Melsville

Some Actors Save Themselves

In the morning, I have to bring Emma to Preschool by 9:15.  Since Jamie is cluttering up the bathroom until after 7:30 and Liam must be watched to make sure he eats breakfast and hounded until he dresses and loads his homework into his backpack.  He experiences all of these things as limiting civil rights, and protests.  After they leave, I need to dress and feed Emma and keep her company.  Is it any wonder that when Emma and I leave the house, I'm often unwashed, hungry, and wearing sweatpants?

On my way home this morning, I stopped at Rene's Cafe for a muffin and coffee,  I sat alone at a table, glanced at a film review in a "Metro" newspaper, and had a think.  Then, I came home, showered, washed my hair, dressed (in sweats) and spritzed on a little perfume (Green Tea).  Fed, washed, dressed and smelling good. I was finally ready to sit down and write; it's showtime folks!

The film review that I read questioned wether Liam Neisson could move past being a heroic figure into being a gun-weelding enraged father in an "action movie"; that reviewer believed that he could.  This week, a two-inch, Lego-built representation of Qui Gaun Gin, a character that Neisson played in the first "Star Wars" movie was delivered into our home.  Liam O'Keefe (my son) had decided that this accsesory to a larger toy was worth four or five dollars on Ebay, and he had talked of little else unril the package arrived.  In his robe and thick braid, Liam Neisson had become part of a toy.

"Star Wars" is Good vs Evil in its purest form.  And, once you've represented Good or Evil on the big screen,  it's hard to move past that.  In the "Star Wars" movies I watched as a kid, Mark Hammil was marched before the audience and labeled GOOD; good and innocent, unsullied.  And he never got over it; he wasn't actor enough.  Alec Guiness had already been an actor, and his character didn't live through the first movie, so he was safe.  Harrison Ford is a movie-star,  he can survive anything. 

I hated that first "Star Wars" movie. I was pregnant when I saw it; I fought falling asleep and didn't always and didn't always win.  When Qui Gaun Gin was on the screen,  I had no problem watching because his character was interesting.  I cried when he was slain because he was a character I actually liked and because I knew that, with him gone, the movie was only going to get worse. 

My friend, Diane suggested that his character had to die because he was better than anything else in the movie.  Except Yoda;  Yoda can stand up to anything.

Sean Connory was brought in to try out to audition for James Bond after the producer had watched him walk accross a parking-lot.  That is what we've been told, and I believe it.  Sean Connory walked his way into being James Bond, inhabited it better than anyone else has, and walked out.  It's possible to keep playing a character for as long as a series lasts, and then move past it.   Don't get me started on Daniel Radcliff, but I do think he can rise above being Harry Potter; if people let him.

Bowling

In Someville, the School Department like to declare Snow Days before a single flake falls.   Before dinner, families know that the city is counting upon the schools being buried by morning.  The kids know that only a total looser would be doing his homework tonight and that the DVDS are about to come out; it could be a Pixar Fim-Fest, a viewing of the whole Star War saga.

Last night, Jamie, Liam, Emma and I  resisted the sirine song of the such entertaiment.  We joined Sarah and Isaiah at Mike's Pizza and moved on to Sacco's Bowl Haven.    Mike's may have up-scaled its menu and a sign with a more elegent font, but rhey still have dueking basketball and hokey on the TVs.  Sacco's looks like it never plans to change.  And it shouldn't. With its twelve lanes, pool - room, and jukebox, there is nothing retro-cool about Sacco's; it is what it is.

Isaiah, Liam, and Emma soundly trounced us parents in the bowling department.  Once the boys saw by how much they could beat us, the boys almost stopped compeating with each other.   Emma was original tied to the adults until she proved not to be a lead sinker.  One she got the hang of it, Emma stood on the dotted line, almost in a split, and rolled a slow ball right down the middle, knocking down 5, 6, 7 pins.  Then, of course, the boys embraced her as a member of The Kid's Team.

On the jukebox, you got three songs for a dollar, and you could pick any song on a whole CD.  Jamie picked Blondie, Parlement and Bob Marely.  Others treated us to David Bowie,  AC / DC and that song which has that line about being called Maurice (Wah-WAHHH).  And we sang along.

Every year, the program that Liam is in throws what the call the K - 4 dance.  The music plays, and the boys slide around the gym floor with a few of their buddies while the girls try to dance.  Some girls wear their Winter party dresses.  The Special Assistant to the Principal, a charming Haitian gentleman dancing nonstop with any mothers who'll dance with him. 

Each year, Liam and his boy-buds loudly announce that they don't want to go, but they always do.

Sarah thought that Choice Program should have a fund-raiser at Sacco's, a really fun one.  I said it should be the new home of the K - 4 party.  Parents could guide their kids on a history of their own youths; childhood birthday parties at bowling allies, a jukebox filled with the music we slammed our teenage doors to and listened to late into the night, the pool some college students learned to play when they should have been studying.

