp on geography.
A homeschooling mom with a connection to the museum set up a class to teach the children about creating Pysanky: eggs that have been decorated in a very specific way using the wax-resist method (cost: $5/kid).
The trickiest part was having to think things through. They dipped the tool (in this case the head of a nail sticking out of a pencil eraser) into the beeswax and covered/created a design that was to remain white. Then the egg was dipped in yellow dye. Next they covered/made a design in wax that was to stay yellow. The egg was dipped in orange. Again for red, and then finally in the rich black.
When it was all done the kids wrapped up their eggs in old ice cream pint containers. I love this city. My friend had a grandma that would pull out the most random, ancient items and be like: "Will this work?" Where did those paper containers come from? Some old shelf, some back room. This entire city is a grandma's attic of treasures (except for the parts that have been torn down to build high rises for minimalist millionaires who wouldn't know an awesome egg-carrier if it bit them in the behind).
Tomorrow we will finish the project. We put them in the oven until the wax becomes shiny, and then we wipe it off. I can't wait to see them finished.
On our way out of the museum The Boy said, "You know how [The Girl] has her thing -- pottery?" Yep. "Well, making eggs with the wax is my thing. I don't mean to rush into it, but it's definitely my thing." We stopped by the little gift shop and for $4 bought some beeswax disks to melt. We are going to start with regular food-safe dye, and if it still remains his passion we can order the traditional dyes online (approximately $1/packet).
On the subway ride home The Boy was quizzing us all on what we would say our passions are if somebody asked. It was surprisingly hard to not fall back on old stand-bys, but rather really try to answer the question in a specific, current, and personal way. What activities do make me really happy? One of the things that I said was watching British TV shows. The Girl said, "You can just say that you like the telly," in an awesome almost-British, mostly silly accent. The Sister said, "working out," but we vetoed it for being too boring. We allowed her to keep "wrapping packages" (the gifts that she gives are almost too pretty to open). The sign on the train wall above The Boy's head became our theme as we made a commitment to think about our passions, and find new ones -- it said: "Be more interesting tomorrow than you are today."
Oz, Blacky Rogers, Ruby, Mr. Peek Peek (pronounced Peck Peck), Easter, and Magnet Horseshoe Crab have left. (Note: those were their foster names, surely their real names are more dignified).
The girl sobbed and wholeheartedly declared that she now wants a pet chicken -- instead of a dog. The boy offered a prayer on their departure: he called upon the powers that be to grant them long and happy lives.
I have to admit, I really liked them, too. When The Girl walked by our now empty powder room, and with trembling lips declared that she wouldn't be able to happily use that bathroom again, I had to silently agree that the bathroom seemed to have lost its purpose. When The Dad returned from taking them home he mentioned how quiet it was in our apartment. In short, it was a good run. It's interesting how quickly a living thing (or six living things) can become a part of the family. Yesterday when we were at the store trying to find something for lunch The Boy suggested a chicken product. The Girl gasped and said, "Not in front of the chicks!"
Our friends have graciously invited us up to their home in the country when it gets warmer, so we can see how our little buddies turn out. I'm envisioning a reunion similar to Christian the Lion... but with poultry running to embrace us (we will be prepared with our examination gloves and medical masks).
As if the impending farewell wasn't enough blarg in one day, the kids also failed a test. Our pediatrician recommended that we go to an allergist up at Columbia and have the children do penicillin challenge tests to see if they really are allergic. Up we trundled to 165th by 9am -- after being stressed for the two months before that one or the other would wake up with a stuffy nose (no mucus or anything else allowed on test day -- we already had to cancel once because The Boy was in the throes of daily nose bleeds). The first part was just a skin scratch test. She said that less than 5% test positive on that one, that it was almost always the second part of the test (the needles under the skin) when the reaction would take place. Well, we were easy customers. Both kiddos were in that skinny 5% and squarely tested allergic. The good news was that we didn't have to spend another couple of hours there, and they didn't have to have ten different bubbles of medicine placed under their skin with long, glinting needles. Obviously, the sucky news is that they are both, indeed, allergic to penicillin.
Yesterday I snatched some time to meet a friend for scones and tea, and I felt grateful that I did. She has teenagers that are wonderful, so she kind of has that perfect-looking life. But, as she sagely said, it just takes one night of a child being sick to remind you of how quickly things can change. And she candidly shared some challenges that her family has had. At one point she said something like: everybody has a thing... some people have lots of things... we just keep working with what we have to work with.
