Birthday wishes for mom

Today is my lovely and talented wife's birthday. (I won't say how old she is, for the usual reasons. Besides, were you to see and meet her, I bet you couldn't guess within ten years of the actual number.)  The thing about getting to know a person as well as I've come to know my wife, a person as good as her, is that I can see the distance between what she deserves and what I can give her.  We all owe her much, under any sort of accounting, but we didn't try to make a dent in the debt so much let her know we know she's owed. Q crafted a card picturing the two of them together, and The Boy, his best drawing arm still fixed from palm to armpit, focused instead on the intangibles like hugs and kisses.  I brought back extra-good coffee to start the day.  The three of us threatened to make her a Fancy Birthday Cake of her own,* but we all decided it was better to go out for, among other things, a nice lunch instead.

The myth of this particular birthday** is that if it's not exactly the time when a person is supposed to start looking back, it's at least when she should begin turning her head in that general direction. But given our life's propulsion — the steady forward force of Q and The Boy most of all — attending to what's been makes little sense at the moment.  We've got a lot to look forward to with her, and for a long time.

Happy birthday, mom, from all of us.  We love you.

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*Something along the lines of this or this.
**Still not saying which one, so just stop with the speculation already.

8

The Boy turned eight today.  All the schedules involved made it hard to celebrate the day dead on, so we flipped things around from Q's order of business.  We'll have his version of our new birthday tradition next weekend — dinner at The Ninja restaurant in Tribeca — and we started the festivities with his party this past weekend.  The Boy remains taken with LEGOs, and he’s gotten into making movies, so we together decided to have a LEGO movie-making party.  The idea was to have 7-9 kids (including Q) bring a favorite LEGO minifigure to star in a movie of their own.  We would come up with a few general story ideas and leave room for the kids to riff a little on their own.  Stop motion takes too much time and special attention to pull off in the window we had, so we talked ourselves into being happy with seeing hands (and whatever) in the frame as the action unfolded.  We’d do most of the filming in the good light and weather of our building’s roof deck, which, with its bushes and trees and rocks, could provide jungles and mountains as backdrops for their imaginations.  I would then stitch whatever bits end up working into a skit-show feature.  I even worked up my post-production skills in case we wanted to add in some laser-blaster effects and/or explosions.  And since The Boy has been poking decently around with GarageBand (a fantastic music-making application for Apple devices), I suggested that he make some music for the opening or closing credits.  We’d post the final result to Facebook and Vimeo and YouTube and then (who knows?) go viral-ish.

A solid plan (except, admittedly, for the going viral part).  The Boy did his part by coming up with a great action-movie track, along with a couple of clever skit premises:  Clone troopers take a coffee break and a bunch of minifigures were ordered to bring Darth Vader a trident but mistakenly brought back a pack of Trident gum. Punishment ensues.  I suggested that at the end, all the minifigures could spring a surprise birthday party on The Boy’s chosen minifigure, and he added that the little guy could be so surprised that he (literally) falls to pieces.  Pretty good, right?

It should be obvious what’s coming.  The seven boys (plus Q) all liked the general movie-making idea, but it turned out to be impossible for them not to be eight-year-old boys.  They’re all good, smart kids, but the dynamic of them together ran quickly toward chaos.  When I mentioned one of my ideas to a kid just a few minutes in, he responded — like some stock character right out of a tween TV show — “BORing.”  Okay, I said, let’s hear their ideas, which included:

• Everyone is fighting a war and then one guy has to pee, so they stop the whole war until he comes back
• China starts to take over the world with its coffee because its coffee is so good
• A cobbled-together LEGO creation one kid was calling “Wine Guy” runs around spraying everything with wine
• LEGO dancing with the stars where the stars come down from the sky and the minifigures dance with them*

Whenever I tried to steer them toward making any sort of short, even with one of their non-boring ides, they wanted to toss in everything at once.

Above all, they were each interested in making the others laugh.  (I assume this is what most mid-list sitcom writers' rooms sound like.)  I should have recognized earlier than I did that they were just enjoying each other’s company, trying to better each other in laughs and volume.  Once I did finally let go of my idea of what they should be doing, I was able to appreciate the inspired mess.

Some things did go as planned.  My lovely and talented wife captured the general theme of the day with an excellent LEGO and Star Wars inspired cake, with an impressive TIE fighter on top and minifigures from both sides of the force at attention.  The fighter and figures stood on a cake base frosted in azure buttercream, which looked super futuristic and cool.**

The force was definitely with my wife on this one

Even these many years later, after he was thrown into us early, I’m still a little surprised that he has made it this far and in this wonderful way. I don’t think like this often, don’t count blessings or puzzle over them. I don’t read new studies of premature and low-weight birth, and I’ve forgotten the old ones. I don’t have to pretend that rocking my child while respecting cables and tubes is the most natural thing in the world.  I had to look up the word ‘gavage’ to write this sentence. I don’t let his single-digit, gym-teacher-calculated BMI percentile nag.  I don’t take mistakes or struggles as portents of things broken when he was most fragile.  I just don’t.  Don’t have to.

