NYC Moms

Summer Vacation: The Magazine Version

The public schools are still in session, for just a few more sweltering days, and then summer vacation is upon us.  Like most of the families we know, we’ve sort of mapped out the summer: in July there is Oasis Central Park Day Camp, for Caleb; and Liam has a spot in the National Dance Institute summer program. (Getting him to agree to this program required one week of pricey soccer camp beforehand, but we're pretty sure he's going to love it. And if he doesn't? It's only a month!)  

August is Camp Grandma and horning in on the summer rentals of various friends (we’re great guests: we bring liquor and  food, clean up after ourselves, and never stay too long: we’re now accepting invitations through the end of August, so feel free to invite us to your house!)  Then there’s more soccer at the end of August while Mommy tries to get ready for her new job, which starts just after Labor Day, and that’s that. 

It’s not perhaps the most exciting summer plan we’ve ever had, but it’s been a long year and there are Big Changes brewing on the horizon for next year, so for this summer, we’re staying local. I’m one of those people who doesn’t do “spontaneous” very well and I like having all my ducks in a row (or rather, out of the house for most of the day, all week), plus we needed to buy tickets to Camp Grandma out there in flyover country.

But then the New York Magazine “Summer” issue arrived and it hit me: Our summer plans are the Most. Boring. Ever.

The Ice Cream Truck Wars

Ah, the ice-cream truck…brings back memories of my suburban childhood, when once a day the Good Humor truck came through the neighborhood, sending us all scurrying into our houses to beg quarters and dimes from our moms (ancient times: seventy-five cents got you a Toasted Almond bar that I think was even made with real almonds. That’s how long ago it was: nut allergies didn’t exist).

 

Now, however, ice cream trucks are everywhere. Don’t get me wrong—I’m a big fan of soft-serve chocolate-vanilla swirl, and don’t even get me started on the treats offered by the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, or the yellow Van Leeuwen truck o’joy (a scoop of ginger ice cream on a warm evening? Heaven in a dish).  No, it’s not the caloric temptation of these trucks that gets me down. It’s the fact that the ice cream truck has become the battlefield where my 4th grader (who now, in mid-June, thinks of himself as a 5th grader) tries to prove that he’s the boss.

How Big?

People sometimes think that my two sons are twins. They’re not. In fact, Liam is almost four years older than his younger brother, and when strangers ask the “are you twins” question, you can almost see the steam coming out of his ears.

Liam was born about seven weeks early and weighed less than two pounds at birth. He spent two months in the NICU and the doctors warned us that because of his size, he might experience developmental delays, or respiratory problems, or vision problems…they sketched out a whole array of potential hardships and obstacles. Despite their dire predictions, however, Liam flourished: he’s bright, strong, healthy, happy.  There’s only one (small) problem:

He’s short.

Is being a good mother only about parenting?

I got cheerios in bed on Mother’s Day (what percentage of mothers had the same breakfast, I wonder), and then biked through the non-May-like blustering wind to Laughing Lotus for a free Moms Day yoga class. For the first time ever, I tried an "inversion," which involved backing my feet up the wall into an L-handstand. I hate being upside down, always have, but I figured that Mother’s Day was an auspicious day to start looking at things from a new perspective.

As we moved through our poses, the yoga teacher read passages to us from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism about the importance of compassion—beginning with being compassionate to ourselves. Compassion, the teacher said, is like being warm to ourselves, trusting ourselves through our mistakes and always coming back to that compassionate voice.

During the class I tried to follow her advice and ignored my sploodgy tummy, my inability to do a full handstand, the fact that my chaturanga pose looks more like wet Wonder bread than it does a plank. 
Although the teacher didn’t say so explicitly, her advice has particular resonance for parents, especially in these days of high-stakes performance parenting, where, you know, your kids need to know Mandarin and one other language by first grade; play improvisational jazz by third grade; tithe a significant portion of their birthday loot to some charity in distant Bangladesh; and maintain perfect behavior in all public situations.  (Click here for what punditmom has to say about this.) For those of us whose kids aren’t quite perfect (well, okay, I mean, I know your kids are, I’m just talking about mine), though, compassion seems key: reminding ourselves that being a good parent has nothing to do with magazine-ready perfection.

Testing, testing, one, two...seven hundred million

Last Wednesday, my son Liam’s fourth-grade class had a pizza lunch in the playground, instead of sitting in the cafeteria with their lunchboxes. Why the outside celebration on a chilly day in April? They had finished their three-day bout of ELA testing (that’s English Language Arts, for those of you happily out of the test circuit).

For the three days, these squirmy nine-year olds (and the even squirmier 3rd graders, and the 5th graders, and—well, pretty much every kid in public school grades 3-8) sat through these tests. 

They’ve been practicing for months, bringing home test booklets and staying after school, if needed, for extra test-prep help; they’ve practiced their “bubbling” (filling in those little circles on the computer scantron sheet); they’ve been told NOT TO BE NERVOUS, as if they can somehow ignore the fact that the bulk of their school day for the past two months has been centered around practicing for the tests. Many of them are aware that the scores on these tests will influence what choices they have for middle school, which further ratchets up the tension. Yes, that’s right: a test that your kid takes this month determines where he or she can go to school two years down the road.

Boys, Hand-in-Hand

At least once a week, Caleb and I go to the park after school with another little boy, L., and his mother. Despite having been in the same class all day, Caleb and L. are always thrilled at the idea of going to the park together; they literally jump for joy, then grab hands and stroll down the sidewalk together like a little old married couple.