Independence and Star Wars

I think second-born children are more independent.  This morning, Emma awoke, got out of her toddler-bed, and went chugging downstairs on her own.  She also announces that she has to use the bathroom and orders the rest of us to stay where we are so she can have some privacy.  At this rate, she will be showering, washing her own hair and smoothing on moisturizer by herself before the end of Kindergartan. We may need a second bathroom sooner than we thought we would!  I can also see Emma fixing her own breakfast (cereal) next year, and maybe fixing a bowl for her brother too. 

Early this morning, while Emma slept in her brand-new bed, Liam crawled in with Jamie and I.  He rarely does that, but he does.

The first children Liam met were nine-year-old boys.  She watched them run, and climb just about everything,  She witnessed Liam's buddy Alex (an unusually tall child) jump / step over our baby-gate. From the first week of her life forward, Emma spent hours watching older kids jumping, kicking and punching in the basement Kung-Fu studio;  is it any wonder she makes for the practice-floor as often as she can, forcing me to preform some impressive sliding dives.

Liam talks about playdates and sleep-overs. Children come to us, Liam goes to them.  It's a part of the life Emma sees.  She's planning play=dates and overnights with Bella, Oliver, Charlotte and Alessandro. We visited Alessandro yesterday; he's a little cutie.

There are times when Emma has to keep herself entertained while I cook dinner and Jamie helps Liam with his homework.  Liam needs attention.  Liam needs his hair washed, and he needs someone get him his breakfast and keep at him until he eats it.  Liam needs love.  There are times when he wants to have someone's lap all to himself.  Emma knows that everybody needs a turn.

And speaking of everybody needing a turn; Jamie and I want to go out every other Thursday night.  We've gotta find a regular sitter.

For the past couple of months, Jamie and I have been reading  "STAR WARS: Cloak of Deception".  This book has about three times more words than it needs.  Even as I read it,  I can't keep up with what is happening even as I read it.  And, I'm saying this who reads James Joyce and William Faulkner for fun.  Maybe we can read "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" soon;  THAT is like applepie and ice-cream to me.  Most of it is: I wonder how we'll make it through the Holy War at the end.  R.I.P. Fred Weasley.

My i-radio

Finally, I have an i-pod, and I'm actually learning to use it.   I'd like to pull together all my dream-radio songs.  Dream-radio songs, the songs that were my favorites when they came on the radio.  Some were songs from a favorite album ( this was in the days if the big, grooved, vinal records with their hisses, skips and scratches).  Others were songs that were mindblowingly great, but for which it didn't make sense to buy the whole album.   I want to collect these songs together off of i-Tunes or Songza, put them in their own little i-pod catagory and let them cycle through randomly.  It may not be as much fun as the radio was when I was a teenager, but it could provide some happy surprises.

                       Some Dream-Radio Gems

            "The Prettiest Star"                    David Bowie
            "Money (that's What I Want)"      The Beatles
            "The Magnificent Seven"             The Clash
            "Here Comes My Baby"           
            "Town Called Malice"
            "Need You Tonight"                   INXS
            "Saint James Infirmery"            Louis Armstrong
            "Love Will Tear Us Apart"          Joy Division
            "She Drives Me Crazy"               Fine Young Canibals   
            "I Walk the Line"                      Johnny Cash.
            "Because the Night"
           "Neon Sign"                               Jonathan Richman
          "Please Mr. Postman"                  The Beatles

           London Girl                               The Pogues       

           Brown-Eyed Handsome Man        Buddy Holly

          Fight the Power                         Public Enemy.

        Bits from My Fair Lady and Oklahoma

        Day-Dream Believer                        The Monkees

        Another Saturday Night                   Sam Cooke

        What's the Story Morning-Glory?        Oasis

There's more too.  They would have to be on Dream-Radio; no single station would play them all.

Two Things about which I Won't have to Worry

1.)  Having my children taken away from me because of my seizure disorder. 

Yesterday, I gave an old cell-phone to Jerry,  someone I met eight years ago because he sold l "Spare Change" ( a newspaper written and sold by people who are homeless) by my subway stop.  Since I saw him several times a week, mostly after I had left my son at daycare,  I learned his name and often stopped to talk to him.  I learned that Jerry's wife had died and that he was raising a daughter Liam's age.  His daughter was the most important thing in his life, and we shared many concerned about the future and our children. I learned that he had gotten an apartment in a local housing project so that he and his daughter could have a home.  I found him to be a thoughtful, interesting person, and I really liked him.