Taking the subway home from the hospital with my two flunkies, I was keeping the disappointment at bay by kind of musing on this idea of everybody having things. A couple of stops down the line a young woman with profound physical/mental limitations, and her caregiver, boarded our train car. I gave her my seat and stood up in front of my kids and held onto the bar -- thus placing me squarely in front of her as well. Mostly she was rocking back and forth and shouting, but sometimes the conversation would become more muted. She kept saying, "I am." And her caregiver consistently kept asking her to continue ("I am what?"). The young woman would shake her head -- no, the caregiver wasn't understanding -- "I am." The caregiver would again encourage her to complete the sentence. This went on for a while. Standing as I was, facing her, I watched her earnestness and the way she was pointing to herself, and thought: she is making a complete statement. I am. She is. We are. Everybody has some thing, but that isn't our essence. Our essence is more eternal than the limitations of our bodies or brains. We are. We are here. We are here for a purpose.
Big Sister sent us this link today (The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore), and it so fit in with the idea of fulfilling the measure of our creation -- even (sometimes because of?) when we are given burdens to endure. Even if it hadn't "fit in" with what was on my mind, it's absolutely amazing and I'm so glad that she shared it.
We have two short chapters left of To Kill a Mockingbird. Boo has carried home Jem. Scout is about to stand on the Radley front porch and consider the value of Boo's life. She will walk home in the rain. Then Atticus will go into Jem's room, and watch over his badly injured son. "Atticus would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning."
My kids will wake up in the morning. Officially allergic to penicillin. Asthmatic. With highly allergic skin. Math-challenged. Still not a self-starter. Overly-sensitive. Obnoxious. Obsessive. Smart-alec. Whatever they wake up as, or with, I will be here. Their dad will be here. Their aunts, their uncles, their grandparents, their friends, their neighbors. And having now sent their feathered darlings out into the world with hopes for happiness, I hope they better understand how much they are loved, and how much we want for them to grow up fulfilled and well.
I will also have Peeps to help soften any lingering sadness.
There is a sacred link between homeschooling and having chickens -- it's a documented fact. From the fundamentalists to the hipsters, those that embrace homeschooling embrace poultry.
As an ignoramus, I did not know that this sacred connection existed. I did know (boy oh boy did I know) that for the past two years I've had to listen to twenty billion chicken facts a day, and I had to suffer through many an uncomfortable social scene when my son would be asked questions -- questions that in no way could be connected back to chickens -- and he would somehow concoct answers that included chickens ("So, do you like sports?" "Not really. I like chickens." "Can you hand me two pencils?" "Two is a number. Seven is also a number. Did you know that there are seven colors that Silkies can be?"). When I started reading articles about homeschooling and kept coming across references to chickens I felt a mixture of validation/having found our tribe, and being slightly ruffled -- like when you've been listening to a band for a few years and then all of a sudden some young poser acts like he "found" the band. On one hand we weren't so weird; on the other hand we were once again just another construct.
Unique or no, the boy didn't care. He has remained loyal to chickens -- chickens for chickens sake. Last summer when we started talking about the details of the scheme he asked if we could have chicks for a bit. Why would this even seem like an option in an NYC apartment on the 27th floor? Because a neat family that we know has a home upstate with chickens, and in the Spring they buy chicks and keep them in their apartment in the city until they are big enough to add to their flock. They were kind enough last Spring to invite us over to meet their chicks. The Girl was tickled; The Boy was empowered.
So what did I answer when he asked if the scheme could include chicks? I said that we would try. Who knew when I said that that the year would fly by so quickly?
Thank goodness for my friend who, knowing that I had made a promise, contacted me to tell me that they had their chicks, and wondered: should they get some for us the next time they went upstate? Full stop. How nice is that? I had "chicks" in April in my mental calendar (my mental calendar is linked to my self preservation, and so very likely might have kept pushing "chicks" into the next month indefinitely). If she hadn't contacted me I might have missed the chick window, and while my farm-animal-in-the-apartment-quota would have remained intact, I would have had a very sad little boy. As it was, she and I worked out a much more manageable plan than us getting a ton of equipment and having the chicks here for weeks... We would just borrow her chicks (and their stuff) for a few days. Full stop. How nice is that?
I'll tell you how nice it is: really nice. I wouldn't have known just how nice before I experienced how much downey happiness they bring into the home. Granted -- I didn't really want them. I'm kind of afraid of animals -- their sudden movements, their glassy eyes, their excrement... Bird flu. SARS. And I feel kind of stressed about being their steward (I'm so worried that something is going to happen to them -- for the amount of times I woke up last night to check on them I might as well have a newborn in the house). But I will be the first to admit that when The Dad brought them into the house in their travel (i.e. get-past-the-doormen) box, their sweet chirps instantly endeared me to them.