Instead, I get to marvel at how The Boy reflects the better parts of a person back, as charismatic people often do.  He’s gotten tall — his head now just starting over his mother’s shoulder — has a solid baseball swing that he more often then not takes with a the right amount of seriousness.  Has a temper and can be too hard on himself and quickly embarrassed.  Has given us the luxury of merely worrying about the usual things, and not even that much about those.

Happy birthday, son.  We love you and are proud of you.
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*Okay, I actually thought that was a pretty good one.
**The Boy loved the color so much that he requested cupcakes for his class frosted in the same blue.

Daughter's/Mother's Day

Her finest cake yet?

My pockets harbor fleets of Q's gum-wrapper boats.*  While I'm busy chewing and not thinking about chewing, she's walking and folding (and chewing).  And after what seems like an instant, she holds up the small ocean of her hand with a tiny boat at sea in it.

Which is one reason why we decided (with Q's enthusiastic approval) on an origami and candy sushi making birthday party for her this year.  Both Q and The Boy like paper crafts, but Q especially enjoys the rigor of origami, with its step-wise instructions and nested complications.  (The Boy still prefers LEGOs and the improvisations they afford.)  And candy sushi has been a favorite treat at their parties for a few years now.  My wife thought the kids might enjoy making it and taking it away in a personalized Chinese take-out container — something I'm pretty much certain that all New York kids are first-hand familiar with.

My lovely wife has become something of a master at party planning over the years, and throwing a good kids birthday party is appreciably difficult. It takes a certain amount of guessing, since the right amount of time needs to be filled with party fun/activities that should respect the guests' skills and spans of attention.  (Otherwise, you'll find kids scarfing all around your neck at the same, loud time letting you know that their whatever doesn't work.**)  As she demonstrated again this year, my wife has the right mix of creativity, steeliness, and perfectionism that leads to genuine good times in our miniscule apartment. We kept the guest list small as before, around 10 kids, which is just about our apartment's capacity — at least if you want to do anything beyond yelling.  We chose three origami projects of increasing difficulty, figuring we'd get to two, which turned out to be on the money.  Given the general party theme, we started with a beginner-level origami carp that everyone was able to follow along into completion with little trouble.  Then Q showed her peers how to fold a paper boat.  She was a great teacher — good pace and patience, happy to help strugglers. She seemed to be enjoying the teaching as much as the doing (note: teaching is definitely a form of doing, cliche notwithstanding), and I was really proud of her.

Then came the candy-sushi making.  My lovely wife had assembled all the ingredients beforehand, and each kid only had to spread out a fruit roll up (the seaweed), put a rectangle of warmish Rice Krispie treat on top, put a few Twizzler whips inside and a Swedish fish or two, and roll the thing into a log. My wife then cut each kid's log into rolls and put them in her or his takeout box. The takeout containers full of tiny-hand-rolled sushi, together with the paper creations and a cute, Japanese origami kit, made for the goody bag that the kids themselves largely made.  The cake, as usual, was gorgeous:  lemon, four layers, with blue buttercream frosting. My wife found this fake water lily flower in Chinatown, and used the lily-pad part as the stage for some seriously good-looking candy sushi and sashimi of her making. Several moms stayed the duration, enjoying each other and the leisure of watching their children engaged in something they didn't have to produce or direct.

Q's party took much of the weekend's oxygen, but it wasn't, of course, the only attention-worthy event.  Perhaps it's fitting that we had a birthday party the Saturday before Mother's Day, though we don't need any additional evidence that the kids' mother deserves a heaven of her own. We appreciated her as we usually appreciate members of our family, which is to say with favorite foods and good coffee and some lovely drawings by the kids taped into frames they also made themselves. Life shuffled on, too; there were still Q's yoga class and The Boy's baseball game, among other things. I wanted to take everyone out to a fancy place for dinner, but after the usual negotiations, we settled for eating sushi (real this time) on our floor picnic-style and watching a Star Wars. We didn't really settle, in other words, or at least I hope my wife doesn't think so.

I like traditions and holidays, mainly because they're ways we share memory through action, remaking them, too, in the remembering.  I suppose that some things can't be adequately celebrated regardless of the gift — I'd put a year in someone's life and mothers squarely in this category.  But I think that's as it should be.

Plate a piece of cake, crease a square of paper, hand them to another. Make the good stories a little longer.

Happy birthday, and Happy Mother's Day.

____________________
*Just one of the many things in my pockets from Q.  See, e.g., "Aboutness" from a little while back.
**Which is another way of saying that you have to respect your own limitations, too, or otherwise there might be a problem with the robot.