I don't remember when I learned that Jerry was on some kind of medication, and that he needed it every day.  I'll be on seizure medication for the rest of my life, and I know what can happen if I miss a dose, so I had some insight into what it's like to be that dependent.  But then, I have insurance and an unfailing supply of what I need. I never did ask Jerry why he needed medication, what would happen if he missed a dose, and how he kept himself supplied.

Jamie and I put my old cell-phone on a web-site that enables people to give away things that they don't need to people who might want them.  Thanks to this site and its postings, Jerry learned that someone was  giving away a phone that was the same model as the refurbished phone he had been using.  When Jerry called me about the phone and told me his name, we realized that we knew one another and talked for about ten minutes.

I asked Jerry about his daughter, expecting we would be sharing stories about our nine-year-old children and their trips though the 3rd grade.  Instead, Jerry told me that the Department of Youth and Family Services (the DYFS)  had taken his daughter and put her into foster care.  Appartently, because of his medical issues, Jerry and passed out and his daughter had called 911 to get him help.   After the ambulance had come to the housing project and found that a nine-year-old girl (who had probably been very scared) ha the foresight to call 911 because she knew her single father needed help,  the DYSF took custody of the girl.

Jerry's daughter stayed with his sister-in-law for a few weeks, but was then placed in the care of another woman.  Jerry is allowed to see his daughter in a supervised setting every few weeks, and he has a court date in March at which he will ask that his daughter return to their home.

My son has seen me have seizures.  Tonight, I will make sure that he knows to call 911 if he's with me and I need help.  Because I'm married and Jamie could take care of the kids, the DYFS would not be able to take my children.  Being a middle-class White woman who doesn't live in a housing project would have a lot to do with it too.

2.)  Getting a decent haircut will never be too hard.

I have curly hair, I like having curly hair, so I used to dread haircuts. I was always  nervous that the person cutting my hair would blowdry it into one of the high, puffy, styles that was popular when I was a teenager and fix it into place with sticky, smelly spray.  These days, I find myself telling stylists that I do not want to see how my hair would look sleek and strait.  In the Summer, I leave the salon while my hair is still a little wet, assuring everyone that was exactly what I wanted.

When I call for a first appointment, I always ask for an appointment with the stylist who keeps curly hair curly.

Today, I read that Chris Rock had directed a documentry about the experieces African American women getting their hair styled.  I've read about this; it sometimes invovles going all over town to find a place that where the stylists have experience cutting African American people's hair.  The alternative is to find someone who runs a buisness out of her home, and that means asking the friends of friends.  Could be fun, could be a way of other women who've shared similar experiences, could be an absolute chore.  

I'm never going to go to such extreames.  I'm never going to worry about how harsh the products being used on my hair are.  I will never have to spend eight hours to have my hair styled (as my friend Dermeesha once did).   All I have to say is, "keep my hair curly. Don't mess with it."  People will know what I mean.  I used to think that getting the right haircut was tough, but I had no idea.

Beatles 1.1

One of my latest Facebook Status Updates was to let people know that George Harrison was the underappreciated Beatle.  Well, he was.

John and Paul may have done more to prefect the three minute lovesong than George did.  They saw her standing there, they signed  their humble notes, "P.S., I Love You". George helped light the fuse for the blast that blew the three-minute lovesong to bits.  George was going to say what he wanted to say.

George should have owned the title of "The Handsome Beatle".  Paul could be The Cute One all he wanted, but George was something else. Something that not everyone even glanced at.  But, can you expect fourteen-year-old girls to appreciate high cheekbones and wicked eyebrows, get drawn in by a low-level smolder.  As he aged, George grew craggy, maybe severe, but interesting.  Paul puffed up; and what good are big, dark eyes if bags surround them?

Only two of the Beatles had cleared thirty when the band broke up.  John became a one-man social movement, a living icon, and a rocker.  Paul became a pop star, a good one.  What did Ringo become?; an entertainer I suppose.  Once you've named yourself "Ringp Starr" it's hard to become anything but Ringo Starr.  When George grew up, he became a musician. Which is what he had always been, the most talented musician in the band.

George gained coolness points for hanging around with Monty Python.   He helped produce a few movies that some people loved and other people just didn't get. He got up and performed with a bunch of other aging musicians, and proved that people still wanted to hear them.

I think that George died of the cancers that develop during forty years of persistant smoking.  You could, perhaps say that he set himself up for it, but that doesn't mean that he deserved his end.  Mistakenly, National Public Radio announced his death months  before it happened.  I felt sad, Nothing like the stunned grief people experienced when John Lennon was shot by a crazy man outside of his home, but really sad. 

Within the day, George's family came forward to say that he wasn't yet dead.  I'm sure I wasn't the only one who imagine George stirring just enough to say, "I'm not dead yet.  I feel happy! Think I'll go for a walk!"  When he did die, the sadness returned.  People told each other, "You know, I always did like George."  Grateful for him after he was gone,  realizing, maybe how much had been lost.