The kids are smitten. We knew that The Boy would be high on his heroine of choice, but The Girl, like me, was won over by their little chirrups. At one point today she stopped what she was doing, cocked her ear, and said with the sweetest little sigh, "Oh, how I love that sound."
The fact that the children of that family allowed the children of our family to foster their six feathered friends during their last week in the city touches me. I hope that they know what a sweet gift they have given us. A gift that my boy and girl will always remember. The Boy was crawling into my bed before it was fully light this morning, and whispering to me about what the chickens were doing in their little bed under their heat lamp. I wish that I had seen him sitting in the pre-morning light observing them. I wish that I had been awake enough to hear everything that he said, but I definitely heard that the words were coming from somewhere content and smiling. The Girl hates leaving the apartment because she misses the chicks so much when she's away ("Just knowing that they're here makes me happy.").
We need to talk about the plastic gloves, don't we? I wish that I could photoshop them out, so nobody would know about my freakishness. All I can say is this: we all do the best that we can with the limitations that we are given. It goes against every fiber of my being to let my kids hold animals that contentedly nestle down in their own poo. In my neurotic world, that could have been a valid reason to not host the slumber party, or a reason to not let them hold them, but I tried to stay present in my children's world where living things are to be caressed and cuddled. We reached a compromise: the gloves. This week of the chickens will be one that they always remember, and I'm really hoping that those memories are largely of soft rustles, and sweet chirrups, and less of my spastic anal flutterings and barked commands ("Do NOT touch your face!").
It did not snow this year on Christmas, but it did snow the night when The Dad was traveling through the city towards our apartment with a box of hushed flapping and muted trilling. Gifts keep coming.
Today we wrapped up St. Patrick's Day, but before we did that we had the weekend, which I feel compelled to record because the sabbatical year has drained me to such an extent that there is no other record keeping happening except for what happens between my phone and this blog. Oh, and the kids' journals that are awesome in their own right, but as things are happening other than museum planning/retainer kvetching and dog wanting/parents-not-allowing-dog kvetching, some subsidizing is in order.
Saturday was the cub scouts Pinewood Derby. The Boy undoubtedly has some skills, but understanding the principles of aerodynamics is not one of them. In his pursuit to create the perfect Bigfoot Patrol Vehicle (we left him alone with the tool basket) he completely lost sight of the concept of speed. He did earn a certificate for "Tallest Car" and some props for design. Later, I heard The Dad trying (yet again) to explain why a more streamlined vehicle goes faster, ergo is the goal for a pinewood derby car.
"Ah ha. So I should have made mine more streamlined." Boy
"If you want it to go faster." Dad
"Of course I would..." Boy
(The Mom is thinking: Oh, he's finally getting the gist of how the pinewood derby works.)
"Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to catch up to Bigfoot." Boy
Right.
For the past five or so years we've tried to hit at least one screening during the International Children's Film Festival (the year The Girl was five she sat through a three-hour subtitled movie without complaining once -- I committed to read the small print in future). This year we ended up down in the village at IFC where the seats recline back like at a planetarium. The movie we chose was From Up On Poppy Hill because we love My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc. At it's conclusion, the kids were lukewarm. The Dad, The Sister, and I all levitated out of the theatre and into the wispy snow flurries. It is a visually lush, emotionally sweet film showcasing a female protagonist with a stronger/not-whiny work ethic, and more poise and grace than any Disney princess, or for that matter any "real" female on TV (now that Oprah has stepped down, that is). My kids might not have loved it on this first viewing, but I'm glad that they were exposed to it.
Sometime during the night a Leprechaun named Seamus wandered through our apartment, and according to the note he scrawled on the mirror lost his wee hat. Somehow this happens every year, so the kids knew to find it and put it on the table (it was located on our felt snake/monster -- we think it might have fallen off while he was trying to get to eight seconds). They've learned that after they leave for the day Seamus will sneak back in, get his hat, write a new note thanking them and granting them a year o' luck, and leave some sort of small token of his gratitude (this year it was some bars o' Irish Spring soap, so they can continue with their soap carving).
To conclude our yearly green festivities we walked down to St. Patrick's cathedral today. It is in the process of a major restoration project. Pounding bounced off the stone, pleas to donate to the cause (be a cathedral builder!) were tucked in every corner, and scaffolding embraced the external as well as internal walls.
(The Stonecutters: Three workers were/cutting stone. When asked/what they were doing,/the first answered, "I am cutting stone."/The second said, "I am making a wall."/The third replied,/"I am building a cathedral.")