Q = 6

This past Earth Day, our daughter Q turned 6.  The date merely made official the changes we've been witnessing lately:  Q has stretched up out of her old clothes and into a whole new set of adjectives:  willowy, lissome, striking — words at ease around women. I probably see those words coming for her long before others do even as I resist them (and will likely do so long after I need to).  But Q is, I suppose, all of those and more besides, which is to say herself as we've come to know her, still sharply funny and clever and resolute.

Because her birthday proper fell on Good Friday and Easter weekend, we've set her (again, small) party for this weekend.* Still, we celebrated her on her actual birthday, too, just the four of us.  My lovely wife had a wonderful suggestion for a new tradition to launch this year:  The birthday boy or girl chooses a restaurant for his or her birthday dinner, and both Q and The Boy got quickly behind this idea.  It's genius, really, given that it's a great and not unsubtle way to privilege experiences over things while giving us a chance to do a thing we all love, which is eat. Q has been extremely fond of sushi lately,** and we were a little surprised when she picked Indian food.  But we all like that, too, and together we settled on a local, slightly nicer place than our go-to Indian restaurant that we've walked by countless times over years but have never been to.

Q made an event of it, as we knew she would.  She wore one of her favorite dresses, the aquamarine silk one that ties in the back, and patent-leather Mary Janes. Hair was braided.  My wife and I also fancied up when we came home early from work, she with a dress of her own and me with a tie of Q's choosing.  The Boy even easily agreed to a collared shirt.

The restaurant was likewise properly dressed, with heavy cotton napkins and pounded-copper chargers at each place setting, and a latticed candle centerpiece that threw small stars on our faces. The ceiling was crisscrossed with runners that reminded me of a howdah.  Apart from a couple up front and a family a few tables over, we had the place to ourselves.  (Most Indian and Chinese restaurants in our neighborhood make their business through delivery.)  They had the waitstaff for a full house, though, and we felt well attended to, especially once the head waitress learned that we had come because of Q's birthday.  At the end of the meal, they brought out a special candle-lit dessert — a disc of something tasting like carrot cake orbited by bits of fried, honey-soaked dough — and all sang "Happy Birthday."  Q found it hard to stop smiling long enough to blow out the flame.

As we crossed the streets back home, she fit her hand, a thing as quick and alive as she, into mine.   Six will too soon become seven, then we'll stop counting years on fingers, then she'll cross streets on her own, then she'll likely hold hands with someone new for different kinds of crossings.  Knowing her as I do, I can picture roles for her adult self — first ever Supreme Court Chief Justice/Gold Medal Gymnast, e.g. — but however she realizes herself, these are days I will return to.

Happy birthday, Q.  We love you and are proud of you.

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*Theme:  origami and candy sushi party. More about same later.
**See note above and our growing stack of receipts from Junior Sushi 2.

Losing stories

I heard very recently that my aunt, Alice Good, died a few Sundays back. There was a certain amount of surprise involved:  Not so long ago, she was being treated for what everyone thought was persistent and nasty arthritis when a full-body scan revealed her body shot through with cancer. She was right up to her 80's and wasn't interested in fighting it with the usual poisonous methods. She decided to let the disease run out, which it quickly did.

I'm sad, of course, to know that she's gone.  As I said just recently, Ree Ree (as we all called her) was one of my father's aunts that he grew up with as a sister, the one with the powerfully big laugh that fixed her forever in my childhood mind.  But some time ago she moved down to the New Orleans area and I set up a life in New York, which means I didn't see her with even the infrequency of some of my other relatives who stayed around Bourbon County, Kansas.

Though I'm not exactly sure why, Ree Ree was someone I wanted to get to know as my older self.  Looking back from the height and distance of my current age, I can see that she spoke to me, reasonably, as an aunt speaks to a child — always with big joy, forever blessing my heart. But over the years, I have picked up bits and scraps of a harder life, or at least a life with more angles than I can now plot, some of which my father subtended.  Now she'll remain for me as she was for me so many years ago. I love her like that, always will, but I wonder what stories she would tell the mid-life me, the one familiar with loss and grief and the pleasures of parenthood. Perhaps stories about my father coming into himself, the sun just over his shoulder, the parent I know now a shadow out in front of him. Many of those stories are lost and will stay lost.

When family members go, even distant ones, I also find myself wondering about how they could have participated in my kids' lives, and vice versa.  I'm proud of Q and The Boy, not so much of their accomplishments,* but of how they conduct themselves between the tests and the trophies. I think that's why we talk about being "close" to those we know well, as if emotional and physical distance maps 1:1.

Knowing the disease and her peace with it, my father, Uncle Larry, and Aunt Peg went down to New Orleans to be with her not long after they heard.  She slept much of the time, my father said, but she talked with them and knew they were there, which was the point.  My father told me about the drive down, about how the closer they got to the gulf, the hotter they all became.  When they finally reached Ree Ree's small town, they met up with her son, who greeted them with cold beer. Dad said he had forgotten how good a cold beer tastes on a hot day.

It's funny what turns out to be the best part of the story.

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*which, of course, are many and notable