This is the Day

Today is the Tuesday after a long weekend.   Emma was home for four of last week's five school days.  Twice I had to head back to school after wolfing down a muffin to collect her, and one of those times I had managed to shower before the school called me.  On Sunday, our family party was canceled due to weather, but happened anyway when my brother, his family, and my big wee cousin, Lauren braved the elements to join us for lunch.  Jamie and Liam bumped around the house yesterday, perhaps preventing me from being as laizze fairre as I might want to be .  This morning, I watched Liam and Jamie leave and told Emma she would soon be at Preschool with her buddies.  Before I could get her into her snowpants, the school nurse called to say that someone should collect sickie-poo Liam.  All this means, I'm here with Jamie and the wretchedly sick Liam.  And Liam has a dentist appointment Wednesday morning and a half-day in the afternoon?

Have you ever had one of those days when you'd planned to live every moment alone more fully?  A day when you had plans and important tasks to accomplish?: a day when you'd saved some time just for dancing around the livingroom all by yourself?  That was to be today.  I meant to watch the inaguration all morning and hear our new President speak.   I meant to turn my attention to my summer-camp database and make it sing.  And Goddammnit, I was going to play around with my ipod and keep my music all to myself!

I can still do these things, but I won't be alone. 

First Reactions

The night I found out that George H. Bush had been elected, I lay in a hospital bed on a regular diet of horse-pill pain-killers and anti-seizure medications (which also act as mood levelers).  When I heard the words, "Vice-President-Elect, Dan  Quayle", my eyes popped open and I yelled in shock, not pain.  And in short, I was afraid.

George H. Bush was is an intelligent man who had worked on the inside of the Fedral government for years.  He'd spent the last eight years getting ready to become the next President, and about as long getting ready to take over the job at a moment's notice.  He knew as much about what was happening in the world as anytime in the Reagan administration.  I was still afraid, and waiting every day for his term in office to end.

When anyone mentions second father-son sets of presidents, George H. will always be "The Good One".  He lasted four years.

My son hadn't cleared the three-year mark when he first saw George W.  After one glance, Liam declared with absolute certanty, "Mommy, Daddy, he is not a nice man".  Even as Jamie carried him upstairs to his bath, Liam remained adamant, "not a nice man, Mommy Daddy!  He is a bad man!"

Liam cannot wait for Mr. Obama to take office, and neither can any of the nine-year-old children I know.  He loves the idea of a President who is not an old, white man.

I don't know if Emma's daycare would consider having the children watch tomorrow's proceedings, but I wish they would.  It may be too much to expect three-year-olds to listen to the speechs or to fully take in what they are seeing, I know that.  I would like the kids to watch Mr. Obama as he walks forward to the podium, I want to know how he looks to them, what they see in him.  Do they feel anything when they see him?    My son pegged G.W.B. on-sight; what do young kids think when they see their new President?

Mama of the Universe

This is the promise I offered when I began this blog;  I will write first at least thirty minutes every day and post what I write.  I'm making this promise again, and I'll do it goddamnit!! 

I'm not making excuses for not writing, I'm just trying to say it's hard not to say I'm too tired.

And why?  Somehow, I have become the most civic-minded Mama in Somervile.  I'm the one who takes notes at the Parent's Council meeting for my son's school program.  That woman filling her wire-bound notebook with every word everybody at the meeting says?; I am she.   With each meeting,  I'm learning to weed out the repeating, agreeing and muttering that happens all the time in meetings, all those times people put up their hands to say, "oh, I agree with Aly", all the times forgot their own points or started disagreeing with themselves.  The more notes I write, the shorter my notes become.  Since I'm the one who bangs out the distilled notes and emails them to the parents list, the parents read what I give them to read.  If I do this enough, I will be more powerful than the Council Co-Chairs.  Someday, the Pincipal will depend on me to tell him what the Council decided.  I will rule the school, but so quietly that nobody will know it.  Scoff if you will as I scrawl my notes, I know what I'm doing.

Perhaps my more lauded project is the summer-camp database I built last year.  In it, I listed local daycamps; their specialties, their whereabouts and their cost per-session.   Compared to the meeting notes, this project is fun.  I spend hours visiting camp web-sites and asking how I might want to spend my days if I was eight years old.  I spend January days thinking of Summer and of children playing soccer in the sunshine, swimming, acting, or becoming engrossed in an art project.  Parents have thanked me for my list, said they couldn't plan their summers without my database.  I know when the City's music camps (a bargin, trust me) start registering campers and when the M I T daycamp (worth the price? Liam loves it) has filled.  Parents of Somerville,  I have what you want.  I know where your kids will be this Summer.  I may look tirelessly civic-minded, but it's all part of ruling the world.