I love watching them walking down the sidewalk hand-in-hand—occasionally pausing to shoot pretend laser cannons at one another. They are completely unselfconscious about hand-holding, hugs, or solicitous pats on the shoulder when one of them falls on the slide, or tumbles during a game of chase. All the little boys we know, in fact, seem equally happy with physical demonstrations of affection: when Caleb sees friends from school at the playground on the weekend, so many hugs and kisses fly around, you’d think they were all guests at a Greek wedding.

As Caleb approaches the end of kindergarten, though, I know that there is another end in sight: the end of easy hugs, the end of hand-holding. Maybe these gestures will last into first grade, but not much beyond that. My older son once hugged a (boy) friend good-bye when they were both in third grade, and the other boy flinched, as if the hug were somehow an affront, something for only little kids—or girls. Why does it have to be that for boys, part of growing up still seems to involve the lesson that displays of affection are only for girls or sissies?

My Blackbelt Epiphany

This past Saturday, I watched my nine-year-old earn his junior black belt and as I watched, I had a small epiphany: that person doing all these kicks and lunges and knuckle pushups was my kid. My kid doing something that never in a million years could I have done when I was nine (or ten, eleven, twelve…).  Watching him bow to the senior instructors, and to Kaicho (the title given to the man who founded Seido Karate), at the end of the grueling three-hour promotion, I was reminded that the best part of being a parent is seeing your children go further than you ever could.

We started Liam in karate in kindergarten, not because we love martial arts, but because our work schedules necessitated having him somewhere after school on the day karate was offered, and because we figured that as a tiny kid, he might benefit from the strength and non-competitive athleticism of a karate class. He liked it and loved his teacher, who broke a board with her head on the first day of class and thus became, in his eyes, the coolest person on the planet. 

After that first year, our schedules changed and Liam could have quit, but he didn’t want to: he has more stick-to-it-ness than either of his parents (sorry, hubby, it’s true).  Every year, Liam would progress upwards in rank until finally, this past January, he was asked to join the training classes for black belt promotion, which meant two hours of practice every Sunday, plus reading Kaicho’s autobiography, plus writing a two-page typed essay about challenges he’s faced in his life—on top of soccer practice, homework, and his regular weekly karate class. For a nine-year-old kid who still loves legos, it was a tall order.

It's Only Kindergarten

Our kindergartner goes to one of those citywide gifted-and-talented programs which seems to equate “gifted” with “go as fast as you can.” I spent the fall complaining about his kindergarten workload. (Did I ever think I would use the words “workload” and “kindergarten” in the same sentence?) “It’s only kindergarten,” I would say to Husband, after the kindergartener suffered yet another meltdown about writing ten sentences using his new spelling words. “It’s only kindergarten,” I complained, as the kindergartner slogged through pages and pages of math worksheets.

I told myself I wasn’t going to sucked into the crazy competitive mommy thing, but I found myself looking at other kids’ work on the bulletin boards and noticing that my kid barely eked out “I pld skr” (I played soccer) on his “weekend news” and other kids were, you know, writing short novels about their trip to grandma’s house.

Bulletin-board envy aside, though, mostly I let the kindergartner set the pace. If he wanted to get his math sheets done by Friday, fine. If he needed to take the weekend to get them done, okeydoke. I told myself I wasn’t going to get all hung up on this accelerated curriculum, no sir, not me, nope. It will all click eventually, I told myself, it’s only kindergarten. 

Sleepaway? Sleepahome!

It’s early March and already the conversation has started in New York City: What are you doing this summer? Are you going to do a camp? What do you think about sleepaway camp, soccer camp, gymnastics camp….. Sometimes it seems as if no matter how obscure the theme (left-handed cello-playing kids with an interest in origami), there is a specialized camp available. And if you believe the playground chatter, the time to sign up is now!

I didn’t go to camp as a kid. We spent summers in Northern Michigan in a ramshackle cottage with lots of cousins. It was sort of like camp except that the only organized activity was “leave the grownups alone!” We were expected to amuse ourselves and that’s what we did, more or less—sometimes through organized torture of younger cousins, sometimes by roaming through the woods having “adventures,” sometimes by finding a quiet spot to curl up with a book or a card game. Given that these summers were so long ago the dinosaurs roamed the earth—and that my grandparents, who owned the house, were pretty strongly anti-technology—we had no TV and no radio. (Computers, at that point, were but a twinkle in Bill Gates’ eye.)

Who put the s-e-x in t-a-x-i?

Whose bright idea was it to put televisions in the back of taxis? Clearly not someone who has young children, that’s for sure. Don’t the marketing mavens understand that a screen in front of a captive audience is simply sibling squabble fodder? One wants the volume off, the other wants it on; one wants to look at the map, the other must see the tarantula clip from Jimmy Kimmel; one wants to read the sports news, the other wants to look at the map; one wants to watch the weather, the other WANTS TO LOOK AT THE MAP. If I turn the thing off altogether, someone’s foot “accidentally” turns it back on, and so it goes, the meter ticking the entire way.

More than once, I’ve walked home in the drizzle or cold with both boys whining that we should take a cab in order to avoid the close-quarter complaining that comes from Taxi TV. 

But for the past month or so, I’ve had no choice but to confront Taxi TV alone with my 4th grader, and because we’re not with his younger brother, the problem isn’t having constantly to look at the map. The problem is…sex.