The end of a summer that never really was

August ended with a wet sigh and little else. The official end of summer supposedly arrives Labor Day Weekend, but even this first day of September feels like the end of something that never really happened.

It's not that the past two months were uneventful: The Boy lost some teeth, my lovely wife and I crept ever closer to forty (with my creeping becoming particularly close), we had our ten-year wedding anniversary, and we traveled to see family, the latter involving (among other things) the feeding of aggressive pygmy goats.

Much of what was supposed to happen — what usually happens — just didn't, however. The Boy was a kindergartner last year, and in New York that meant school through nearly the end of June. Then a little over two weeks out of classes, The Boy broke his arm, which (through no fault of his own, of course) kept our July beachless. He was really a good sport about it all despite being no good for any sports.

Our poor luck didn't come off with The Boy's cast, though. Work for me was, and is, a puzzle with too many missing pieces. We talked about getting away for a short trip, just the four of us, but we never followed through. And we had plans for a long weekend last week in which we'd reacquaint ourselves with the coast that is always so close to us, but Bill and Danny teamed up to close the Atlantic for nearly a week and to produce just enough rain to make being outside annoying. We did rearrange our house while the weather worked over the trees in the park, but that's about as exciting as my wife's three-day weekend got.

Danny irritated us the most. Along with two to three trips to the beach each summer, we also make a habit of Arthur Ashe Kids' Day at the U.S. Open. The Boy can play tennis pretty well, but he isn't the most motivated thing in the world. Taking him and Q out to the huge grounds for the kid activities (with prizes always donated by Hess Oil) makes him want to believe in himself. After Danny soaked all the fun out of a Coney Island trip we had planned,* it canceled everything at the Tennis Center but the stage show with all the tweens lip-synching poorly. We did attempt to squeeze a little life out of the butt of August with a Sunday trip to the Met (particularly the always cool Temple of Dendur), a Central Park playground, and Pop Burger. Q had a good time feeding the pigeons nearly half of her jumbo pretzel, but I'm sure she would have preferred Jersey sand crabs tickling her hands instead. But it is what it is.

There are so many metaphors that could ably stand in for this summer (broken arm, anyone?), but Bill and Danny let me be dramatic, so I'll let them serve. Large storms like those don't make land here in the city (thank goodness). Still, they bend our weather and waves enough to keep us inside with our faces on the glass. Throughout the summer it has seemed (and here comes the drama) like some enormous force has been spinning slowly somewhere too far away to be calamitous for us but close enough to remind us of our size, what we didn't and don't have.

I'd like to think, though, that September will remake us. Both Q and The Boy will soon go back to school, and I will be a bigger part of their lives in the months to come. There will be gymnastics (or ballet, if Q ever makes up her mind), and swimming and tennis and reading and — with the laziness of August behind me — writing. The days have already begun rolling down into fall, the most beautiful time in New York.

We can't wait for the change in the weather.

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*And Coney Island was Plan B. We usually head for Robert Moses or the Jersey Shore, but both had been closed for a while.

Project: Chalk Robots Seen From Space (or suitably high up)

Giant Park Robots Best Seen From Above

What you'll need:

1. Box of sidewalk chalk (with plenty of both blue and pink for, um, making boy and girl robots).
   
2. Lots of sidewalk/cement, the curvier the better.
3. Bored and/or gullible children.
   
4. Roofdeck.*

*Roofdeck is optional, but it's way cool to look down from way up.

Begin by getting the kids outside in the park; tell them you're going to do something really cool.  Bring fancy drinks like pink lemonade if need be.  Don't forget the camera.  You want to draw something large (and easy), so we suggest robots.  You don't have to be that old (or young) to draw big squares, triangles, circles, and whatnot.

What goes with Giant Robots?  A rocket, of course (which are, conveniently, also pretty easy to draw).

Think big.  That's the idea, after all.

When you're done (or at least until the pink lemonade has been exhausted), head up to the roofdeck for the payoff.

I love how it looks like the blue (boy) robot is tossing the pinkish (girl) robot in the air, and we didn't intend that.

Next up?  Robots playing tennis.  And swimming.  Probably.

Cold angels

It's definitely cold now.

We spent most of Thanksgiving day—the part we spent not eating—outside tossing up handfuls of bright leaves and reacquainting ourselves with the swings, our coats left to themselves inside in a pile. We made lots of room for the overeating we would engage in later.


The warmth faded through the week and held on weakly until the lip of December. Friday night, the last night of November, the wind came up off the river at a new, sharper angle. Saturday was nothing but cold, bitter in fact. We even decided against the two-block walk to go swimming like we've done nearly every week since joining the pool, which is saying something.

The snow on Sunday began as a rumor. That's as far as we let it go, though; Q & The Boy love snow (Q still has an odd fascination with snowmen that we don't quite understand and can't quite explain). We didn't want to get their hopes up.

On Sunday morning, my wife and I made it to the window a little before Q & The Boy, and we saw that the weather had already rebuilt the park. Under snow, the trees, the rocks, seemed to suggest something other than themselves. We sent the kids to look out the window when they padded out of their room just a little while later. The park paths already showed signs of adventure, and several folks were out with their kids and their cameras.


After breakfast we hoisted on layers ourselves and went willingly out into the cold. The Boy promised that he would make snowballs to throw at me. I couldn't help daring him to do so.


The cold made the snow to dry to pack; snowmen were definitely out of the question. But we did scoop up mittenfuls of powder to dust each other while pretending to run away. Then it was off to the playground to make new sense of the old swings and slides.


Q was excited that she could almost touch the ground when sitting in the swing, now that the snow had made it a little closer. The Boy sifted snow over the slides to speed himself down.


The cold may have precluded snowballs, but it encouraged snow angels. And they seemed to be everywhere we looked and went, glorious footprints of childhood. Out in the playground, The Boy headed over to a smooth patch of ground over by the picnic benches used for birthday parties in warmer months. He slid into a snow angel like an expert and encouraged us all to do the same.


He was irresistible, and I didn't find myself resisting that hard anyway. We all indulged ourselves.

When you're on your back, the snow squelching under your coat, you can't help but smile without thinking of how your face might look, can't help but feel lifted higher than you are. You can lose track, if just for a moment, of the line between snow and sky.

Happy December, everyone.

The Perfect Time

We head out to the playground after dinner, as usual, and it's always the perfect time. It's been hot, the day loitering still and heavy for the most part, but around 7 p.m. the river sends in cooler air over the grass. Most of the visiting kids have left the day for dinners and baths, leaving colorful riots of popped balloons and shovels and misplaced spills of sand that were probably minutes ago continents or bases or pirate ships.

Almost empty now, everything is for us. Q and The Boy set to work on opposite ends, she slowly soaking herself in the dog-shaped fountains, he lugging an adopted bucket full of sand up to the high wide slide to speed himself down. I loll roughly in the middle, unneeded and unnecessary.

I become useful when it's time to swing, and there's no waiting now. We make a sport of it: we do slingshots and catapults and underdogs, and Q's laughs bubble up and out of her and all over us. "The swing makes my head look up," she says. We stop when we want to, off to explore every last ladder and bridge.

Soon the sun gets real low, and my watch confirms it; it's time to head inside. On our way out, Q pretends to fiddle with the gate latch to steal just a few more minutes before this day becomes something she can only remember. Though I sympathize, I'm on to her, so I go back to scoop her up while The Boy shows himself how he can run atop the park's low wall in his new flip flops. To do things simply because you can. I tell him to be careful, because that's my job, and he tells me "I'm gripping my toes like this when I run. I won't fall off." He doesn't.

This is the perfect time.