My children are drawn to Catholic candles like Mormon moths to the flame. I told them that we would donate enough for one candle -- so they would need to decide together who it should be for. When given such wide open options, I don't even try to guess -- I just wait for the decision. Considering that it could have ranged from the Queen of England ("She has corgis!") to Mike the headless chicken, I was pleasantly surprised that they chose their great-grandma. She's in good health, so I'm not sure if it is because she's our family's matriarch, as the oldest, or because their great-grandpa died two March's ago, or because she just sent them a new chess board. Whatever sparked it, a candle was lit for her.
We've been kind of interested in the papal conclave (anything that incorporates smoke signals is inherently awesome). While walking past the ABC studio that has monitors against the window I was intrigued to see the oath to secrecy being chanted, then just one day later, again walking past the studios, the announcement was being made. The crowd gathered in front of the monitor didn't gasp or cheer, it was more with a muted, "Oh," that people started sharing the news into their cellphones.
There was an enormous book for people to leave farewell messages to Pope Benedict XVI (yes, we did think that we were awesome -- we read those romans as easily as their arabic cousins). The Boy asked if he could leave a message. For those wondering I think it was along the lines of: "Thank you for being a good pope." It made me realize that I had no idea what the general feeling is for PB16. I hope that he mostly did good things, that Catholics were happy with him, and that the future is full of love and respect for Bergoglio/Francis. I think it is important to feel secure with the leader of your religion. I read an article in the Times about how Bergoglio sold his mansion in Buenos Aires and lived humbly. Living below your means is always a nice indicator of someone who is trying to be wise and good.
We of course saw the man himself, St. Patrick (or rather, the area devoted to him).
It made me think again how much I don't know about the saints. I think I had the same thought when we went to Little Italy during the St. Gennaro festivities... The kids are gearing up to do a research paper, and I'm thinking that I might do one right along with them.
While reading the prayer for the intercession of St. Elizabeth I marveled anew at what she represented for Mary. A cousin, yes, but more importantly a friend who didn't doubt her. Somebody who accepted Mary's outrageous story and immediately told her not just that she was okay, but that she was blessed. She underscored their connected missions by sharing that the incubating John leapt in her womb when Mary came. It is a story that demonstrates the importance of women in other women's lives -- the strength that we can be for each other when we believe each other. I felt motivated to make the 5th of November (Elizabeth's feast day) a day to write letters to women in my life who support me -- and I shall encourage The Girl to grow up doing the same. I know that some people make fun of "Hallmark" holidays ("I want my mother to know I love her everyday..." or "Valentine's Day is just to sell chocolate..."). To that I say: stop being a freakin' scrooge. If I don't write down: "go to the post office" on my schedule day after day passes without my packages being mailed. I think it's helpful to have a day on the calendar to establish: it goes no further -- on this day my good/necessary intention/goal will be achieved. If not for St. Patrick's Day I wouldn't have an excuse to conjure up Leprechaun antics, or put green dye in every food item that we make. Sure, I could do all that on a random Tuesday, but like that will happen... I'm glad that the holiday inspired us to walk down to St. Patrick's, because even with the pounding and the scaffolding, it is majestic in its grandness and its details.
And now a story. About fifteen years ago, I was in the city wandering by myself and went into St. Patrick's. Its beauty simultaneously mellowed me and thrilled me. In the middle of the vast sea of pews I took out my journal and started writing. I do not know why, out of all the patrons there that day the elderly custodian even noticed me, but with a broom in hand, he leaned in, tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I had enough light to see properly. I was so taken aback that I simply murmured something about being fine, and I smiled, and he smiled, and nodded, and walked on. How I wish I knew what he would have done had I answered, "Actually, I don't." Now that I've lived here I can honestly say that it could have easily gone in so many directions. He could have said, "Then look to Christ, my sister." He might have said, "I didn't think so, you stupid cow. Stop ruining your eyes and go somewhere else." He might have gone into some random cubby and come back and strung up a shop light over my head. He might have pulled out a flashlight and calmly shined it down on me for as long as I needed it. That is why I love this city. Anything is possible.
On our way out we stopped by the little "gift shop" and bought some prayer cards of some saints for $1/each ("Made in Italy"). But it wasn't just about buying the prayer cards: we helped build the cathedral.
My favorite part walking to St. Patrick's was passing Tiffany's and seeing some visitors taking pictures while drinking coffee and eating a danish. The Girl looked at me and smiled -- I felt grateful that we shared that reference.
My favorite part walking home was when, in the middle of the park, the kids remembered something exciting that was happening tonight, and The Girl did this crazy, jubilant spin that actually made her fall down.
And what might that exciting event be? I'll dedicate tomorrow's post to it, but for now, some teasers:
