Good Riddance

Since we have decided to leave New York, our home of 12 years (and our entire adult lives), I thought I would begin to feel an overwhelming nostalgia, or become wistful in anticipation of all the things that I will miss: hot dog vendors, street fashion, the idea of Broadway and Museum Mile. Instead, perhaps as a defense mechanism against change but perhaps as the simple relief of honesty, I find myself making mental lists of all the things I will not miss, and that list is long. We all know that parking problems is at the top. Guess what? The meters I use weekly while getting Clio to and from school just went from 30 minutes for a quarter to 20 minutes for a quarter, a 50% increase. Good riddance, meters. The road construction in our neighborhood means that the journey from Clio's day care on 31st street to our house on 30th involves going the wrong way around extra blocks, many double-parked obstacles, and waiting for construction vehicles to stop blocking the street, a journey which just now took 20 minutes. Good riddance, road rage. When we went to the aquarium on Wednesday, this was the scene that greeted us:


literally hundreds of school children, waiting to get in. Good riddance, crowds.

Of course there are things that make me sad to go, that feel irreplaceable. My Doctor. My Mom's group. Walking to the playground (though not through construction). The Aquarium, and Coney Island all around it. The list goes on, and yet....

I am a traitor: Good riddance, New York.

Oh! It just broke my heart to write those words. There is city love in me yet.

On not worrying too much

This morning as I drove myself, the girls, and my Mom to the NYC Aquarium, I remembered aloud that the warning light had come on in the car on our way home from the airport the other day. My mom told me that my dad's car has had a light blinking for 5 years; when pressed on the issue, his response is apparently "well, nothing has happened yet." To which my mom and I said in unison and in the exact intonation, "because it's a warning light."

Truth be told, if I really look around my house, there are little warning lights everywhere. I often notice them and find myself thinking, just like my dad, well, nothing has happened yet. I read that column in Parents magazine called "It Happened to Me," and with two little kids, I'm all too aware that, like the people who send in their horror stories, everything is okay... until it isn't. Like the cleaning products on the floor of the bathroom that I will just assume Eleri can't reach- until one day she does? These are not lessons to learn the hard way. Now, I'm not a hovering parent. I really do think that children should be independent and learn to fend for themselves. And I fall very much on the liberal side of the debate over how much we should protect our children. For all these reasons (plus laziness and/or necessity), we never childproofed our home, Eleri eats things off the floor (as I have already confessed), and we occasionally allow Clio to play out front or back alone (we can see and hear her through the window or open door)--yes, in Brooklyn.

I love this recent piece on Salon.com by the author of Free Range Kids, titled Stop Worrying About Your Children. The author drew the ire of the news media a few years back when she allowed her then-9 year old son to ride the subway. Alone. In the essay, she very convincingly makes the argument that, essentially, we are a generation of parents that has gone insane with worry, partly because of the disproportionate and sensationalized coverage in the media of crimes involving children. (Kind of like how you would think we were a nation of serial killers based on the number of books, TV shows, and movies that feature them and the people who hunt them down.) She argues, with some statistics, some common sense, and a lot of self-effacing humor, that kids today are about as safe as we were growing up back in the 70s- perhaps safer, since there have been so many improvements based on new understanding of our environment and its risks- car seats designed on the results of crash tests, sophisticated vaccines, and (arguably), purell.

At the same time, there are dangers that are not self-evident in every home. To Eleri, the reflective, black surface of our oven door is a mirror; not only would she like to look at herself in it, she would like very much to touch that reflection, and she has no way of knowing that it might be hot. Do we condition our children away from these wolves-in-sheeps-clothing? Tell them no! until they don't go near that one "mirror," though others are okay? (How confusing). Or do we let them learn the hard way? I am reminded of a story from Marni's family: Her sister Andi was apparently a biter, and one day, when she bit their mom Max, Max just bit her right back. And Andi stopped biting.

For toddlers and preschoolers, there are many dangers that are also beyond comprehension, unless experienced. Once she got comfortable on the stairs, Clio became careless, and Dave and I waited with bated breath for the day she would fall down them; finally, she did, when she reached down for a toy that she had dropped to a lower step. Luckily, she was not hurt, just a little shaken up, and now she understand the force of gravity a little bit better, and will carry that knowledge into future experiments.

So how do we protect our children just the right amount? Obviously we don't want to create an unsafe environment, but if we over do it on safety at home, don't we set up a false sense of security, leaving them vulnerable to all the "normal" dangers out there in the spheres they will experience that we cannot control?

And what about all the chance occurrences that no one can predict, much less control? Earlier this year, my younger brother and his wife lost their first child, at birth, to Trisomy-18, a chromosomal disorder with essentially no survival rate. Before he was born, when they knew something was wrong but not how devastating it would be, I said something stupid to my brother: odds are, the baby will be fine. Because risk (and reward) is often calculated in ratios with such a big number on one end, it seems impossible that we could be the one on the other side of the equation. But that's the thing about odds: someone has to be the one. Someone is the exception that makes a rule safe for the rest of us. In Rory and Nicole's case, the number was one in 6,000, and the odds do not feel fair. We can't make sense of this, and the loss will take a long time to work through; but at the same time, we can't do anything to prevent such a tragedy. We can't live our lives as if we are the one in every, or maybe even any, case.

For Mother's Day

Dave bought me my very own URL, clioconfidential.com, and looked into software for building and tracking websites.

There is no better gift than your spouse's belief in something that you are doing.

This gift happened to coincide with the 2-year anniversary of this blog, and very close to the 400th post. I love the idea of taking it out of blogger and into it's own little universe.

Stay tuned.... (but keep in mind that we're moving, and selling our house, and starting a "new life," so the "new blog" may be slow in coming!)

Found Self Portraits

Now, Forager

Eleri has a very bad habit. Now that she can really get around on her own, she takes advantage of her mobility to scavenge for food. And when I say food, I use the term loosely, to include all manner of thing that Eleri would love to eat that we prefer she not. Like magazines. And the shriveled-up peas that hide in corners even after I sweep. And, most of all, the carpet fluff. Our living room rug is relatively new and still shedding its bright orange fibers. Eleri loves to dig them up and put them in her mouth. This fluff also collects in other places that she has discovered: the crease of the bottom stair is a veritable buffet.

Dave is insistent on removing any and all of the above items from her mouth. If we're being honest, I'm a little more liberal and sometimes pretend that I have not seen her put anything in there. But occasionally we get a hairball-like situation that, as Clio might say, is "so nasty." (At least this would be a correct usage of the term, right?) Dave has suggested getting rid of the rug, but I feel strongly that we need it to stage the house for sale. Luckily, once the house hits the market we will also need to sweep and mop on a much more regular basis. (Wait, did I just say that was "lucky"? Lucky for the carpet fluff, I guess.)

Meanwhile, at Clio's parent-teacher conference last week, they told me that one of her favorite activities is snack. Really. You would think we weren't feeding these kids or something.

Status Update

So, we're moving.

To Boulder, CO, a city to which I have never been. (As I pointed out to my mother, this is not the first time I will have moved to a place sight unseen: there was Lugano, Switzerland, to attend The American School in Switzerland; there was Poughkeepsie, NY, to attend Vassar college.) In keeping with the trend, this move is related to school, but this time I will not be the student. Dave is planning to study Structural Integration; depending on which school you attend, this is also known as Rolfing. You can Google it if you want to know more- Dave says he doesn't yet have his sound byte down to describe what it is, exactly. I like to say it's "on the body work spectrum," more to the chiropractic and movement therapy end than the swedish massage end. But I haven't even Googled it, actually, so don't listen to me.

While we're there, Clio will go to Montessori school, Eleri will go to day care of some kind, and I will re-enter the work force. Preferably doing something related to future goals, like teaching, writing, editing, or working in Public Programs, all somehow related to cultural or educational environments. But hell, if it brings in more than childcare takes out and covers basic expenses, I'll work in a bookstore. Or as the assistant program manager at a gym. (yes, this is a real job that I really might apply for. Climbing wall birthday party, anyone?) This is what I find exciting about the whole venture: the possibilities. I feel a little bit like we get to try on another life for a little while. We will likely be renters. We can try new hobbies and no one will know us well enough to say "really??! you!!?" when we say we are, I don't know, going to train for a triathalon, as so many people apparently do in Boulder. (Something about that thin mountain air.)

I like that we will know what it is like to live somewhere in "the rest of the country." I have lived my entire adult life in New York City, a wonderful, if somewhat skewed perspective, and I am eager to get another view on things.

At the end of this experiment, lasting somewhere in the 12-24 months range, we will pick up and move again, to settle down in the Twin Cities, and begin the rest of our lives. Or the next part of the rest of our lives. Or the rest of the next part of our lives.

At least that's the plan.

For now, there's work to be done. If you know of anyone who might want to buy a 3-bed 2-bath attached house in Brooklyn with central air, outdoor space, and parking, all for the price of a 2-bed coop in one of those new buildings on 4th ave in park slope, send them my way. If you know someone who might want to employ us, rent to us, or befriend us out west, ditto. If you want to take our kids off our hands every now and again as we prepare our house for sale, well, where do I drop them off? Any other ideas? I'm all ears!

As for all the nitty gritty details, no, we haven't figured any of it out. But we will.

Overheard

Mommy, what does D-E-L-I spell?

Mom, my duck's name is Millia.
Millie?
No, Millia. Say like this: Mih
Mih
Lee
Lee
Uh
Uh
That's right, mom. My duck's name is Baby Millia Duck.

On waterballoons:
And it will be terribly so fun to go outside and break them and watch the splash, right mom?